Of Human Bondage (1915)

This long novel by W. Somerset Maugham is generally considered his masterpiece and it is indeed very good—as good as I remembered from first reading it over 40 years ago. It’s autobiographical but not really autobiography. Most people, including me, remember it as the story of the tragic, absurd relationship between first-person narrator Philip Carey and a waitress in a teashop named Mildred. The 1934 movie version, for example, stars Bette Davis and focuses exactly on that (Davis is perfect and the picture is worth seeing). I noticed, however, that Mildred does not show up until page 268 of a 607-page edition. It’s easy to see why she is so memorable—she is as terrible a person as you would ever care to meet. The first 267 pages are devoted to Philip’s life from the age of 9, when his mother dies and he is orphaned (his father died years earlier). This is true to Maugham’s life, as is being sent to live with his clergyman uncle and aunt. Philip has a clubfoot that makes him a target of ridicule for other kids growing up and even into adulthood. Maugham had a stutter that produced similar experiences. Philip tries first to become an accountant. Then he wants to be an artist and moves to Paris for two years to study. Ultimately he decides he doesn’t have the talent and gives it up. His uncle never approved of the artist plan and by the time Philip is 21 he is fed up with Philip’s inability to commit to a career. He wanted Philip to work in the church but by this point Philip has given up all faith in God and is an atheist. The magic here is Maugham’s ability to make it all so interesting. It is a strangely compulsively readable novel and pure pleasure all the way. There is somehow pleasure even in the agonies of Mildred. Most of us, men and women too, have likely had relationships like it, though perhaps not as abysmally intense. You may like to know now that he gets shut of Mildred and finds his way to a happy and satisfying end. Maugham actually was a doctor like Philip becomes, but he was also a prolific writer with a shelf-full or so of novels, plays, stories, and essays to his credit, which I understand are often nearly as enjoyable. I’m still not ready to take on The Razor’s Edge due to the terrible Bill Murray movie adaptation, though word of mouth claims the novel is actually good. I’ve got my eye on The Magician, which is about Aleister Crowley, or The Summing Up, which is about writing. But Of Human Bondage is the natural place to start with Maugham. It’s fair to call it a masterpiece. If anything, I liked it even more the second time.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

"The Outstation" (1924)

Story by W. Somerset Maugham not available online.

I thought this story by W. Somerset Maugham was pretty good, though unfortunately marred by comparison with an earlier and better story in the collection with similar themes by Joseph Conrad, "An Outpost of Progress." Both are set in British colonies across the globe and involve conflicts encountered by the white men stationed there. Conrad is concerned with the violence and barbarism of colonialism, whereas Maugham appears to have more the portability of the British class system on his mind, with an exotic background that somehow forces the conflict. It's as effective in its way as the Conrad, but not as visceral. Maybe that's what I miss. Maugham's story has the more interesting characters. It's told third-person omniscient, mostly from the point of view of the ranking white man, Mr. Warburton, at a Malaysia station of a private trading company. Warburton is an effete upper-class toady, a carefully defined "snob." His new assistant, Mr. Cooper, is a blustering fellow on the rise from the working class. He is competent in his work, but rejects the dress and manner of Warburton as phony. Cooper knows well on a blunt level the injustice of the class system, but it is Warburton who is more capable of kindness to "inferiors." Cooper beats and mistreats his servants, calls them "niggers," and can't understand Warburton's objections any more than he can understand the requirement to dress for dinner. Warburton is caught by the situation, as Cooper is too good at his job to move him elsewhere and replace him. They modulate from being strained with one another, to hostile, to quarreling, and finally they stop speaking altogether. "Each lived in his own house as though the other did not exist." I don't think I'm giving too much away if I let you know that going from bad to worse is the basic narrative arc here. But here also is where the comparison with Conrad becomes apt again. Maugham continually erects a stiff upper lip British sensibility around the details that leaves things just a little more distanced than I think is called for. These characters are complex and interesting and in vital conflict with one another. I wanted it all more out in the open—or perhaps a better view of the inside—and the result of the disaffection is that the conflict feels slighted a little, as if it were something proposed as a thought experiment of some kind. Or is that just the comparison with the Conrad again?

Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine