William Somerset Maugham, CH (January 25, 1874 – December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was one of the most popular authors achieving recognition as the highest paid of his profession during the 1930s.
Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could.
Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham himself attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work.
It seems equally likely that Maugham was underrated because he wrote in such a direct style. There was nothing in a book by Maugham that the reading public needed explained to them by critics. Maugham thought clearly, wrote lucidly, and expressed acerbic and sometimes cynical opinions in handsome, civilized prose. He wrote in a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and won critical acclaim. In this context, his writing was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way"[16].
Maugham's homosexual leanings also shaped 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 distinguished authors of his time. "Liza of Lambeth," "Cakes and Ale" and "The Razor's Edge" all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result.
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 traveled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics 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."
Maugham's public account of his abilities remained modest; toward the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.
Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club[17]. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, it began its exhibition life and in 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden.
Shallow, poorly educated Kitty marries the passionate and intellectual Walter Fane and has an affair with a career politician, Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter discovers the relationship, he compels Kitty to accompany him to a cholera-infested region of mainland China, where she finds limited happiness working with children at a convent. But when Walter dies, she is forced to leave China and return to England. Generally abandoned, she grasps desperately for the affection of her one remaining relative, her long-ignored father. In the end, in sharp, unexamined contrast to her own behavior patterns, she asserts that her unborn daughter will grow up to be an independent woman. The Painted Veil was first published in 1925 and is usually described as a strong story about a woman's spiritual journey. To more pragmatic, modern eyes, Kitty's emotional growth appears minimal. Still, if not a major feminist work, the book has literary interest. Sophie Ward's uninflected reading is competent if not compelling.
“我对你不抱什么幻想,我知道你愚蠢、轻浮、没有头脑,但是我爱你。我知道你的目标和理想既庸俗又普通,但是我爱你。我知道你是二流货色,但是我爱你。”这是沃尔特对凯蒂的对白。 “这样说来,她不爱他,却爱着那个她已看穿的卑鄙小人,这就让人费解了。她想着,想着,用一个...
评分“我对你不抱什么幻想,我知道你愚蠢、轻浮、没有头脑,但是我爱你。我知道你的目标和理想既庸俗又普通,但是我爱你。我知道你是二流货色,但是我爱你。”这是沃尔特对凯蒂的对白。 “这样说来,她不爱他,却爱着那个她已看穿的卑鄙小人,这就让人费解了。她想着,想着,用一个...
评分(一) “我知道你愚蠢、轻佻、头脑空虚,然而我爱你。我知道你的企图、你的理想,你势力、庸俗,然后我爱你。我知道你是个二流货色,然而我爱你。” 他爱她如斯,然而在她眼里,他却是个无知庸俗、闲言碎语、自命天高、孤芳自赏、冷漠自制、毫无幽默感的老古董。他让她厌恶、...
评分文Shirleysays 有首英诗《换歌》,大意是讲:好心人收留了一条狗,后人畜反目,狗发疯将人咬伤。人们都以为人会死,最终死的却是狗。在毛姆的小说《面纱》里,男主人公瓦尔特临终的唯一遗言就是,“死的却是狗”。 我猜这首词源自爱尔兰文学家奥利弗.戈德史密斯,他在许多诗...
评分最后看得太仓促了 当时看中译版的急切希望手边有原版,看得还不是很顺。 特别好的故事,大爱毛姆。
评分结尾有点仓促。”The dog it was that died“听起来像是苦涩的自嘲,Walter是原谅Kitty了吧,可是他原谅自己了么。Kitty到最后对Walter有的也只是pity没有爱这真是毛姆会有的写法
评分读过的第二本【较长的英文原著】 对Walter无法融入无聊娱乐 有共情~
评分读过的第二本【较长的英文原著】 对Walter无法融入无聊娱乐 有共情~
评分#每周一本英文书# 2018_17/54 死的却是狗……
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