Customer Reviews

Of Human Bondage (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

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What Buddhist burst of contemplation led to this great novel written by that "technician," W Somerset Maugham? Of all the great books of the 20th century, which one could compare with its raw nerve and sinew? Here are no word games, no playing with the chronology, no obfuscation. With the limpid prose that had become his trademark, Maugham took us by the most direct route into his own private inferno.

What in his hero Philip Carey was a clubfoot was for Maugham a painful stammer. What was Carey's public school at "Tercanbury" was Maugham's Canterbury. And, what is most interesting, what were Carey's tortured amours with the opposite sex were Maugham's tortured amours with the same sex. Yet with all the "translation" going on, the intensity of the feelings was transferred intact. The pain of Philip's on-again off-again relationship with Mildred has few equals in the literature of self-torture and self-delusion, ranking with Swann's pursuit of Odette de Crecy.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE is a big book. There are hundreds of characters; and many of the lesser characters are memorable. The ineffectual dilettante Hayward, the skeptical poet Cronshaw, the icily bland Mildred, the despairing artist Fanny Price, the treacherous Griffiths -- even the walk-on role of grumpy old Dr. South comes alive in the last few pages of the novel.

The settings are equally diffuse: London, the English countryside, Heidelberg, Paris, a Channel fishing village, and -- an amusing canard -- Toledo in Spain. (Carey is always dreaming of going there, but he never does.)

When one is young, life looks like a triumphant progress through love, fame, and wealth. There appears, however, to be an inherent weakness in the organism; and it tends to go astray more than it does forward. We give ourselves to uncaring people; we constantly meet with reverses; we see our childhood dreams trampled by money-grubbing and the quiet desperation of which Thoreau wrote.

And yet there is a spring that runs through us all. Even when it is dammed up, as Philip Carey's so often is, it can break out and rush forward, carrying everything in its path. When it happens deus-ex-machina style in BONDAGE, we are exhilarated (if not convinced). Maugham lets us down easily. He is too great and generous a writer to leave us in despair.

Maugham's own story turned out well: he died rich, at an advanced age, and full of honors. His books are still in print and read by millions. What is more, Maugham, particularly in OF HUMAN BONDAGE, showed us what lay beneath the unperturbable veneer: We saw the skull beneath the skin.

I like this novel very much, but am always hard pressed to say why. Philip, the protagonist, isn't very sympathetic. The novel goes on at great length to describe several episodes that seem to be transparently taken from Maugham's own life. And I don't agree with Philip's lack of faith, although I understand it. Perhaps it has something to do with Philip's directionless nature, something most every young man can identify with. I read this first on graduating high school, wrote papers on it in grad school, and reread it again recently at the age of 34. Why? Because Philip is a very believable character. He suffers and endures, rather than swallow his pride when it would definitely be to his advantage. It's very easy to identify with someone who is so imperfect, instead of an idealized individual about whom you couldn't care less. Philip draws you in because he's so very human, flawed but purposeful, cynical yet still in possession of his dreams. Two last points: First, the novel is an _excellent_ look at London at the turn of the century. Reading this will teach you volumes about life as it was lived in this city, from its living conditions and social order to its worlds of medicine and bohemia. Second, the character of Mildred is the most callous, unfeeling individual I've ever met in print, although I've since seen many like her, both male and female, in my own life. Most likely, everyone encounters a Mildred sooner or later: better to meet her here first, where you can study her at your leisure. While I haven't found other works by Maugham nearly as interesting, this one has a special place on my bookshelf.

W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage is one of the best novels I have ever read. The language is simple. The narration is subtle. The characters are real and display emotions and feelings everyone can identify with. The power of novel becomes apparent when you are reading it. You choke up every once a while, you smile for hours after you have finished reading certain passages, and you comprehend your own self, your woes and possibilities, better through perspectives that novel provides.

Philip Carey is born with a clubfoot, and as he grows up, orphaned, he struggles with his own deformity. The initial quarter of the novel is about his growing up, and details incidents and relationships that shape our hero. He then develops a fancy of becoming a painter and travels to Paris, only to quit few years later to return to London, where he studies to become a doctor. The most engrossing part of novel starts here with the entry of Mildred, the waitress.

