Word: maughams
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Morgan's volume forms a monument to Maugham--its size testifies to the complexity of the subject and the exceptionally active life he led. Yet Morgan does not attempt to deify the writer, revealing not the successful, exciting, respected literary profile Maugham wished to project, but the often caustic, seldom genuinely charming man, obsessed with his literary shortcomings--he considered himself a failure for not winning a Nobel Prize--and haunted by his own homosexuality and his fear of public exposure. Born during the reign of Queen Victoria, he clung to Edwardian values of keeping up appearances; he had many...
Morgan reveals that Maugham's homosexuality doesn't emerge in the 80 or so works he published because he disguised his male characters as women for his readers' supposed benefit as well as his own protection. Morgan reconstructs Maugham's process of transforming personal experience into convincing literature in lengthy and detailed accounts of Maugham's yearly trips to exotic places like Thailand or alligator-infested jungle rivers. His secretary-companions, Gerald Haxton, his lover for 30 years, and Alan Searle, who was living with him when he died, almost always accompanied him. None of Maugham's works is purely...
Morgan does not attempt to integrate literary criticism of Maugham's works into his biography, but he summarizes each play, novel and short story, and relates them to the author's own life. By leaving complex analyses to the critics, Morgan draws out only the elements in Maugham's works which cast light on his subject. Morgan writes of an early play...
...Craddock is a novel in which we see Maugham working out his familiar obsessions--the mother endangered in pregnancy, the stillborn child, the pain of love, and the quest for freedom. Just as Maugham identified with his mother, he makes Bertha Craddock his alter ego...Bertha represents both Maugham's mother and Maugham; she is the unconsciously disguised homosexual lover...
Generally, Morgan confines his discussions of Maugham's works to fruitful explorations of the characters. Occasionally, however, he goes overboard in his psychological dissection: "Bertha's finger fetishism begins to seem like an unconscious homosexual fantasy of the author's." When Morgan sticks to the biographical narrative he has researched so well, he fares much better...