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the_moon_and_sixpence
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the_moon_and_sixpence
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THE MOON AND SIXPENCE BY W Somerset Maugham
(1919) 1999. Vintage Books. Paperback.
This is one of the most famous novels about visual art and is based
on the life of French artist Paul Gaugin. I read it in two weeks,
either side of visiting the Gaugin exhibition in Canberra at the
Australian National Gallery.
A small item of my favourite trivia. W. Somerset Maugham had the same
lifespan as a much greater Briton, Winston Churchill. If you're at a
trivia night with a bonus who am I? question and the first clues are
that I was born in 1874 and I died in 1965 you have to wait for one
more clue before you can shout "Churchill!" or, less commonly,
"Somerset Maugham!"
Maugham is more famous as a short story writer, the only other novels
besides this that I've heard of are "Of Human Bondage". Another work
of his, also published in Vintage, is "The Razor's Edge" which I've
seen used as the title of a poker book, "The Raiser's Edge".
Charles Strickland is a complete cad. A seemingly settled English
stockbroker, he abandons his wife and two childen and goes to live in
France. He hasn't run off with a woman, and he doesn't seem obviously
dissatisfied with his family, he has just run off to be an artist,
after some completely unpromising art classes in England. Indeed his
wife seems the more artistic, giving soirees and parties for writers
and men of letters.
Strickland breaks up a married couple in France, driving the wife to
suicide. The husband has an eye for art but has no artistic
inspiration himself. After more adventures in France, Strickland goes
to Tahiti where he finds happiness and a native wife but dies of
leprosy.
I don't have any idea why this book is called The Moon and Sixpence,
perhaps a sixpence is round like the moon but I'll check the meaning
of the title on Wikipedia shortly. The book was a very satisfying read
and the 215 pages gave you a full 215 pages because the chapter breaks
were just three lines high and each chapter flowed on from the
previous one with no extra blank space at the bottom of pages. This
layout made the book like reading a vertical scroll, only you didn't
have to twist rolling pins left and right you can still flip the
pages.
Wikipedia on the title of the book:
According to some sources, the title, the meaning of which is not
explicitly revealed in the book, was taken from a review in The Times
Literary Supplement of Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage, in which the
novel's protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as being "so busy
yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet."
According to a 1956 letter from Maugham, "If you look on the ground in
search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon."
One thing that frequently strikes me in reading classic novels,
including the Ian Fleming James Bond books, are passages that
grate with the sensitivities of modern readers and would be silently
rewritten by publishers if the estates of the writers let them.
A late passage in the book, from the viewpoint of a Tahitian woman,
would get the rewrite treatment. It's on page 184 of my edition.
################################################################
'My first husband, Captain Johnson, used to thrash me
regularly. He was a man. He was handsome, six foot three,
and when he was drunk there was no holding him. I would
be black and blue all over for days at a time. Oh, I cried
when he died. I thought I would never get over it. But it
wasn't until I married George Rainey that I knew what I'd
lost. You can never tell what a man is until you live
with him. I've never been so deceived in a man as I was
in George Rainey. He was a fine, upstanding fellow too.
He was nearly as tall as Captain Johnson, and he looked
strong enough. But it was all on the surface. He never
drank. He never raised his hand to me. He might
have been a missionary. I made love with the officers of
every ship that touched at the island, and George Rainey
never saw anything. At last I was disgusted with him,
and I got a divorce. What was the good of a husband
like that? It's a terrible thing the way some men
treat women.'
################################################################
1st October 2024
My book reviews are at https://github.com/stucooper/booksiveread