The rest of the novel thrives on the passion of Philip, his love that carries him to the edge of self-destruction, and his coming of age. Unrequited love has never been potrayed better. Philip allows himself to become an instrument in hands of cold-hearted Mildred, who repeatedly ruins herself through absurd choices, and ruins him for not withstanding his love and care, he finds himself snubbed, ridiculed, bereft. Eventhough his reason tells him otherwise, Philip is unable to release himself from his passion for a considerable time. As is said in the novel, "But when all was said the important thing was to love rather than to be loved; and he yearned for Mildred with his whole soul."

The novel is lot more than just story of Philip and Mildred, and there are other unforgettable characters. Each person Philip encounters and each friend he makes, leaves an indelible impression on him and the reader. Be it his idealist friend Hayward, who has too much promise too little product, the poet Cronshaw who dies in poverty, Fenny Price whose hard work cannot make her draw even reasonably well, his uncle and aunt whose love is both tacit and beautifully potrayed and the writer Norah who shows Philip of a caring and loving other.

The most charming people in the novel are Athlneys. Athlney brings life and humor into the novel, and I think saves Philip from a total destruction. The novel really highlights the virtue that lies in a simple, happy married life and Anthlneys win over both Philip and readers with their goodness and simplicity. Thorpe Anthlney with his nine children is a jolly character, and be it his conversations or actions, he wins over our hearts outright.

Philip finds love in most unexpected quarters and is surprised by how help crops up from strangers. His every experience makes him as richer as the reader becomes in reading about it. The thoughts about the meaning of life, or about love or religion or about virtue or vice, and about each aspect of life that Philip encounters are spelt out with a subtlety and mastery. These thoughts find easy resonance with the reader, and make Of Human Bondage an unforgettable affair. The honesty of this piece is stunning. This novel, written without any flourishes and intricate wordplay or mystery, is I think a celebration of the deep insight and understanding of the author.

I have read his other works. The Razor's Edge, The Moon and Six Pence as well as his short stories are a proof of Maugham's ability to tell simple tales with great mastery. These, on their own, make Maugham a great novelist. But it is after reading Of Human Bondage that I realized why most novelists and readers have considered this piece as one the greatest pieces in World Literature. Maugham's aim was perhaps of catharisis and he put his own emotions into the characters, and therefore, he's created a work that is timeless and unforgettable. A must read for everyone who can read.

Of Human Bondage is one of my favorite books. The best time to read it is in late adolescence, when the need to figure out who you are and how you fit in is particularly acute. But its insights into the human condition can be profitably and pleasurably absorbed at any stage of life.

First published in 1915, it's a coming of age story that Maugham felt compelled to write so he could put to rest memories of his own past. Phillip Carey is a sensitive, reserved boy who bears the physical affliction of a club foot. His parents die when he's young, and he's sent to be raised by his uncle, a Vicar more concerned with his creature comforts that the emotional needs of a young boy. Tormented at school for his deformity, Phillip becomes an outsider, with the acute powers of observation that compensate the outsider for being cut out of the human herd. He flees England to study German in Heidelberg. Returning home, he becomes a clerk in a firm of Chartered Accountants, but his soul rebels against the tedium of the work. Hoping that his small talent for drawing can be developed into something larger, he goes to Paris to study art.

As an art student, Phillip learns a lot about life, and enough of art to know he'll never be anything but average as a painter. Spurning mediocrity, he goes back to London and enrolls in medical school. At this point he meets Mildred, a waitress in a tea shop. Despite being very clear eyed about her flaws of character and personality, Phillip falls madly, self-destructively in love with her. Phillip has spent much of his young adult life attempting to free himself from the convention wisdom and morality of his time. He prides himself on being clear eyed about people and in control of his emotions. But his carefully erected rationalist philosophy proves powerless against his unreasoning desire. This tempestuous relationship is the beating heart of the novel, and the strongest memory most people retain about it.

Some critics have expressed disappointment with the story's ending. After suffering many more trials, Phillip is finally at the point of leaving England for a life of adventure as a traveling doctor in the Orient. With his dream in his grasp, he willingly abandons it for a more conventional kind of life. But unlike Raskolnikov's abrupt conversion to Christianity at the end of Crime and Punishment, Phillip's choice of the conventional life, and a conventional romance, has been carefully prepared for by the author. For much of the book, Phillip and other characters have been debating how much free will an individual actually has. Cronshaw, a drunken poet Phillip befriends in Paris, sums it up this way: "I act as though I were a free agent, but when an action is performed, it is clear that all the forces of the universe conspired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have prevented it." Phillip is free to choose his life's course; he is also the plaything of chance and fate.

