If you want a dystopia, ban Maugham! A utopia? Better let him in.
William Somerset Maugham fondles gallantly with the lives of the bourgeoisie. In his novel The Moon and Sixpence, he described his work as a family entertainment, shattering big names like “One of the Finest Classic Novel of All Times”. He seems to be one gentleman to tap the hats of meanderers with his silk-black walking cane, while glancing everywhere elsewhere and whistling to the music played in the nearby bar. As he concludes Tom Ramsay’s character in The Ant and the Grasshopper: “You could not approve of him, but you could not help liking him.” It could be flung right back at himself. In attitude, Maugham is much like Lord Henry in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, “he never says a right thing, yet he does nothing wrong.”
A stroll down the psyche lane with Maugham is a delightful experience. In The Luncheon, he depicts the absolute disaster of a young man not yet known to say no to a woman. Being vain we believe that we have more than what we’ve really got. But he does not regret as readers might do, and puffs at the truth that the woman who “always only has one thing for lunch” is 21 stone. Maugham is a humorist, and he never seems to take sides. Having hope we make way for extraordinary occurrences. This blind, universal hope leaves us sore-hearted more than satisfied. But surely it is a grasshopper-valor. In The Escape, Maugham demonstrates one of the many ways to wear love away. It is also very interesting how analogous Ruth Barlow and The House Seekers are. They never found the thing, because they did not seek, only examined. Perhaps it is altogether not a choice unwise to sit on the Merry-Go-Round for the whole of your life!
One thing I know for sure, Maugham is a better snack than Dove White Chocolates.