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POINTS OF VIEW (284 pp.)-W. Somerset Maugham-Doubleday...
What happens to very old writers when they stop writing? In the case of W. Somerset Maugham, now 85, he just goes right on writing. Over the past ten years he has regularly announced his retirement, and now he once more informs the world that his new book, Points of View, is "absolutely my last." A few critics will hope he means it; in longhair circles the old storyteller has almost never been ranked above a sound literary carpenter. Yet few professional writers can honestly say that they do not envy his easy style, his civilized yarner's gift...
Among Behrman's great circle of literary and artistic friends were Gabriel Pascal, Somerset Maugham and Sir Max Beerbohm, and about these people he tells some of his most entertaining anecdotes. One day, Pascal--the Hungarian producer who procured the screen rights to all of Bernard Shaw's plays--said to Behrman, "Sahm, you know I ahm illegitimate descendant Talleyrand." Two weeks later, Behrman met Pascal again and the producer said, "Sahm, did I tell you I ahm illegitimate descendant Metternich?" Recounting these incidents in an unpublished New Yorker profile of Pascal, Behrman wrote, "Whatever differences may have separated...
...Behrman's favorite stories about Maugham concerns a visit to the estate of an American sculptress. The party came upon a gleaming white block of Italian marble, and Maugham exclaimed to the hostess, "That's the best thing you've ever done!" "But," the artist protested, "I haven't even started; it just came over from Italy. What on earth did you think it was?" "The Immaculate Conception," Maugham replied...
...Mississippi Heart Hand. For bridge's enduring and growing popularity, urbane Novelist William Somerset Maugham has a simple explanation: "Bridge is the most entertaining and intelligent card game the wit of man has so far devised." Of all partnership card games, bridge is the most challenging to the mind. Nobody can become a good bridge player through experience and rule learning alone; the game requires thought. There are 635,013,559,600 possible bridge hands, and the value of every one can be modified, sometimes drastically, by the distribution of unseen cards in other hands. Even an incurably cautious...