W. Somerset Maugham - The Great Novels and Short Stories of Somerset Maugham

Copyright 2014 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Introduction Copyright 2014, Nick Lyons

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-62873-784-4

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

W. S OMERSET M AUGHAM (18741965) is one of the most readable of all twentieth-century authors. Late in life he viewed himself as sitting in the very first row of the second-raters, and his work, for all of its immense popularity, has been scored by many literary critics for blandness of style, flatness of characters. But he is much more than that. Popular he was and surely remains, and the simple reason for this has always been the genuine interest and pleasure a huge number of readers have always taken in his work. This ample collection of three early novels and five short stories (his favorite form) is bound to be widely enjoyed.

Liza of Lambeth , his first novel and probably the one drawn most closely from his life experiences as a medical student and fledgling doctor, is still striking in its cold-eyed depiction of poverty, illness, and despair. It was greatly popular when it was first published in Maughams early twenties and remains stark and blistering today in its realistic depiction of the tense, tragic life of a young woman in a London slum. The Magician , with its nasty depictions of contemporary writers like Hugh Walpole, a close friend of Maughams, followed ten years later, in 1908, and by the time Of Human Bondage was published in 1915, Maugham was one of the most popular writers in the world. He had become a playwright, too, and at that time had four plays on the London stage simultaneouslythough his plays, except in clever cinematic adaptations like Being Julia , are rarely seen today.

The Moon and Sixpence , roughly taking the bolder frame of Paul Gauguins life, remakes the French artist as a contemporary Englishman and uses Maugham himself as narratora role he felt comfortable using and makes excellent use of again in The Razors Edge and other works. Charles Strickland, a British stockbroker, abandons his wife and children, and goes to Paris where he plunges fully into the life of a painter. He is monotonic in his commitment to his painting, indifferent to the lives of others, often brutally cold and cruel. And then, like Gauguin, he leaves the West and takes up life in Tahiti. Throughout, Maughams voice is patient and curious and nonjudgmental, and he serves as foil for the moral, social, and even aesthetic extravagances of Stricklands life, making them more believable.

The Trembling of a Leaf , Maughams second collection of stories, grew from his travels and fascination with the South Sea islands. It was published in 1921, two years after The Moon and Sixpence , which looked so closely at Stricklands removal from Western life to a totally different life on a Pacific island. Youll find five of the best stories from that collection here: Red, Mackintosh, The Pool, about a couple that return from the islands to live in Scotland; The Fall of Edward Barnard, who has left life in the West for a new life with the islanders; and the enduring classic, Rain. All contain contrasts of the presumably simpler life of the islanders with life in the West.

Rain depicts a particularly tenacious missionary who passionately proselytizes Sadie Thompson, trying to redeem her from her life as a prostitute. Sadies position is simple. Why couldnt you leave me be? she asks. I wasnt doin you no harm. But he persists and persists and finally his efforts lead to raw tragedy. The story has been a perennial favoritefirst as the story, then as a popular play by Maugham, and then as a spate of successful movies with Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, and even Rita Hayworth. It presumably earned its author, in all its forms, more than a million dollars.

This collection offers an excellent sampling of Maughams work, with its clear prose, shrewd plotting, and story-telling strengths. They reveal most of his seminal themeshis dislike of hypocrisy, hokum of all kinds, cruelty, and the many ironies of life, and also some of his own cold cynicism. Chiefly, though, these novels and stories are wonderfully readable, memorable, and enormously engaging.

Nick Lyons

SHORT STORIES

Mackintosh

H E SPLASHED ABOUT for a few minutes in the sea; it was too shallow to swim in and for fear of sharks he could not go out of his depth; then he got out and went into the bath-house for a shower. The coldness of the fresh water was grateful after the heavy stickiness of the salt Pacific, so warm, though it was only just after seven, that to bathe in it did not brace you but rather increased your languor; and when he had dried himself, slipping into a bath-gown, he called out to the Chinese cook that he would be ready for breakfast in five minutes. He walked barefoot across the patch of coarse grass which Walker, the administrator, proudly thought was a lawn, to his own quarters and dressed. This did not take long, for he put on nothing but a shirt and a pair of duck trousers and then went over to his chiefs house on the other side of the compound. The two men had their meals together, but the Chinese cook told him that Walker had set out on horseback at five and would not be back for another hour.

Mackintosh had slept badly and he looked with distaste at the paw-paw and the eggs and bacon which were set before him. The mosquitoes had been maddening that night; they flew about the net under which he slept in such numbers that their humming, pitiless and menacing, had the effect of a note, infinitely drawn out, played on a distant organ, and whenever he dozed off he awoke with a start in the belief that one had found its way inside his curtains. It was so hot that he lay naked. He turned from side to side. And gradually the dull roar of the breakers on the reef, so unceasing and so regular that generally you did not hear it, grew distinct on his consciousness, its rhythm hammered on his tired nerves and he held himself with clenched hands in the effort to bear it. The thought that nothing could stop that sound, for it would continue to all eternity, was almost impossible to bear, and, as though his strength were a match for the ruthless forces of nature, he had an insane impulse to do some violent thing. He felt he must cling to his self-control or he would go mad. And now, looking out of the window at the lagoon and the strip of foam which marked the reef, he shuddered with hatred of the brilliant scene. The cloudless sky was like an inverted bowl that hemmed it in. He lit his pipe and turned over the pile of Auckland papers that had come over from Apia a few days before. The newest of them was three weeks old. They gave an impression of incredible dullness.