Points of View by Somerset Maugham
The book is a compilation of five essays. I read the essays 'The Short Story' and 'Three Journalists' first for no specific reason except that the titles appealed to me.
Essay on the short story is an interesting reflection on Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield. I gorged every word that Maugham wrote about Chekhov. He mentioned that Checkhov loved writing and sending his works to various publications, though he never thought too much about himself as a writer. He just kept on writing. When he first arrived in Saint Petersburg, he was surprised to see that he had already been accepted as one of the leading writers in literary circles.
Maugham humanizes Anton in a way that an ordinary reader can relate to the great man.
Most of the time, when one thinks of writers like Anton, one tends to idealize them. In this essay, one sees the ordinary aspects of Anton's life, a young man trying to write against all odds, traversing an unusual path of becoming a writer. It is fascinating to read that Anton himself was not aware that he was writing an unrepeatable history.
In the same chapter, Maugham made some clever observation about Henry James. James, Maugham observes, never knew ordinary people, 'his characters have neither bowels nor sexual organs.' This is indeed an astute take on James work that immediately rings true. Maugham gave a great example of James' idiosyncrasy. Once James painted a picture of some woman. Someone remarked, 'but a woman is not like that' to which James replied, 'it is not a woman, madam, it is a picture.' According to Maugham, if someone had ventured to suggest that James stories were not lifelike, he would have said, 'those are just stories and not lives.'
In the same chapter, while he wrote in great detail about Chekhov and Mansfield, Poe and James were also featured briefly. However, the essay is mainly on Chekhov and Mansfield. Maugham clearly liked Katherine's craft, and the influence of Chekhov on her. He did not attempt to present her as god-like or impeccable. For instance, he writes, among other things, that Katherine was immensely self-centered, apt to have sudden fits of violent temper, fiercely intolerant, exacting, harsh, selfish, arrogant and domineering.
In the chapter titled 'Three Journalists', he writes about Jules Renard, Paul Leautaud. Although I knew little about these French writers, I liked reading about them. The essay is an extremely well-written portrait of these lives that come alive on the page because they deal with something that is permanent in life such as love, ambition, quest for meaning, crisis in life. I would like to read these chapters again because I had read them too quickly.
There were other essays; one on Goethe and the other on an Indian guru. I think Maugham was fascinated by Indian spirituality. I liked the essay, but I guess he was too reason-oriented to really know Indian approach to spirituality. Such an undertaking demands a certain submission without any guarantee that the submission will produce a positive result. One does not even know if seeking 'spiritual truths' is a worthy activity. So engaging with spirituality in the Indian tradition is quite at odds with the western thought.
It is very clear that concepts like 'Brahman', 'Karma', 'Maya' are extremely complex and are great areas of philosophical inquiry. Often, one is tempted to dismiss them because these concepts are not easy to handle. I must say that there is much in Hindu religious texts one can ridicule and should discard. However, there is much more in it that is formidable, which the West has never been able to grasp.
Essay on the short story is an interesting reflection on Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield. I gorged every word that Maugham wrote about Chekhov. He mentioned that Checkhov loved writing and sending his works to various publications, though he never thought too much about himself as a writer. He just kept on writing. When he first arrived in Saint Petersburg, he was surprised to see that he had already been accepted as one of the leading writers in literary circles.
Maugham humanizes Anton in a way that an ordinary reader can relate to the great man.
Most of the time, when one thinks of writers like Anton, one tends to idealize them. In this essay, one sees the ordinary aspects of Anton's life, a young man trying to write against all odds, traversing an unusual path of becoming a writer. It is fascinating to read that Anton himself was not aware that he was writing an unrepeatable history.
In the same chapter, Maugham made some clever observation about Henry James. James, Maugham observes, never knew ordinary people, 'his characters have neither bowels nor sexual organs.' This is indeed an astute take on James work that immediately rings true. Maugham gave a great example of James' idiosyncrasy. Once James painted a picture of some woman. Someone remarked, 'but a woman is not like that' to which James replied, 'it is not a woman, madam, it is a picture.' According to Maugham, if someone had ventured to suggest that James stories were not lifelike, he would have said, 'those are just stories and not lives.'
In the same chapter, while he wrote in great detail about Chekhov and Mansfield, Poe and James were also featured briefly. However, the essay is mainly on Chekhov and Mansfield. Maugham clearly liked Katherine's craft, and the influence of Chekhov on her. He did not attempt to present her as god-like or impeccable. For instance, he writes, among other things, that Katherine was immensely self-centered, apt to have sudden fits of violent temper, fiercely intolerant, exacting, harsh, selfish, arrogant and domineering.
In the chapter titled 'Three Journalists', he writes about Jules Renard, Paul Leautaud. Although I knew little about these French writers, I liked reading about them. The essay is an extremely well-written portrait of these lives that come alive on the page because they deal with something that is permanent in life such as love, ambition, quest for meaning, crisis in life. I would like to read these chapters again because I had read them too quickly.
There were other essays; one on Goethe and the other on an Indian guru. I think Maugham was fascinated by Indian spirituality. I liked the essay, but I guess he was too reason-oriented to really know Indian approach to spirituality. Such an undertaking demands a certain submission without any guarantee that the submission will produce a positive result. One does not even know if seeking 'spiritual truths' is a worthy activity. So engaging with spirituality in the Indian tradition is quite at odds with the western thought.
It is very clear that concepts like 'Brahman', 'Karma', 'Maya' are extremely complex and are great areas of philosophical inquiry. Often, one is tempted to dismiss them because these concepts are not easy to handle. I must say that there is much in Hindu religious texts one can ridicule and should discard. However, there is much more in it that is formidable, which the West has never been able to grasp.
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