Intriguing Life Questions | The Razor's Edge

Vintage Maugham | The Razor's Edge | W. Somerset Maugham

books:


	• The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham Vintage, 2003 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 152 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Story of the World's First Hippie

Larry Darrell is the glorified image of a wannabe saint. He is the main "character" of this novel or reminiscence although there are many other interesting upper-class American, British, and French characters as well as some low-life ones. Maugham manages to interweave many observations and anecdotes into this tale, but the heart of the book is the story of Larry's spiritual quest.

Larry is an early personification of the 1960s call to drop out, turn on, and tune in--especially the "drop out" part. Originally from an upper-class Illinois family Larry after his WW I experiences as a fighter pilot and hero decides that he cannot follow the accepted path. He just wants to "loaf" (his word). He's really on a quest to find himself and the answers to his spiritual questions. Larry is portrayed as kind, gentle, unassuming, with no ambition in the ordinary sense, loving, unjudgemental. Just the perfect saintly hippie. Well he's not quite a proto-hippie because he won't take drugs (one of his girl friends is an opium addict) or drink alcohol except very lightly. He even has magic powers to heal people learned from an Indian yogi.

This book is entertaining and interesting as a social document of the 1920s and 1930s and an exposition of various character-types especially the wannabe saint. The Razor's Edge is absorbing except for some half-baked Eastern religious sermons tediously imposed on the reader (or in my case listener) near the end. I recommend it. Despite the gushing of a few other reviewers I would not consider The Razor's Edge to be great literature. IMO some of Maugham's other works are superior.

I listened to the audio book which was very well narrated and produced.

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Intriguing Life Questions

A wonderfully witty and thought provoking look at manners during the time between the two world wars. Set mostly in France, this study of American expatriates revolves around Elliot, a socializing connector who views all non-French societies as barbaric, and Larry, a WWI fighter pilot who has looked death in the face and decided he wanted to live differently than most of the people he now meets. Great questions arise during the story about our public image, possessions, happiness and why we are on this planet. The book starts out slow but picks up once the characters start interacting. There is a long section at the very end where the author, also a character in the story, retells a conversation he had with Larry about Larry's Hindu beliefs. This section is expository, so can bog down, but the content is fairly interesting.

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Vintage Maugham

I have just finished re-reading "The Razor's Edge." This must be my third time around with this novel, over a span of many years. Yet it continues to fascinate me; sometimes I think I'm still playing "catch-up" with Maugham. The same goes for "The Summing Up" and his short stories --- they are so good that they invite re-reading after a decade or so has gone by.

"The Razor's Edge" is a pretty simple story, which might be titled "My Encounters with Larry." Maugham apologizes for this at the outset, and even goes so far as to write in something like "the real first person," where the characters address him as "Maugham." The character who attracts the lion's share of attention is a young American named Larry, who was badly shocked during World War I and afterward set out on a search to discover the meaning of life with a private income of $3,000 per year.

Put that way, it sounds completely corny --- but, then again, aren't many of us searching for the meaning of life? We may not have $3,000 a year (quite a bit back then, at least enough to live on) and we may not have the iron backbone of Larry, who is not just "dabbling" and "posing," but is quite capable of spending the entire day reading through William James' "Principles of Psychology."

But how can you tell a tale like this without making it utterly boring?

Maugham's answer to this problem works splendidly. He surrounds his central character with a cast of extremely vivid characters, none of whom are concerned with searching for the meaning of life --- because they all believe they already KNOW the meaning of life, and are avidly pursuing it. The amiable snob Templeton devotes his entire life to social climbing, and believes that, after death, he will "move in the best circles" in Heaven! After all, Heaven has gradations as well: Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels and the rest. The main female character, Isabel, has a hopeless lifelong crush on Larry, but her "meaning of life" is almost exactly defined as "upper-middle-class American prosperity," and she eventually marries Gray Maturin, who is quite sure that the meaning of life is "work, money, and a beautiful wife." These characters and more are thrown into the world of the 1920's, and they all find their lives drastically altered by the character-revealing stock market crash and Depression. As these characters endlessly pursue their own small ends, Larry continues steadfastly working on the eternal questions of God's existence and the meaning of life.

The book is superbly well-written. I had an excellent teacher at UCLA who told his class that "Maugham may not be an 'A' writer, but almost everyone admits that he is the very best of the 'B' writers." That judgment may have been an understatement. Whatever else you may say about Somerset Maugham, he wrote well and was a tremendous storyteller. I am personally convinced that his short stories are overdue for a major revival.

In the meantime, if you have any interest in those Big Questions, I can recommend this book to you without reservation. The resolution is not philosophically or theologically simple --- not by any means. But it coheres --- it holds together. And that is no task for a "grade-B" writer.

A terrific book!!

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The Lady or the Tiger? Whch Choice Will You Make?

Published in 1944, this classic novel portrays the increasing awareness of existential choices in life faced by those who came of age in the 1920's, beginning to see the breadth of choices available in the 20th century, but seduced by the comfort of the traditions of the 19th century in an age of increased prosperity. These questions were interrupted by the depression and WWII, but the existential challenges remain. What life do you lead now that you are aware of the choices you make and their consequences? A great book for a "know it all" college student, a mid-thirties adult or someone moving into their 50's. There are no simple answers or guarantees, but actively making life choices seems to be part of the answer

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excellent study of human nature and choices

At first I thought this book was not going to be as great as Of Human Bondage which I love, but as I read on, the significance of the message and the poignancy of this book became so pronounced. In fact, it is amazing how the author managed to convey such heavy issues in this short book, and to incorporate literary weight as well as underlying dark humor. He is a master researcher and observer of personalities, better than some psychologists, as well as a great communicator of philosophy--what do we pursue, what prices we pay, what do we worship, and how do we justify our choices? The last page of this book sums it up so deliciously!

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Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters - his fiancée Isabel whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliott Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. Maugham himself wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.