Book Review: Somerset Maugham’s Ten Novels And Their Authors

Author: Somerset Maugham
Pages: 340
Published in the year: 1954

The one aspect, among many others, that draws one to Somerset Maugham’s writing is the elegant simplicity and clear-headedness found in them.  He can be a very compassionate writer,  as The Painted Veil reveals and with Ten Novels And Their Authors, it is his analytical ability as a scholar and critic that comes to the fore. And all of it laid out with such eloquence!

This particular book is especially illuminating, as Maugham expounds on the various aspect of fiction writing, giving a fairly detailed analysis of the books and authors he admires.
Literary criticism, no matter how challenging and satisfying, often makes for heavy reading. Maugham achieves that rare feat in that he writes a book as thrilling as a novel and yet gives you wonderfully original and insightful views on an author’s work, linking it closely to their personal lives.

The book is divided into 12 chapters, 10 chapters devoted to the authors and one of their most significant works as chosen by Maugham.  The first chapter,  ‘The Art of Fiction’ discusses various elements of fiction writing – all greatly readable (for me, that has come to be the hallmark of Maugham’s works — he’s also that rare writer who rarely rambles on. This quality helps in an endevour such as this, where one needs to be genuinely curious about another author’s life and works. Maugham proves to be astute and all his elaborations make a definite point.)
This chapter discuss some very important aspects of writing. Why does a reader feel tempted to skip lines or pages from a book?  According to Maugham, the responsibility to engage a reader lies with the writer.  He is also daring in his admission that even some classic novels are unnecessarily long.  He mentions Don Quixote in this regard and says that even if some chapters were to be edited out of the book, it would cause no serious loss to the reader in his/her enjoyment of it.

Then he also talks about the advantages and disadvantages of narrative choices.  Should it be written from the standpoint of omniscience or in the first person. The assessment shows that it must be done according to the subject at hand. Maugham’s other significant point is on what constitutes a good novel.
There are many aspects that he talks about here, but the central one is that of achieving verisimilitude.  ”A story should be persuable. The episodes should have probability and should not only develop the theme, but grow out of the story”

He then goes on to talk about each author in considerable detail, paying special attention to personality traits and episodes in the writer’s life which may have had a part to play in the fiction he/she went on to produce.  So Charles Dickens could never really sketch out a gentleman very well, because he’d never seen many of those kind in his childhood.

Similarly Emily Bronte’s “strange, mysterious, shadowy character” permeates through Wuthering Heights.  Says Maugham of her, “Emily Bronte disliked men and without exception, was not even ordinarily polite to her father’s curates.”
She was clearly anti-people and avoided proximity, which could be one of the reasons why she chooses Mrs Dean to be the narrator of Wutherings Heights.  Says Maugham, “I think it would have shocked her harsh, uncompromising virtue to tell the outrageous story as a creation of her own.  This technique of having the housekeeper tell the story enables her to hide herself behind, as it were a double mask.”

Leo Tolstoy, he describes as “irritable, contradictory and arrogantly indifferent to other people’s feelings” even though to Maugham there can never be a greater novel than War And Peace.
He talks a great deal about French writer Stendhal’s pompous manners and utter desperation to appeal to the fairer sex. “His passions were cerebral and to possess a woman was chiefly a satisfaction to his vanity”

Many authors, like Gustav Flaubert and Balzac had complicated love lives and all that Maugham describes without the slightest bit of hesitation or sympathy. They all come across as complex characters, with very many issues relating to money, their lovers among other things.
No doubt, these are interesting bits to read – even though they concentrate a lot on their sordid personal lives. But the book’s prime appeal is Maugham’s rich and masterful observations on the work of these authors.
Like what he says of Henry Fielding, who started out as a playwright before turning to fiction.  According to Maugham, this was a great advantage because  “by then the author has learnt to be brief, he has learnt the value of rapid incident”

He has very many interesting aspects to say about Jane Austen as well, whose Pride And Prejudice he regards as a greatly entertaining and charming novel.  According to him, Austen was the most consistent among her contemporaries.
“Most novelists have their ups and downs. Miss Austen is the only exception I know to prove the rule that only the mediocre maintain an equal level.  She is never more than a little below her best”

He may have given with one hand what he takes from the other here, but yet, Maugham’s appreciation for Austen is genuine. He says of her works,  “Her observation was searching and her sentiment edifying, but it was her humour that gave point to her observation and a prim liveliness to her sentiment. Her range was narrow.  She wrote very much the same story in all her books. Her experience of life was confined to a small circle of provincial society and that is what she was content to deal with.  She wrote only of what she knew. She never tried to reproduce a conversation of men when by themselves, which in the nature of things, she could never have heard.”

…bit long, so the rest can be read here …http://sandyi.blogspot.com/2009/10/somerset-maughams-ten-novels-and-their.html