Much in the novel corresponds to events in Maugham's own life. His mother died young, he was raised by an uncle who was a Vicar, spent time in Heidelberg and trained as a doctor. Maugham didn't have a club foot, but did have a bad stammer that made conversation a trial. He was also a closet homosexual at a time in England when such behavior led to social ostracism and the threat of jail. Maugham himself lived the life Phillip dreamed of, free of many conventional constraints. Unlike Phillip, it's not clear that such a life brought Maugham any closer to happiness. Gore Vidal, another gay writer of consequence, perceptively noted that Maugham's greatest character may have been the authorial self that he presented to his public with unflagging consistency right into old age. This controlled, avuncular persona successfully masked the insecurities, grievances and sexual torments of Maugham the man.

Maugham once characterized himself as a "first rate writer of the second rank." If the first rank is peopled with the likes of Dostoievski, Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Marquez and Mishima, he's right. But its intellectual depth and emotional honesty put this novel in the first rank. It should be read as long as there are young people with keen minds and ardent hearts trying to figure out where they fit in the world.

I was completely shocked to find out that how much Philip Carey, a handicapped and introspective orphan, who longs for true love and the meaning of life was a portrait of myself. Maugham has written a book that is far deeper than any other great authors have ventured to go. One might fancy himself more aware of his existence if he reads a great deal, thinks of the human condition, longs for passion, rejects materialism, seeks pleasure in art and finds daily routine and common desires boring. But Maugham shows how one might just find that the true meaning of life does not come from great authors, philosophers and absolute idealism. In fact, Maugham (through Philip's eyes) sees beauty and a sense of power from meaninglessness of our lives (We are born, we live, and we die.) Maugham lays out peneratrating examination of poets, artists, philosophers, and religious figures blinded by their ideals as well as people we choose to be family, friends and lovers. Despite his violent urges to love and his insensentivity toward women who love him, Philip remains a very sympathetic figure who we try to understand because of his lonely life. Ultimately, he triumphs. By freeing himself from his 'ideas' of love and the meaning of life painted by great artists, writers and philosopher. He finally does something that is good for HIM. If you have to read one book in your entire life, let this be the one.

This Somerset Maugham classic is a must-read. Of the hundreds of novels I have read in my years, THIS is the best. Period. While Maugham has been placed near the bottom of reading lists in literature classrooms, this enduring masterpiece shows why that is a travesty. How many critics does it take to say, "Maugham may have been the greatest storyteller ever," before people actually begin to READ him again?

"Of Human Bondage" is the story of Philip Carey up until Carey is thirty. You LIVE the life of Philip right along with him. The writing is so riveting that as you conclude, you close the book and ask yourself, "what am I going to do now"? It is easy to experience "Philip withdrawal" after finishing "Of Human Bondage." Don't let it last long though - catch more writing from the master, the great William Somerset Maugham.

***UPDATE***May 1, 2011***

Another decade of living and reading has passed. 'Of Human Bondage' is still my favorite book. No question. I just wish more people were reading Maugham and, especially, this greatest of novels.

`Of Human Bondage' is precisely that: a seminal text focused upon the varied enslavements man subjects himself to, be they poverty, or ego, or religion, or pride, or classism, or art, or of the emotional and physical impulse that combine to create that insidious agent, love...'Of Human Bondage' smolders white-hot against the murky abstractions that congest the philosophic heart; it is a lodestone, sear and boiling, in the stagnant fen of mortal affairs.

A semi-autobiography of Somerset, `Of Human Bondage' depicts the formulative years of one Philip Carrey, who is orphaned at an early age and cursed with a deformed leg. Raised in a classic middle-class English household, Philip goes to school, drops out of school, questions the existence of God, wanders to Germany and France, tries his hand at painting, attends a doctorial college. Though weak-willed and sensitive to the extreme about his leg, Philip nonetheless displays a lucid perspective about the events that occur around him and the people that populate his world; Somerset's subtle, sometimes cynical, often deadpan personality comes forth brilliantly, without ever resorting to preaching or needless melodrama.

