Homage to W. Somerset Maugham

I wonder whether an artist of any kind can be said to long for success.  Success is something it would seem great artists would wish to avoid, as their greatness to many is defined--if not measured--at least in part by their lack of success.  Great artists are not successful; their work isn't admired during their lifetimes, or sought, and most of all not bought.  This appears to be a condition precedent to greatness in an artist.

I refer to artists of all kinds, to painters, writers, composers, musicians.  The quality of art is thought to increase with failure in life.  Those unfortunate artists who succeed must do so because they appeal to those having money and willing to spend it, i.e. to Philistines.  Philistines necessarily are without the ability to discern great art and are instead attracted to the banal, the clichéd, the sentimental and, worse yet, the bourgeois.

So at least is the conceit of many an unsuccessful artist, I would guess, and of those who discover them after they've suffered through life in poverty or enslaved by drugs or as misunderstood genius-deviants-criminals.  It's curious that the tortured artist has become something of a cliché.  Perhaps the successful artist will come to be lauded and his/her work sought after, and will even be considered great when the artist has passed beyond the allure of genius.  There are examples in history.  Michelangelo, painter and sculptor, who seems at times to have thought of men and God as being as preposterously muscled as modern superheroes, was a successful artist of his time and is nonetheless considered a great one.

W. Somerset Maugham became extremely successful as a novelist, playwright and writer of short stories.  He was a screenwriter too, I suppose.  At least, several of his books were made into movies.  He was also a success as a public figure, that figure being himself as a well-read, knowledgeable, witty and world-weary literary master, of sorts.

Of sorts, I say.  He hasn't been granted iconic status, and has been considered less a writer than the other standouts of the 20th century, such as his contemporaries Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Scott Fitzgerald.  Even Anthony Burgess, who apparently admired his work, poked fun at him in his Earthly Powers.  Maugham himself pretended (or perhaps even felt) modesty about his work, declaring himself to be in the first rank of second rank writers, or words to that effect.  Orwell thought well of him and admired his storytelling and simplicity of style.

So do I.  Perhaps he was a good storyteller because he was very well-traveled as well as well-read, listened and observed.  He experienced much, and was even for a time with British intelligence, working in Switzerland and Russia after the downfall of the Czar but before the Bolshevik revolution.
He wrote a series of stories about being a spy, naming the protagonist Ashenden.  Supposedly, Ian Fleming was inspired by his work to write his James Bond stories.

He has never been considered a great writer.  I'm sure there's a reason why that's the case.  But I re-read recently his novel The Moon and Sixpence and found myself impressed by the story told if not by the writing.  His style of narration is cool, dry and simple, which I find admirable, but the story is a good one as well, although it grows tedious sometimes as he describes the life of an artist apparently based on Gaugin, as related by those who encountered him.  What makes the artist remarkable is the fact that he is what would now be called a sociopath or one with a similar personality disorder.  He's entirely indifferent to other people, without conscience, interested only in painting.  He destroys lives, without any real intent to do so but for merely selfish reasons and is untouched by consequences to others.

Of course, his art isn't appreciated during his life, but he's considered a genius after his death.  He destroys his greatest work, apparently content to have done it but not wanting it to be seen by others.  I wonder if Maugham was having a bit of fun with the idea of what it means to be a great artist, portraying him as a kind of seductive monster, as inhuman, and telling his reader that he's happy not to be a great artist himself, and the reader should be happy for it as well.  Telling his reader that great artists are not admirable, but merely sick.  They're not content to be tortured themselves by life, but wish also to torture those they know.  Perhaps one doesn't have to be tortured to be a great artist.  Instead, one must torture.

I think of Maugham as being similar to Graham Greene.  They have the same interest in far away places and in the grotesque aspects of human nature.  They both tell a good story.  Somehow it's enough, for me.  To what extent is it reasonable to expect more?  Why be disappointed if an interesting story is told and told well? 

Maugham put a symbol on all his books, and that's what is shown above.  It's supposed to be of Moorish origin, a charm against the evil eye and talisman of good luck.  It brought him luck.  I know nothing of the evil eye.

The Problem with Hemingway

I'm an admirer of Hemingway's work, for the most part.  I'm not all that fond of his novels, except for The Sun Also Rises.  It seems to me that his longer works become disconnected, and lack impact as a whole (though parts of them are impressive).  His short stories are, for me, always enjoyable and sometimes remarkable.  I wonder, as I have here in other posts, whether this is the case for all American writers I've read.  But it may be that I lack the patience to appreciate novels generally.  This wasn't always the case, though, so it may be a function of age (strangely; but I'm nothing if not strange).

