Word: maughams
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Magical Power. At first glance, the six objects of Wescott's literary affection-Katherine Anne Porter, Somerset Maugham, Colette. Isak Dinesen, Thomas Mann and Thornton Wilder-seem to have little in common. But all illustrate Wescott's passionate belief in the magical power of a story to hold those brooding truths about human behavior that cannot be abstracted as philosophy or illuminated in the swift lightning of poetic metaphor...
With that belief established, Wescott lavishes high praise on the storytelling insights of Somerset Maugham and cheerfully states that Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain would be improved by pruning 300 pages of extraneous erudition out of it. Wescott's main critical contribution, however, is his experienced literary sightseer's infectious enthusiasm. "Let me not bully you about this novel that I love," he says engagingly of Christmas Holiday, a little-known book of Maugham's that he thinks is the best novel ever written about Europe just before World War II. His account...
...Universal were articulately querulous. Said one: "What audience would ever believe that the hero would want to get her at the fadeout?" The turning point of her career came in 1934 when she peroxided her hair and stole the show as Mildred, the mean little waitress in Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Says Davis: "She was the first leading-lady villainess ever played on a screen for real. I was the female Marlon Brando of my generation...
...heist from the respected O'Hana Gallery in London was the biggest in British history. Gone from the gallery's choice "Summer Exhibition" were 35 paintings, including works from the recently sold Sir Alexander Korda collection, Renoir's magnificent Andree Assise from the Somerset Maugham collection, and the well-known Tilling the Vineyard, by Toulouse-Lautrec. The market value of the haul was estimated at about $1,200,000, and the thieves were obviously connoisseurs. They not only took the best; they also knew which paintings were too delicate to be cut from their frames and would...
...Show magazine, seamed old Story teller W. Somerset Maugham, 88, broke a long silence on his only marriage - an eleven-year affair with Interior Decorator Syrie Wellcome. As Maugham tells it in Looking Back, it was a painful episode. Married in New Jersey in 1916 after a two-year love affair - and a year after Syrie bore him a girl, their only child -they hit it off miserably. He found marriage a kind of human bondage, soon was demanding the right "to go and come when I liked." She took two lovers- "I knew them both and had a very...