W.S. Maugham – an Outstanding Writer and Modern Classic

William Somerset Maugham

(1874 - 1965)

The name of Somerset Maugham is connected with critical realism in the English literature of the first decades of the XXth century. He possessed a keen and observant eye and in his best works he ridiculed hypocrisy, self-interest, utilitarian approach to art. W.S Maugham was a prolific writer. Numerous novels, short stories and plays came from his pen. His best novels are: Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, Cakes and Ale. At his best he is an incomparable story-teller. He writes with lucidity and almost ostentatious simplicity. His acid irony and brilliant style helped him win a huge audience of readers.

The novel The Moon and Sixpence based on the life of the French artist Paul Gauguin won him fame. The main character of the novel Strickland is a middle-aged stock-broker, who takes up painting, throws over his family, goes to Tahiti and in the few years before his death paints highly original pictures with strange colours.

The novel is an illustration of one of Maugham’s favourite convictions that human nature is a knit of contradictions, that the workings of the human mind are unpredictable. Strickland is concentrated on his art. He is indifferent to love, friendship, kindness. His pictures fall flat on the public and recognition comes to him only after death.

Maugham borrowed the title of the novel from a review of his book Of Human Bondage. Speaking of the principal character of the book, the reviewer remarks that like so many young men he was busy yearning for the moon and that he never saw the sixpence at his feet. The title served to Maugham as a symbol for two opposing worlds – the material world where everything is thought of in terms of money, and the world of pure artistry craving for beauty.

The author’s style is clear and precise. He doesn’t impose his views on the reader. He puts a question and leaves it to the reader to answer it. When criticizing something he sounds rather amused than otherwise. Maugham’s brilliant style made his books extremely popular all over the world.

Unit I

Chapters I-IV

1. Study the following words and word combinations, explain their meaning in English, give the context in which they are used:

1. to make an acquaintance with smb.

2. an object of ridicule

3. to excuse a thousand faults

4. to satisfy the aesthetic sense

5. abulation of admirers

6. disparagement

7. to eke out

8. exegesis

9. a strain of asceticism

10. tumultuous

11. to wander among one’s recollections

12. to observe with admiration

13. vagary

14. flippancy

15. to have a passion for

2. Say whether the following statements are true or false:

1. The greatness of Charles Strickland was authentic.

2. There wasn’t in Charles Strickland anything out of the ordinary.

3. The most interesting thing in art is a personality of the artist.

4. Mr. Strickland was an excellent husband and father, a man of kindly temper, industrious habits, and moral disposition.

5. A painter’s monument is his work.

6. Charles Strickland spent last years of his life in England.

7. Mrs. Strickland had a real passion for reading.

8. Mr. Strickland didn’t have any children.