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1.0 out of 5 stars
Utterly worthless ''literary criticism'',
This review is from: W. Somerset Maugham (Literature and Life) (Hardcover)
Archie K. LossW. Somerset Maugham Ungar, Hardback, 1987. 8vo. 139 pp. Contents Chronology 1. Disorder and Early Sorrow: Maugham's Life and Times 2. Troubled Grace: Of Human Bondage 3. Instruction and Delight: The Moon and Sixpence and Cakes and Ale 4. Innocents Abroad: The Razor's Edge 5. White Mischief: Maugham's Short Fiction 6. Wit's End: Maugham's Work for the Theater 7. The Lion of the Villa Mauresque: The Essays and Memoirs 8. The Summing Up Notes Bibliography Index =========================================== Well, there is no point in wasting much time with this book. To put the matter somewhat shortly and rather bluntly, Archie Loss' pathetic attempt to give any idea of Somerset Maugham's huge oeuvre is a perfect crap that doesn't even worth the paper it was printed on. Mr Loss has nicely chosen a thematic, rather than chronological, way of presentation but his discussing three novels out of twenty and a couple of short stories out of more than one hundred is just not serious; his treatment of Maugham's plays and books with essays is equally perfunctory. Such highly selective attitude would have been justified if the author had been a person of unique personality, sharp intelligence and perceptive mind about literature - none of this could be said about Mr Loss, alas. The indifferent chronology and the barely decent bibliography that surround this scrap of a book are no compensation whatsoever for the mediocre, prejudiced, self-righteous and condescending trash which often borders on inanity. Mr Loss has lost me with his first page and first note; in the former he flatly says that Maugham's life was shaped by events he could not control the chief one being - guess what? - his homosexuality of course; and in the former the reader is advised to peruse Ted Morgan's biography which might have a certain coldness, yes, but this is due to Maugham rather than to Morgan; most surprisingly, Mr Loss eagerly thanks Mr Morgan not only for the biographical facts in his book, but also for his analyses (!?) of Maugham's works. Small wonder that Mr Loss' book turned out to be the same stupendous junk as Morgan's: gossipy and obsessed with homosexuality to the point of obscenity; inanely superficial and vacuous when it comes to ''analyses'' of Maugham's works; and, oh, so, so high-handed, conceited and patronizing: as if Maugham should have felt himself privileged, despite his readability and popularity, to be discussed by so serious and brilliant a critic as Mr Loss. There is nothing in these 139 pages but the most hackneyed and moronic stuff about Maugham that is all but ubiquitous in the (hypo)critical literature about him. You will read yet again, not stated directly in a most vulgar manner of course but subtly implied, how Maugham's lifelong striving was not for something else but to keep himself in the public eye as much as possible. You will read how Of Human Bondage ''suffers'' from the lack of explicit homosexual content, or how grave a defect of The Summing Up is the lack of mundane biographical stuff; probably the most important in the latter, Mr Loss profoundly states, is the ''personal element'' - no matter how ''impersonally rendered'' he adds, no less perceptively. You will read the same old fairy tale about misogyny and Paul Gauguin in The Moon and Sixpence, or Hardy-Walpole stuff in Cakes and Ale. You will, of course, read a great deal about the tremendously important homosexuality of Somerset Maugham which was so powerful that more or less dictated his whole life, not to mention works. You will be enlightened to learn that Maugham's most important experience during his youthful sojourn in Heidelberg was, not the discovery of the theatre stage, the deepening and maturing of his reading habits, or Kuno Fischer's lectures about Schopenhauer, certainly important as they were, but his homosexual relationship with Brooks. Give me a break, Archie, will you! Less brilliant and more naive a person, I think that Maugham's life was shaped mainly by constant study of human nature, endless travelling and, most of all, indefatigable industry at the writing desk. It was also shaped by his shyness, self-consciousness, common sense and remarkable powers of observation. His sexual orientation, especially in a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence, certainly took its toll, and so did his disastrous marriage or terribly unhappy childhood. But harrowing as these experiences must have been, they never swayed Maugham from walking his own path and fulfilling his own pattern of life. His complete works say it all with inimitable eloquence and style. Pity that his critics and biographers never bothered to read them carefully. Well, this is only at expense of folk dumb enough to read critics' nonsense before Maugham's own works. Maugham was fond of saying that ''The Right Thing is the Kind Thing'', which indeed was the title of his short story The Back of Beyond when it was first published in a magazine. The kindest thing I could say about Mr Loss is that he is never at loss when it comes to make himself ridiculous and often reaches such heights in that endeavour that he would be amusing if his writing style were not so unbearably dull. It would certainly have been no loss if I had never read this book of Mr Loss. In addition to the voluminous amount of dirty prejudices and preposterous banalities, it is as tedious a drudgery as there ever was one written by human being and printed on paper. Rarely, indeed, have I been so thankful for a book's shortness. Suitable read mainly for fellows too lazy to read Maugham's works themselves or too stupid to try think a little over them. There's only one thing for which this book is even more suitable: your fireplace.
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