Word: morgans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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MAUGHAM by Ted Morgan; Simon & Schuster; 711 pages...
Maugham, by Ted Morgan, locates the truth midway between these views. His biography is by far the most detailed, balanced and tolerant portrait available, partly because Morgan persuaded Maugham's literary executor to give him facts and assistance previously guarded by the author's will...
...Morgan, a journalist and author (On Becoming American), builds a sound psychological case for Maugham's character and behavior. Young Willie spent his first ten years in France, until he was orphaned and sent to Kent to live with an aunt and clergyman uncle. Suffering from the cultural bends and deeply scarred by the death of his mother, Maugham acquired a lifelong stammer and a taste for masochistic relationships. "I have never experienced the bliss of requited Slove," he once wrote. "I have most Sieved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved...
When he and Syrie divorced in 1929, Maugham had already established residence on the Riviera with his secretary-lover. Gerald Haxton was a sociable charmer, but he was also unscrupulous, a gambler and a drunk. "Their relationship," writes Morgan, "had a dark, unpleasant side in which the roles of master and servant were interchanged and each tried to make the other suffer." When Haxton died in 1944, his place was taken by Alan Searle, a lower-keyed companion who enjoyed reading muscle magazines...
...Morgan treats this decline with a detachment that Maugham would have appreciated if not welcomed. Elsewhere the book covers the minutiae of 91 years so thoroughly that a subsequent biography is unlikely. One fact remains: although it was lived in tumultuous times, surrounded by power and prestige, Maugham's life lacked transcending drama. The strain of maintaining his facade against a threatening world exacted its price. He survived; he did not prevail. -R.Z. Sheppard