Somerset Maugham [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Meyers is a prolific biographer of literary figures whose books are hit-and-miss - while never less than professional, they are sometimes excellent and sometimes disappointing, depending on the rapport that Meyers has with his subject. But they are always marked by his remarkable industry and erudition. I've enjoyed most of them very much, and his last book, on George Orwell, was excellent.

I'm delighted to say that his new book on W. Somerset Maugham is just as good. It's possible that Meyers feels a rapport with Maugham because, like his subject, Meyers is fantastically prolific and not given his due by the intelligentsia. Whatever the reason, this is an excellent biography of an underrated writer, and immediately becomes the standard life of its subject.

Maugham was a very fertile writer and, like anyone who writes a lot, his production is uneven. Some of his books -- "Of Human Bondage" and "Cakes and Ale" come to mind -- will live as long as any English novels of the last century. Others, such as his historical novel about Machiavelli, "Then and Now," which Edmund Wilson used to unfairly trash his entire body of work in a 1946 New Yorker review, will most likely be forgotten. But Maugham wrote brilliantly in virtually every genre, from the essay to the spy story (his "Ashenden" had a noticeable influence on Ian Fleming's creation James Bond) to the travel book to plays (he once had four plays on the West End at once -- a feat that's been seldom duplicated) to the novel and short story, and the best of his work will live. Meyers illuminates his life with understanding and tact, and avoids (or at least does his best to downplay) the prurient detail so indulged in by other, more sensational biographers (Ted Morgan leaps to mind).

So if you're at all intrigued by the most successful author of his time, or if you're already a fan of his work and would like a sympathetic (yet not uncritical) look at his life, I would highly recommend Jeffrey Meyers new biography. And I can't wait to see which author he tackles next.

Over the years W. Somerset Maugham has become one of if not my favorite author. His Novels, plays and short stories capture his time and social circumstances perfectly. He is the consumate Edwardian writer.
Jeffrey Meyer has produced a great biography that combines well researched details of Mauham's personal life with analysis of his work from various periods of his long and prolific career.
This is a wonderful biography, that fully immerses the reader in the world of Maugham as a writer and a man who had obvious shortcomings but yet emerges from this as a sympathetic character. There is much here for the fan of Maugham that will illuminate some of his better known characterizations as being based on individuals in his life.
Overall I found this to be a highly readable and very enjoyable literary biography and I will be sure to check out more of Meyers' work as well as revisit some of Maugham's as a result of having read this.

Jeffrey Meyers

Somerset Maugham: A Life

Alfred A. Knopf, Hardback, 2004.
8vo. xvi, 411 pp. First Edition.

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I wish I could give more credit to this book because it is relatively enjoyable read and contains lots of interesting biographical data about Somerset Maugham. It is also researched well. But I cannot give more than one star and now I will try to explain why that is so.

Mr. Meyers has a lot of judgments about both Maugham's work and personality which don't seem to rest on any foundation. And who cares of his personal opinion? Despite his relatively positive attitude toward Maugham he indulges very often in futile comparisons with Conrad and Lawrence about their putative influence over Maugham. It seems that Maugham is nothing more than a 'Conradian' projection, or maybe a bunch of D. H. Lawrence's ideas. He thinks that he knows every thought that has ever occurred to Maugham and everything about developing his characters. But all these are just speculations - nothing more, nothing less, and completely useless.

Have we read the same Maugham books? Sometimes I am inclined to think that Maugham biographers have never read any of his books, or at least never read them seriously. They think that all in Maugham's life was determined by hate for his wife and trying to conceal his homosexuality. This may have been so, I don't know, but many of their conclusions about the influence of these two factors over his oeuvre are simply ridiculous. Back to Mr Meyers. Despite his touching defense of Maugham's (in)famous memoir Looking Back or the damning criticism of Noel Coward's pathetic attempts to satirize Maugham, Mr Meyers fails completely, to my mind at least, to show how unique a writer and a man Somerset Maugham really was.

Mr Meyer's analysis, for example, of ''The Narrow Corner'' is outrageous and preposterous. Where have you seen a homosexual relationship between Dr Saunders and Ah Kay, and between Fred and Erik, Mr Meyers? Where have you seen a love story between Fred and Louise? He thinks that the novel is one of Maugham's finest but writes such a nonsense about it. The novel is indeed brilliant but I have never been able to bother myself with homosexuality in it. It is a story about pure goodness and pure idealism, about courage and cowardice, about human frailty and human spirit.

What about Cosmopolitans? Mr Meyers tells us directly that this short story collection is much inferior to all previous ones and that the only outstanding story in it is Mr Know-All. And that's a perfect nonsense too. Mr Know-All is a brilliant story but there are at least five or six more which are as great. Indeed, ''A Friend in Need'', ''The Verger'', ''Loiuse'', ''Salvatore'', ''A String of Beads'', ''The Ant and the Grasshopper'', ''The Luncheon'', ''The Wash Tub'', and ''Social Sense'' are among Maugham's best short stories - perfect in structure, witty, amusing, and thought-provoking, even in this limited size. In the preface (have you read this, Mr Meyers?) to the volume Maugham explains that these are anecdotes written on a magazine commission and the themes in them were chosen carefully as not to require any elaboration. That makes any comparison with the other stories of Maugham - much longer and complicated in terms of both plot and characters - simply ridiculous.

I daresay that if Maugham had not been the man he was - with all his troubled sexuality and vicissitudes of his life - he wouldn't have been the writer he was. But let's not try to deduct from this everything about his personality and works. And one last advice to the readers of this biography - first read the books of Somerset Maugham, and then, if you want to learn a bit more about him (only a bit, alas) read this book. One of its gravest disadvantages is that it contains the plots of almost all Maugham's works and if you read it before these works, you will be deprived of an essential part of the delight that Maugham's fiction can offer you. And you will also be greatly prejudiced about Maugham's work after reading Meyers' and that's certainly not something very desirable.

Read the short stories of Maugham and decide for yourself. If you like them, go on with his novels, plays, essays and travel books. If you don't, then don't read him at all. Leave Mr Meyers for the end, if you really want to learn few facts more about the really extraordinary life of this really great man and great writer.

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