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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Underrated Read,
By
This review is from: The Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
These stories are great reading. He was really a master of the short story. I especially like those stories based in "the colonies", Asia, Africa. Great reading on plane. I read them in Africa and he truly captures the dichotomy/hypocrisy between the white man and the native(s).
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stupendous variety of characters and locales, sheer delectation from beginning to end,
This review is from: The Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. 1
Vintage Classics, Paperback, 2000 8vo. 536 pp. Preface by the author [pp. 1-2]. First published as ''The Complete Short Stories'' in 3 volumes in 1951. New prefaces by the author. First published as ''Collected Short Stories'' in 4 volumes in 1975.* Table of contents: Preface** Rain The Fall of Edward Barnard Honolulu The Luncheon The Ant and the Grasshopper Home The Pool Mackintosh Appearance and Reality The Three Fat Women of Antibes The Facts of Life Gigolo and Gigolette The Happy Couple The Voice of the Turtle The Lion's Skin The Unconquered The Escape The Judgement Seat Mr. Know-All The Happy Man The Romantic Young Lady The Point of Honour The Poet The Mother A Man from Glasgow Before the Party Louise The Promise A String of Beads The Yellow Streak * This is what you will find if you open any of the four Vintage Classics volumes. But it does not seem to be true. Apparently, Maugham's short stories in four volumes and under the title ''Collected Short Stories'' were first published in 1963 by Penguin. ** Essentially, this preface is identical with the one to the first volume of The Complete Short Stories from 1951. -------------------------------------------------' I cannot remember when was the last time when a novel, let alone a short story collection, kept me awake all night long until the dawn broke. That is precisely what happened with the first volume of the ''Collected Short Stories'' of W. Somerset Maugham. From his most famous story - ''Rain'' - until the last one, ''The Yellow Streak'', which Maugham based on his own experience in the Far East when he nearly drowned himself, there are 30 beautifully written masterpieces in the genre of the short story, quite rightly regarded as classics today. Except for one story (''Red'' which you can find in vol. 4) this first volume contains all other short stories from Maugham's first mature short story collection, ''The Trembling of a Leaf'', first published in 1921 and based entirely on notes taken during his travels across the South Seas in the end of the First World War. Indeed, this was just Maugham's second short story collection; the first, ''Orientations'', had been published 22 years earlier, in 1899, and Maugham chose not to reprint any stories from it into his collected edition because he thought them immature and supercilious. All these South Sea stories have common settings of course - Tahiti, Samoa, Hawai - but the similarities end here, except that all of them are written in a very fine style, rather more elaborate than what Maugham adopted later in his career, but with the same striking insight into human nature that makes his characters, and hence his stories, so compelling, fascinating as well as utterly convincing and believable at the same time. Everybody who reads Maugham's ''A Writer's Notebook'', where most of his South Sea notes were published some 30 years after they had been made, would be surprised how much of these stories is firmly based on real people and real events. The famous prostitute Sadie Thompson and the pair crazy missionaries were real people whose physical descriptions Maugham took almost word by word from his notes. So were the basic facts of the story, its first part at least. The same is more or less true about ''The Pool'', another of Maugham's masterpieces where the problem about marriages between white men and native women is explored to a great detail and with amazing perspicacity. But Maugham, with his shyness, stammer and definitely introverted personality, could hardly have known all these thoughts, feelings, fears, passions and obsessions he wrote about. For example, he never spoke a single word with the real Sadie Thompson (but he had the audacity to use her real name in the story!) and he exchanged just a few words with the real missionary family. For creating his short stories he must have used a great deal of invention and imagination, although they all were firmly rooted into real persons and events. It is strange, considering how huge the human vanity really is, especially when it is wounded, that Maugham was never charged with libel for any of these South Sea stories. For my own part I would be very much flattered if an author uses me as a base of a character of fiction and would not mind at all if the character is pretty despicable; quite on the contrary, in this case the author's sensitivity and insight might tell me something new and interesting and useful for myself, even more if the fictional character is all goodness and unselfishness. But this point of view appears not to be shared by many. Be that as it may, the five South Sea stories that form the backbone of the first volume of Maugham's ''Collected Short Stories'' are certainly among his best. The subtlety of characterization and the diversity of incidents make for breathtaking read. The clash between the prostitute and the religious fanatic (''Rain''), or between the educated young clerk and the shallow and arrogant master of the island (''Mackintosh'') are tremendously dramatic, to put it mildly, and never one-sided. Both have little if anything to do with ''Honolulu'', a strange mixture of funny main character and a rather spooky story. And finally, there is ''The Fall of Edward Barnard'', probably the greatest masterpiece of the group, an epic tale about spiritual revelation and personal transformation among the exotic lushness of the tropics. The theme is as old as the hills - the battle between the civilization with its inevitable technical progress and the danger of dehumanizing oneself - but the interpretation is so fresh, the characters are so vivid, the dialog is so much to the point, that once read ''The fall of Edward Barnard'' is never forgotten. But there is much more to enjoy here than these five masterpieces from the South Seas. Here is ''Before the party'', a pretty grim story about alcoholism and murder but one of Maugham's finest achievements about the British in the Far East. Other notable stories include ''The Unconquered'', the only one of all Maugham's which is set in occupied France during the Second World War, and a set of four ''Spanish'' stories - ''The Romantic Young Lady'', ''The Point of Honour'', ''The Poet'' and ''The Mother'' - exploring another world of violence and passion spiced from time to time with charming humour and irony. When one gets exhausted by the grimmest and most horrible sides of the human nature shown so vividly, one can always turn one's attention to the highly amusing adventures of Nicky in Monte Carlo (''The Facts of Life''). If that is not enough for relaxing, there are several anecdotes that might help you to laugh your head off, like ''The Ant and the Grasshopper'', ''The Three Fat Women of Antibes'' and ''Mr. Know-All''. Or you might prefer the more sophisticated and perfectly elegant cynicism of ''Louise'' and the French marital complications in ''Appearance and Reality'', both of them are simply hilarious. To finish with the staggering variety of subjects and characters, here is the only one case, as far as I know, in the whole of Maugham's oeuvre when he wrote pure fantasy. The short story The ''Judgement Seat'' is set where nobody has ever come back from to tell us what it really is and one of the main characters is He who half the mankind passionately believe in and the other half, with equal vehemence, deny his existence. What remains in the end, after numerous adventures through light and dark sides of human nature, are the wise words of ''The happy man'': ''Life is full of compensations.''
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