Word: maughams
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...VAGRANT MOOD: SIX ESSAYS (250 pp.) - W. Somerset Maugham - Doubleday...
...days as a professional writer are over," said Somerset Maugham in 1948. "I'm putting up the shutters, shutting up the shop. After all, I'm 75 next birthday . . . But if I think of an occasional little piece, I will write it." Since then, Somerset Maugham (now 79) has published his notebooks and thought of a few little pieces...
Four Black Crosses. Though he might have become a monster, Augustus Hare grew up a mannerly eccentric. He never married, but about four times a year he drew a black cross in his journal to mark his incontinencies. When Maugham got to know him, Augustus Hare's days were already numbered, and swaddled in ritual. They began at 8 a.m. with a cup of tea and two slices of thin buttered bread. This was followed by morning prayers, Augustus reading, guests kneeling. Maugham found that Augustus had inked out many lines in the Book of Common Prayer, and asked...
What does Maugham do when he isn't writing about the Hares and the Sadie Thompsons of the world? Often, he admits in another essay, he curls up with a bad book, a whodunit. An outspoken fan of Raymond (The Big Sleep) Chandler, Maugham nonetheless argues that the detective story has been played out ever since readers wised up to, and writers exhausted, all possible plot gimmicks...
Author Somerset Maugham, who once said that the public respects an old writer for his age and not necessarily for his work went to the Riviera villa of his friend the Aga Khan to celebrate his 79th birthday. For the occasion, he had a further observation: "The public gets used to a writer . . . Longevity also allows a writer, if he's old enough, to influence three generations of readers. But it isn't having written a lot that makes one respected. What makes a writer and what makes him a success is, in my opinion, solely his personality...