Word: maughamism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Almost by definition, the several segments of an "anthology" film are forced to huddle under a thematic umbrella. Most often, the umbrella is a single author, as in O. Henry's Full House, or Somerset Maugham's Quartet, Trio and Encore. Or Truman Capote's Trilogy. In Capote's case, the effect is magnified by Director Frank Perry (Last Summer), working from scenarios by his wife Eleanor in collaboration with the author...
...more indirect propagation of homosexual points of view? Homosexual taste can fall into a particular kind of self-indulgence as the homosexual revenges himself on a hostile world by writing grotesque exaggerations of straight customs, concentrates on superficial stylistic furbelows or develops a "campy" fetish for old movies. Somerset Maugham once said of the homosexual artist that "with his keen insight and quick sensibility, he can pierce the depths, but in his innate frivolity he fetches up from them not a priceless jewel but a tinsel ornament...
...many cases, including Maugham's own, that is an exaggeration. Indeed the talented homosexual's role as an outsider, far from disqualifying him from commenting on life, may often sharpen his insight and esthetic sensibility. From Sappho to Colette to Oscar Wilde and James Baldwin, homosexual authors have memorably celebrated love?and not always in homosexual terms. For example, W. H. Auden's Lullaby?"Lay your sleeping head, my love/Human on my faithless arm"?must rank as one of the 20th century's most exquisite love lyrics...
With similar logic he puts down Somerset Maugham, not for slickness but for lacking a religious sense. Maugham, he writes, is an agnostic "forced to minimize-pain, vice, the importance of his fellowmen. He cannot believe in a God who punishes and he cannot therefore believe in the importance of a human action." Like Greene himself, Maugham often explored the old British theme of the Imperial dropout, the white-man-going-to-hell-in-the-tropics. But Maugham's doomed colonials could not go to hell-they could only go to the dogs...
...medical authorities, either because their value has not been proved or because they have been shown to be worthless. This covers the activities of M.D.s as well as those of unlicensed practitioners. * Among them: Pope Pius XII, King Ibn Saud of Arabia, the Imam of Yemen, Georges Braque, Somerset Maugham, Gloria Swanson. Though Niehans did not personally treat Sir Winston Churchill or Konrad Adenauer, they used his cellular injections...