Bright Young Things discussion

Welcome to the April Group Read discussion of chapters I - V:

The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham

The book will be that much more enjoyable because of A Fragment of Autobiography which prefaces the story. Maugham's economic straits while nobbing with the wealthy are strikingly similar to Lily's embarrassments in Wharton's The House of Mirth.

I was delighted when I read that part. I had heard a small amount about the conflict between Maugham and Crowley, but knowing more is definitely adding to my enjoyment of the book.

I'm not sure that Susie likes him out of a perverse desire to go against the crowd so much as an interest in and desire for excitement. I haven't picked up on any attraction for him other than being drawn to his exotic and flamboyant nature and strange stories.

I was a bit nonplussed at first as to why the group had chosen this specific one of Maugham's novels, but now that I'm aware of the Aleister Crowley aspect, that certainly makes it a lot more interesting, I must say.

I'll hazard a bit of clairvoyance here: ..and that is that I'll shortly be reading up more on the very interesting persona and history surrounding Crowley. :D

I must say, Bill, that I am struck by your not mentioning the peculiar lack of "carnal desire" between Arthur and Margaret, since it actually struck me that they postponed their marraige for rather casual reasons.

'I think only English people could have behaved so oddly as you, in postponing your marriage without reason for two mortal years.'

'You see, Margaret was ten when I first saw her, and only seventeen when I asked her to marry me. She thought she had reason to be grateful to me and would have married me there and then.

...'And it's not as if there had been any doubt about our knowing our minds. We both cared, and we had a long time before us. We could afford to wait.' "

I suppose Arthur's love was of the very idealistic kind. ..and yet he is a very pragmatic man; still, I suppose his reasons are quite pragmatic.

The two of them rather remind me of the love Dante Alighieri held for Beatrice Portinari.

Perhaps not a very close correlation, since Dante was after all a poet, and Arthur is a very prosaic man.
Plus Dante never married Beatrice - but still, he also met her at a very young age and she inspired a life-long devotion in him.

I wonder how much of this is influenced by Maugham's own orientation. Per Wikipedia:

>>For a public man of Maugham's generation, being openly gay was impossible. Whether his own orientation disgusted him (as it did many at a time when homosexuality was widely considered indefensible as well as illegal) or whether he merely took a stance to cover himself, Maugham wrote disparagingly of the gay artist.

In "Don Fernando", a non-fiction volume about his years living in Spain, Maugham pondered a (perhaps fanciful) suggestion that the painter El Greco was homosexual: "It cannot be denied that the homosexual has a narrower outlook on the world than the normal man. In certain respects the natural responses of the species are denied to him.

Some at least of the broad and typical human emotions he can never experience. However subtly he sees life he cannot see it whole ... I cannot now help asking myself whether what I see in El Greco's work of tortured fantasy and sinister strangeness is not due to such a sexual abnormality as this".[30]

But Maugham's homosexual leanings did shape his fiction in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for authors of his time.

[....]Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he travelled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics[who?] often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied in 1938: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."<<

I must say that I think the abovementioned has made Maugham a master of describing self-effacing longings and yearnings, which sometimes comes out very poignantly in his prose.

Reading about Aleister Crowley is almost more interesting and colourful than any fiction.

One doesn't know how much of it is for real and much is only smoke and mirrors, but it does seem as if the guy was pretty influential - hailed by some as the most evil person that ever lived. (Though I personally feel that Countess Erzsebet Bathory most certainly deserves this title instead).

From what little I have casually gleaned of Crowley up to now, has always made me have the idea that he was a bit of a madman (if not a total madman).

However, I've just read something about him that raised him somewhat in my esteem: (from Wikipedia):

>>Crowley developed a drug addiction after a London doctor prescribed heroin for his asthma and bronchitis.[138] His life as an addict influenced his 1922 novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, but the fiction presented a hopeful outcome of rehabilitation and recovery by means of magical techniques and the exercise of True Will.

He overcame his addiction to heroin during this period (chronicled in Liber XVIII - The Fountain of Hyacinth) but began taking it once more late in his life, again on doctor's prescription for his respiratory difficulties. <<

Well! As I understand it, heroin is the most addictive drug there is, so if Crowley really managed to kick that habit, he must have had strong willpower indeed!

Bill wrote: "Traveller wrote: "I am struck by your not mentioning the peculiar lack of "carnal desire" between Arthur and Margaret, since it actually struck me that they postponed their marraige for rather casu..."

Are we supposed to be liking Arthur? I don't see him being written terribly sympathetically.

Well, I'm discovering from a bit of current reading, that Aleister Crowley is actually a much more complex character than the cariciature image I had had of him up to now, and perhaps that complexity has to some extentent rubbed off onto Haddo, even though Maugham obviously disliked the man. (Not that I can say that I really blame him... :P )

So this is the statue that resembles Margaret. http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5043/5...

Bill wrote: "I know I'm supposed to be liking Arthur and disliking Haddo---so why is it the other way around?
I think my contention may be with Maugham himself--who I think is creating the opposite effect he intended with this reader. "

Hmm, I certainly am not liking Haddo - he is a rather cruel braggart who needs to be the center of attention all the time, for all I can see. Why do you like him, Bill?

