Talented, but flawed | The Moon and Sixpence (Dover Value Editions)

An easy bit of second-tier literature to devour... | The Moon and Sixpence (Dover Value Editions) | W. Somerset Maugham

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	• The Moon and Sixpence (Dover Value Editions) W. Somerset Maugham Dover Publications, 2006 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 73 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Artist as Stereotype

There is a common stereotype in the arts of the artist as somehow divorced from the realities of life. Such an artist is misogynistic, hermetic, dispassionate, and generally unable to relate to his fellow man even as he creates monuments of art that suggest otherwise. In THE MOON AND SIXPENCE, Somerset Maugham tells the tale of Charles Strickland, an Englishman, who at age forty seems thoroughly conventional and unremarkable. He is a stockbroker, married, with two children, and reasonably affluent. Then one day, out of the blue, he tells his wife that he is leaving her. He gives no reason and off he goes. His wife is sure there is another woman who has twisted his reason, so she asks the narrator to hunt her husband down and demand the truth. This the narrator does. Strickland tells him that there is no woman. Instead, he left his wife to be free to paint. The narrator is astounded and he cannot believe that any rational man would use painting as a pretext for the end of a marriage. Most readers comment on the surface callousness of Strickland, a man who shows no concern for the fate of his family. Indeed, Strickland goes to great lengths to articulate this lack of concern, the result of which is to convince both narrator and reader that Strickland is worse than a cad and a bounder. The reality is less prosaic. Strickland is neither. Maugham has created a two dimensional portrait of a walking cliche. If such a person like Strickland has ever trod the earth and left his family in dire straits for the reason given, then he is surely the only one to have done so. Maugham was careful to portray a man who was clearly callous, insensitive, and totally self-centered, but evil? Certainly not. Strickland is a man consumed with a Vision. Everything else in life, including his own, is subservient to his goal of creating beauty from the sordidness of the world. It does not even matter to him if no one else sees his paintings. He sees them, and that is all that matters. Other readers view the book in the context of sociology. Does Strickland violate the implied social contract that mature men establish between themselves and family and friends? If any contract exists, it is of the internal sort, between one who works to live and one who lives to work. In the former case, Strickland often cares not a fig about keeping his body together. In the latter, his life has no meaning except to sanctify his work. There is at least one other character in the novel who can see this even if the narrator cannot. Dirk Stroeve, an expatriat Englishman, is a total fool and incompetent in life. He dabbles in painting all the while realizing that he has no talent with brush or easel. He opens his door to welcome a homeless Strickland, who promptly repays him by carrying on an affair with Dirk's wife. But even after this, Dirk cannot hold a grudge for he recognizes that Strickland's genius transcends such mere mortal foilbles as jealousy. If Strickland is willing to lay his life on the line for his art, then clods like Dirk must be willing to do no less. Later in the novel, a world full of art lovers slowly realize that genius is a gift from the gods that demands that the artist-genius must pay a high price for a fame that is as often rejected as sought. In THE MOON AND SIXPENCE, Maugham allows his readers to glimpse that behind the mask of genius lies a soul in torment that does not even recognize that it is in torment. This, then, is the paradox of the book.

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Talented, but flawed

This story is set at some time around the turn of the twentieth century, before World War 1. The story opens in London, England. The unnamed narrator is a young man who has just written his first successful novel. Gingerly negotiating his way around the `literati' of England he attends a party at which he meets Mrs. Strickland. She is not herself an author but has a deep interest in meeting talented people. She gives parties at her house where food and drink is laid on, and where various members of the world of the arts and literature are invited. Eventually the narrator is invited to dinner at Mrs. Strickland's, though on arriving he finds that it is not a literary function, but a small private affair. It is here that the narrator meets for the first time Mr. Charles Strickland, who's life-story this book follows. Charles Strickland strikes the narrator as "... just a good, dull, honest, plain man." It is therefore with some surprise that the narrators later hears that Mr. Strickland has suddenly abandoned his wife and gone to Paris, apparently in the company of a young woman who worked at a tea-shop in the city. The narrator feels with some excitement that he has just entered the exciting, unseemly world of his own novel. The narrator's life-path crosses several time with that of Charles Strickland. Gradually as the story progresses we come to see Strickland as a markedly talented, yet severely flawed man.

This novel, first published in 1919, "... confirmed Maugham's reputation as a novelist and is probably his best-known book." This being said it should be noted that the book has moments of greatness, but is also partly flawed.

The plot is based on the life of the `post-impressionist' painter Paul Gauguin. It is, however, primarily a fiction and varies from that artist's real biography. Gauguin was for example French, not English. The points of similarity include:

An uneventful first half of life, with a career as a stockbroker,
A sudden break with his family,
Lack of recognition from the contemporary critics and general public,
Recognition of talent from some fellow painters,
Living in poverty,
A biting, sardonic personality,
Leaving Europe to live `close to nature' in Tahiti,
A non-representational art style in which, for example, color represented the emotions.

Rather interestingly Strickland physically resembles Vincent van Gogh, with his red hair and beard. Van Gogh was rather a different man to Strickland, though he too painted non-representationally, using color to express emotion. Strickland, like van Gogh spent a short time at an art academy where his efforts were viewed quite askance. Also like van Gogh, Strickland had an unseemly affair that resulted in the painting of a famous reclining nude.