For me, the most difficult part of the text concerns Phillip's doomed relationship with the waitress Mildred, whom he falls into a pathetic love/hate affair. The character of Mildred is so obnoxious and the details of their relationship so noxious I barely continued on from her introduction...but persisted, realizing the overall importance to the narrative. Philip has observed the bondage of others to fame, desire etc, and displays contempt for that human failing, yet he too sinks into the quagmire with ease: for though Mildred is repulsive to him in nearly all facets, she is strangely alluring as well: she attracts Philip because she perpetuates the same deplorable traits that he himself (Somerset/Carrey) had not yet dealt with; she is the embodiment of his unresolved childhood psychological trauma (orphaned and deformed) and, in a way, a means of his freedom from it.

`Of Human Bondage' abounds with intriguing ideas and universal themes, some probably more relevant for when the book was written, but most still resonant in this day and age. Of these various philosophical insights, one of the most vital is when Philip comes at last to accept his handicap, realizing that, over the years, the suffering and humiliation he incurred from it gave him a unique character; rather than conforming to the dominant views of class/religion of English society, he continually explored the world with a clear (if sometimes troubled) gaze. While his major handicap has always been obvious to himself, most of the people around him live their lives totally unaware of their own personal handicaps, be they physical, mental, or emotional-and at last coming to terms with that, he achieves an inner calm that makes the turmoil of the previous six hundred pages all the more worthwhile.

Certainly, this is not a book for everyone. Those of strong religious nature and those programmed to the success-consumption paradigm may find the ideas presented unsettling or unsatisfactory. Regardless, `Of Human Bondage' will remain a classic of the English language for many years to come, and rightly so. Well worth the time and energy spent.

This book is probably one of the best books I've ever read in my life, after Les Miserables and Atlas Shrugged. It's poignant and heart-rending, and beautiful all the same. The language is probably one of the best things about it, Maugham has a true gift for prose and he writes in a way that leaves you on the point of tears for poor Phillip. The fact that the novel is more or less autobiographical makes it all the more powerful, and adds to the story's beauty. Never before has someone written with such beauty of the pain and trials of being a prisoner of one's emotions, and to read this novel is to fall in love with the little boy who grows to be a man and fights with himself and with cruel society his whole life.

This book has everything - a fascinating main character, interesting minor characters and exploits the theme of human suffering at an emotional and physical level.

Maugham is masterful in the way he carries the reader on Philip Carey's journey so that you are almost pleading with the character not to follow the road he is taking.

Possibly the best description is when he falls to his lowest point as a shop assistant and the indignities he is forced to endure in order to survive. Although there is a tendency sometimes to criticize him for his foolhardiness, as a reader you are ultimately drawn into sympathising with the plight of this relatively inexperienced young man.

I am hard put to think of any modern novel that has it all as this book does. Although I have read his other novels, I believe Maugham really surpassed himself when writing this fantastic book which I re-read every few years and always enjoy. Only Thomas Hardy comes close in terms of examining man's emotional suffering at the hands of a woman - something that he strongly experienced in his married life.

This power is expressed in the possibility that people from different places and ages really relate to each other. It is the power to communicate thoughts and emotions in a way that the reader says: "I feel the same". There is nothing compared to the discovery of a connection with a fictional character.

In this ageless novel, Maugham tells the semi-autobiographical story of Phillip Carey, an orphan with a clubfoot who is raised by his aunt and uncle, this one being a Protestant clergyman. After school, he tries to be an accountant, but fails for lack of interest. During a vacation, he has his first sexual encounter, with an older friend of the family. Trying to see some of the world, he leaves for Paris, where he studies painting. Then he goes to medical school, his true vocation, but is forced to suspend, due to lack of money. Poverty temporarily ruins his life, as he has to work in a shop, the hardest and saddest part of his life. Finally, his uncle dies, leaving him money enough to continue his medical studies. He'll also find love.

The plot is the least important thing about this book. The reason this is one of may favorite books is that, as I read, I feel so identified with Carey in his growing up, in his triumphs and setbacks, that I finally approach the book from an emotional and not just an intellectual standpoint. Carey always looks for the meaning of life until he understands that he has to give it a meaning, that there is no preordained way to go, but the one he is able to find through reason and humanity.

Certainly, Maugham should be considered one of the best writeres of the XX century. Perhaps he is not, due to the fact that he was not an innovator or experimentator, but a concise, almost perfect craftsman. So, come join Phillip Carey in his journey through life. You will find revelations about your own, in a book that is pleasant as long as you are willing to confront real issues, beyond simple entertainment.