As for Arthur, I suspect that he is a mixture of Maugham himself and the need for a quiet noble but practical protagonist who represents the antithesis of Haddo, and who can be easily wounded for extra effect later on in the novel.

I suppose Arthur himself was a bit cruel to Haddo, but then all that posturing and Haddo's being nasty to the artists, obviously rubbed him up the wrong way.

PS. I hope you'll not judge Maugham by this novel - it is one of his very early works, and not near the quality or even the style of "Of Human bondage" "The Razor's Edge" and "The Painted Veil" in my estimation.

Per Maugham's own admission, he was aiming to write light fiction and was cashing in on the popular fascination with the occult that characterized his era.

For the latter alone, I think this book is an interesting look at this popular theme to be found in late Victorian fiction and and pop culture. I suppose there must have been a reason why Aleister Crowley was so well-known at the time, and why his name is still known almost a century later.

Oh, and may I say, that I'm finding some passages rather romantic, and more reminiscent of the Romantic era in literature, than the modernist era:

"The colour of her skin was so tender that it reminded you vaguely of all beautiful soft things, the radiance of sunset and the darkness of the night, the heart of roses and the depth of running water."

I must admit that Maugham seems to be a bit obvious in trying to make us dislike Haddo; - I mean the thing with the horse and the cats - there used to be (possibly still is?) an urban myth that animals can "sense evil"; so I suppose he is trying to set the stage in suggesting that the animals fear him because they sense evil in Haddo.

Regarding Suzie, I almost feel as if Maugham feels sympathetic towards this stereotype, and critiques the shallowness of society which would only be entranced by a woman's outer beauty, and not by the value that a woman's personality might have.

I think it is Maugham who is complex... in The Painted Veil I wavered back and forth between the characters, trying to decide who Maugham had chosen for the protagonist & who for the antagonist. The answer, of course, is neither and both.

Maugham's characters are like most real people -- they are usually superficially likeable, and then become vulnerable in their weaknesses as they make bad choices from good but confused intentions, and somehow become heroic as they struggle with self-knowledge.

I just watched the movie made from his novel
Up at the Villa, and the same thing can be said of all these characters, too.

Also, I think it might be safe to say that Maugham was bi-sexual, there were women he loved (and one he married) as well as men. From his writing and his life, I'd go out on a limb and say his artistry transcended his sexuality rather than being driven by it. I think he was one of those men who fell in love with people, not necessarily genders, and who saw human beings through a deeply compassionate lens as both flawed and inspiring.

I think he is a fine writer who tells very interesting stories about the complications between people.

Traveller wrote: "PS. I hope you'll not judge Maugham by this novel - it is one of his very early works, and not near the quality or even the style of "Of Human bondage" "The Razor's Edge" and "The Painted Veil" in my estimation.."

I've not read The Razor's Edge or The Painted Veil, but I have read Of Human Bondage and I agree with you about the quality. I am trying to not judge this one on that basis though because of the timing in which they were written.

Bill wrote: ""I know I'm supposed to be liking Arthur and disliking Haddo..."


I've only just met Haddo in the book, and I can understand your sympathizing with him -- he clears the room just by poking their egos. That's a fearless and brazen kind of behavior that usually belongs to people who have a great sense of personal power and keen insight. He makes everyone else there look childish in their little fits of leave-taking.

At first glance, Haddo seems very similar in physique, style and attitude to Wilkie Collins' Count Fosco in The Woman in White... and Fosco was creepy indeed.

Janice Geranium wrote: "I think it is Maugham who is complex... Also, I think it might be safe to say that Maugham was bi-sexual, there were women he loved (and one he married) as well as men. From his writing and his life, I'd go out on a limb and say his artistry transcended his sexuality rather than being driven by it. I think he was one of those men who fell in love with people, not necessarily genders, and who saw human beings through a deeply compassionate lens as both flawed and inspiring.
..."

I absolutely agree with you in that I personally feel Maugham was a complex and likeable person. A sensitive person, I would say, who was actually, I personally think, a better writer in that he seems to have liked and been sympathetic towards both genders irrepective of what his exact sexual orientation might have been.

I find him a very "human" writer - in a good way.

I read a few of his books when I was very young, but I still remember how touched I was by the poignancy with which he somewhere in one of them descibes the yearning of a homosexual man for another man. I had in addition to the 3 books I'd mentioned also read Cakes and Ale, and although I don't remember much detail out of any of these books, I do remember being impressed in how courageously he defended his female protagonist in the book.

In fact, those of you who are currently reading Hardy in the other group, might be interested in this little passage from Wikipedia:

Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930) is a novel by British author William Somerset Maugham. It is often alleged to be a thinly-veiled roman à clef examining contemporary novelists Thomas Hardy (as Edward Driffield) and Hugh Walpole (as Alroy Kear)[citation needed] — though Maugham maintained he had created both characters as composites and in fact explicitly denies any connection to Hardy in his own introduction to later editions of the novel. Maugham exposes the misguided social snobbery leveled at the character Rosie Driffield (Edward's first wife), whose frankness, honesty and sexual freedom make her a target of conservative propriety. Her character is treated favourably by the book's narrator, Ashenden, who understands her sexual energy to be a muse to the many artists who surround her.