The book is roughly divided into three even sections. The first section covers Strickland's unexpected departure to Paris. Here Maugham quite competently sets the scene, introducing us to Strickland's personality. The second section covers life in Paris, concentrating on the relationship with the Strove family. This part of the story is the most conventional segment and is rather uninteresting, at least plot wise. I was reminded of Emily Bronte's and her sister Charlotte Bronte's , though those books are much more successful than Maugham's. The third section revolves around the trip to Tahiti and it is here that the book truly shines. There seems to be something about the idea of `getting back to nature' that appeals to the psyche of modern man.

It should be noted that Maugham's narrator freely admits his own lack of knowledge of human nature and the motivations of the people he meets. The all-knowing narrator, so standard in many books, is gone, and instead we have am essentially modern device. The reader himself must decide what he believes about particular people. How much, we ask, can we know anyone other than ourselves?

Of course the novel has the theme of the genius. We are shows how unconscious forces drive such people, and how all else falls to the wayside on the road to the chosen goal. The novel also explores the theme of the artificiality of `civilized' society, and the retreat to a more `real' nature. This idea goes back at least as far as the Eighteenth Century Romantics, though it should be noted that Maugham has his own spin on the topic. Nature, for example, is not always the `pleasant mother' of the Romantics.

Strickland is adequately drawn as a terse, abrasive man with a monomania for his art. His name suggests the `strict land' he has chosen to dwell in, where everything is rejected except his calling. His name also perhaps suggests "strychnine' as he is poison to just about all who he meets. After his initial `conversion' to the path of art Strickland there is at first some humor arising from his candor about his rejection of social norms. Soon, however, a monomaniac becomes predictably dull, and Maugham has achieved the unusual task of writing about a central character by highlighting the people around him. The second section accents the Stroves, particularly Dirk, a good-natured man with perhaps more heart than sense. Interestingly Dirk may be Maugham's comment on the Romantics. The third section reveals to us a whole procession of characters, many of them eccentric, who encountered Strickland in various situations. These portraits greatly enhance the novel.

All in all this is certainly not a bad book, but not a great one either. The second section, as I have noted, mars the book to some degree. Maugham made a fact-finding trip to Tahiti and the details and highlights this journey seems to have given him greatly enriched that part of the book.

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An easy bit of second-tier literature to devour...

The Moon and Sixpence is a short, intelligent, well-written, sophisticated, episodic piece of second-class literature written by a first-class (though not genius-level) writer.

It is not featured on the MLA's list of the hundred best novels of the 20th century, and I can see why--withal its superiority to inferior works that ARE on the list.

Maugham has a very pleasing (though not dumbed-down) style, which makes for swift and pleasurable reading. This book is not as good as The Razor's Edge or Of Human Bondage, but it is not something one would be ashamed to have on the resume either. It's a book that can be read in a day, and which probably won't change your life...but it should enhance you nonetheless.

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Maugham Does It Again!

After having read `The Moon and Sixpence,' my faith in Somerset's writing as intelligent writing for the masses, remains unshaken. The pleasing fluidity that is a salient characteristic of his prose is omnipresent here as well, making this as fast a read as one of John Grisham's earlier works. Somerset is one of those writers who could expound on fluff and yet make a charming discourse out of it. And yet, while reading his candidly autobiographical `The Summing Up,' he almost convinces you that he is an untalented, hardworking writer who has to labor at his writing, with his one shortcoming being that he could never be as fluent as the writers he idolized - I might say that his one shortcoming seems to have been unbecoming modesty.

Coming to the book itself, it is loosely based on the life and work of Paul Gauguin. One of the things I found rather interesting about this narrative is how Somerset decided to name his protagonist Strickland, rather than just Paul Gauguin. While I do agree that Somerset did not have enough first-hand material to call his account a true-to-life account, he had more than his share of literary license to fall back upon to make it past that. I wonder if it was his artistic integrity or a fear of some repercussion from Gauguin's surviving family members that caused him to take this decision (since most of what Somerset had to relate about Strickland was less than flattering, and given the chameleon like nature of Strickland's wife, such an expectation might not be unfounded). Either way, he did not adopt the same style of writing as Irving Stone did in "Lust For Life."

The one lasting impression I came away with was the constant reminder from Somerset that though he admitted Strickland's genius, and admired his labor for his art, he certainly did not like him, or respect him as a human being, which is a juxtaposition of emotions that I don't come across normally in a book that is meant to be biographical in nature.

Another pleasing aspect about the book was the plenitude of quotable quotes issuing forth from Somerset's pen, some of them bordering on the Wildean, in my opinion. I remember one of them being to the effect that a woman is ready to forgive a man for the harm he has done her, but is never willing to forgive a man for the sacrifices he makes for her - the apparent irony of that really tickled me for a while, although, I must say, I have not had that much of an occasion to test the verity of that statement =)

I.

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An uncompromising and self-destructive deserts his wife, family, business, and civilization for his art. Shedding harsh light on an artist's ego, Maugham reveals the lengths to which one man will go to focus on his art. Written in 1919, this unforgettable story is timeless in its appeal.