I think A Farewell to Arms retains what I will call the precision and purity of his short stories, but For Whom the Bell Tolls does not.  The latter novel straggles into the didactic and maudlin.  I'm uncertain whether The Old Man and the Sea is a novel or an extended short story. 

I refer to precision and purity not merely because I find them attractive in his work, but because Hemingway himself seems to have valued them highly.  He wrote in Big Two-Hearted River, or a version of it, that the character Nick wanted to write like Cezanne painted.  Nick, in that story at least, is generally considered Hemingway's alter ego.  He's also known to have been critical of James Joyce for using "tricks" in his work, though he also wrote that Joyce's characters were too much like Joyce himself.  Perhaps "simplicity" is a better word for the works of Hemingway I like.  Though I don't doubt he wrote with great care and purpose, I don't get the impression of contrivance and unnecessary and indulgent elaboration I receive when reading other authors when I read him; and I value this highly.

Since the days of his greatest popularity and acclaim, however, Hemingway and his work have been subject to a great deal of criticism.  Hemingway the person is said to have been unduly macho, cruel to friends and enemies, jealous; it's maintained he was an alcoholic, insecure in his masculinity (whatever that is supposed to mean), preposterous, a bore, self-serving.  His work is said to lack subtlety and art, to be easily imitated, to focus too much on "masculine" concerns like hunting, fishing, fighting and war; to be predictable.

The novel published after his death, The Garden of Eden, makes one wonder about the accuracy of the traditional, rather stereotypical, view of his personality and his writing.  It's difficult to think of Hemingway writing about what we would now call "gender roles" and "gender confusion" although his attraction to women of masculine appearance has been noted previously.  His scope as a person and as a writer may have been much greater than previously believed.

His personality and conduct must be considered in light of what seems indisputable--that he suffered from mental illness, as did other members of his family.  His father committed suicide as did other close relatives.  He clearly deteriorated during the 1950s, becoming paranoid and depressed, and was subject to various physical ailments as well.  It's speculated he was bipolar.

What seemed to be the primary problem with Hemingway as writer after his death, particularly in the late 20th century, was I think that he went out of style.  His writing was much imitated for a time, he fell out of fashion.  I recall feminists finding him particularly hateful, and anti-war feelings during the Vietnam era resulted in a lack of interest in his work.  So the themes of his work were thought chauvinist and macho.  But his style was also in disrepute, and as it seemed to some his later writing came to be repetitive in style as well as them.

My problem with Hemingway, to the extent there is one, has nothing to do with the fashion of the moment, nor am I a critic of his style, which I find admirable;  I very much enjoy reading his work, generally.  I have no problem with the subject matter of his work either, though I've never been a hunter or fisherman, and have no interest whatsoever in killing otherwise harming animals, especially for "sport"; nor have I been a soldier.  His fascination with "grace under pressure" is one which I may even share.  His manner of writing, and the way it seems to me to express ideas and feeling with which I'm familiar and for which I feel empathy, transcends subject matter in some fashion.

My problem with him arises from his (to me) inexplicable love for bullfighting.  I've read Death in the Afternoon but was unimpressed.  It seems to me to be a grotesque pageant in celebration of the extended ritual torture of an animal, ending in its death.  It's not clear to me how any reasonable person could enjoy such a spectacle, let alone admire it and its participants.

Bullfighting may have originated in the Roman games I did a post on recently, but if that's so something changed to have resulted in the adulation for the toreador we see in the cruel circus and in Hemingway.  Animal fighters, beastiarii, were held in low regard by the Roman populace, in contrast to gladiators.  The sacrifice of animals to placate the gods was also characteristic of pagan religions, and no doubt caused unnecessary pain and death, but as far as I am aware sacrifice did not involve prolonged torment. 

It's sometimes claimed the courage and skill required to be a successful toreador renders bullfighting interesting and them admirable.  No doubt the toreador is exposed to danger, but the bull has been tormented and bled by picadors by the time he encounters it.  How is it possible to find, as Hemingway did, grace, beauty, courage and honor in such mere slaughter?  There is something unseemly, unworthy and base in the spectacle and therefore in those who laud it.

This is what makes it hard for me to admire Hemingway as a person.  There is a cruelty present in him which doesn't arise from hate or circumstances which seem to justify cruelty in return for cruelty.  It is more a kind of sadism. 

Does this impact his work?  I don't think it's possible or advisable to separate a person from his work as others do, which is why I hold Heidegger in low esteem.  I have not felt that way about Hemingway, though.  Do I draw a distinction between philosopher and artist, cutting the artist more slack because I feel a philosopher should be held to a higher moral standard?  I suspect that's the case, and wonder why. 

But that is the subject of another post.