Word: maughams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NONFICTION: Maugham, Ted Morgan Philosophy and Public Policy, Sidney Hook * Show People, Kenneth Tynan * The Last Nomad, Wilfred Thesiger * The Life of Katherine Mansfield, Antony Alpers * Thirty Seconds, Michael J. Arlen
...Morgan remains scrupulously objective throughout Maugham. He frequently cites letters and documents, hundreds of which he examined, whenever he discusses any of Maugham's personal affairs over which there was controversy. His explanation of Maugham's attempt to adopt Alan Searle, his secretary and lover, and to disinherit Liza, his daughter, which caused a widely publicized lawsuit and scandal, casts Liza in a more favorable light than most previous accounts...
...Human Bondage, considered Maugham's greatest work, formed the basis of his literary reputation. He describes himself "in the front rank of second-class writers"; in this novel only, perhaps, did he rise above that description. Morgan makes no attempt to judge Maugham's literary importance, preferring instead to defer to other writers like H.G. Wells, Henry James, and Theodore Dreiser, who said Maugham was "a great artist" and Of Human Bondage a work of genius. Morgan also cites critics like Malcolm Cowley, who thought Of Human Bondage Maugham's greatest work, and asked, "Why did he never climb back...
...Human Bondage was the story of Maugham's youth, with little alteration. It is the only one of his major works to examine his own life before he became a writer, instead of the lives of those who surrounded him afterwards; leading the life of the writer and traveller from the moment the finished medical school, then, may have paralyzed his work. Drawing from his own life, he could examine only the concerns of a writer, socialite, and traveler, much as pop singers today dwell incestuously, in their lyrics, on singers and singing...
This, however, is not Morgan's thesis, for he has no thesis, but relies on the simple value of a story presented objectively. Without a damning or praising conclusion from Morgan, the aspiring writer and the aspiring socialite can choose to admire Maugham's success or to discard him as incapable of true creation. Morgan's biography brings his life in focus with his literature, revealing how Maugham obliterated the fine line between his life and his work...