Word: maughams
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...novelist and the detective, and add to them the patience and compassion of the priest. Few people want their shortcomings exposed (biography has added a new terror to death, complained one 18th century writer), and they, or their heirs, often go to considerable trouble to hide them. Somerset Maugham asked his friends to destroy his letters; both Willa Gather and Ernest Hemingway inveighed against posthumous publication of theirs...
CONVERSATIONS WITH WILLIE by Robin Maugham Simon & Schuster; 188 pages...
When he died in 1965, William Somerset (Willie) Maugham was the most famous writer in the world. Eighty million copies of his books had been sold, his plays were performed worldwide, his work had led to several memorable movies, and some 80 of his short stories had been adapted for television. At his famous Villa Mauresque, he employed one of the best cooks on the Riviera, dined off silver plates and entertained royalty. Yet he was miserable. What was wrong? Everything. Or so this instructive and melancholy memoir by Nephew Robin Maugham would have us believe...
...hard to see how. During most of the twelve-year marriage, Maugham was hardly a husband. He was most frequently off with Gerald Haxton, a handsome young American he had met during World War I. Full of charm and liquor, in nearly equal measure, Haxton was difficult but necessary, an ideal complement to Maugham, whose lifelong stutter made him shy and withdrawn. In their travels through the Far East, Haxton would spend the night drinking with the local planters and lawyers and then repeat their tales to Willie, who would fashion them into stories. When his lover died of tuberculosis...
...there is a reason to doubt Maugham's own memories, tinctured by old age and ill health. A man as intensely unhappy as he claims to have been when he was 90 or 91 could not have written so much for so long. At the tired end of a long party, it is hard to remember how much pleasure it gave most...