Word: maughamism
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What made it a smash hit, and far more than an expanded honeymooners skit, was the Nichols style: timing, vibrance and a slavish attention to detail. Nichols and failure became antonyms. Barefoot was followed by The Knack, Luv and The Odd Couple. The director came to resemble Somerset Maugham's nouveau novelist, Alroy Kear, who read that genius was an infinite capacity for taking pains. "If that was all, he must have told himself, he could be a genius like the rest...
...often greets the morning with a plateful of steamed turbot. For passengers on the daily Brighton Belle train to London, it is buttered kippers or poached eggs on haddock. At certain inns across the countryside, morning brings York ham, Lancashire black pudding, deviled kidneys and broiled mushrooms. Indeed, Somerset Maugham's classic gustatory advice to overseas visitors still holds: one can eat well in Britain if one eats three breakfasts...
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...