The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
Doubleday & Co., 1944
The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
”What’s that big book on the table?”, she asked.
“That? Oh, that’s my Greek dictionary.”
“Your what?” she cried.
“It’s all right. It won’t bite you.”
“Are you learning Greek?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I thought I’d like to.”
He was looking at her with a smile in his eyes and she smiled back at him.
“Don’t you think you might tell me what you’ve been up to all this time you’ve been in Paris?”
“I’ve been reading a good deal. Eight or ten hours a day. I’ve attended lectures at the Sorbonne. I think I’ve read everything that’s important in French literature and I can read Latin, at least Latin prose, almost as fluently as I can read French. Of course Greek’s more difficult. But I have a very good teacher. Until you came here I used to go to him three evenings a week.”
“And what is this going to lead to?”
“The acquisition of knowledge,” he smiled.
I remember an acting teacher telling me once that drama was about conflict, goddamn it, and that no one ever wrote a play about someone working out a philosophy of life. That may be so, but W. Somerset Maugham wrote a book about it, and it’s a good one. In a smarter world, Larry Darrell would be a household name right along with Captain Ahab and Jay Gatsby.
Actually, Darrell has less in common with Ahab than with Mellville’s other creation, Bartleby, the clerk who always shouts “I am not part of your nutritious breakfast-I am a Free Man!!!” whenever the boss asks him to do something. Darrell goes from shocking the sensible businessmen of 1920s-era Chicago by sitting around their clubs reading good books instead of taking a job in an office, to shocking the socialites of Paris by living in a Spartan apartment and improving his mind instead of living decadently, to wandering in Weimar Germany as a laborer, to studying mysticism in India, and back to Paris and America. Along the way, he comes to peace with himself, and that’s most of what happens.
A lesser writer than Maugham would have given Darrell a supporting cast of foils representing excessive materialism, jingoistic nationalism, church hypocrisy, etc., all of whom would condemn Darrell and end up being exposed as unhappy losers and failures in the end. That kind of story has been told dozens of times. Instead, most of the characters who make other choices with their lives turn out more or less content. The closest character to an earnest object lesson, the social climbing Elliott who finds himself snubbed in old age when he can no longer give the fashionable parties-it seemed to me that he lives the life he wanted right up to the end, and with the help of the narrator (Maugham appearing as himself), has the last laugh on his enemies from beyond the grave. The primary love interest, Isabel, despite one unforgivable action late in the novel, is presented as basically a good sort who whose values are just too different from Darrell’s to make theirs a relationship that would work out. Another friend, Gray, devotes himself to a career which, though it has its ups and downs, is ultimately fulfilling, while the tragic Sophie is presented as closer to Darrell in “getting it” than any other supporting character. Maugham, commenting with detached bemusement, has some affection for them all and seems to give the message that any choice can be the right one, as long as one is true to oneself.
The Razor’s Edge is a pretty short, moderately paced novel that can be read in an evening or two and that gives the reader a good deal to think about on a couple of levels. High recommendations.
Doubleday & Co., 1944
The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
”What’s that big book on the table?”, she asked.
“That? Oh, that’s my Greek dictionary.”
“Your what?” she cried.
“It’s all right. It won’t bite you.”
“Are you learning Greek?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I thought I’d like to.”
He was looking at her with a smile in his eyes and she smiled back at him.
“Don’t you think you might tell me what you’ve been up to all this time you’ve been in Paris?”
“I’ve been reading a good deal. Eight or ten hours a day. I’ve attended lectures at the Sorbonne. I think I’ve read everything that’s important in French literature and I can read Latin, at least Latin prose, almost as fluently as I can read French. Of course Greek’s more difficult. But I have a very good teacher. Until you came here I used to go to him three evenings a week.”
“And what is this going to lead to?”
“The acquisition of knowledge,” he smiled.
I remember an acting teacher telling me once that drama was about conflict, goddamn it, and that no one ever wrote a play about someone working out a philosophy of life. That may be so, but W. Somerset Maugham wrote a book about it, and it’s a good one. In a smarter world, Larry Darrell would be a household name right along with Captain Ahab and Jay Gatsby.
Actually, Darrell has less in common with Ahab than with Mellville’s other creation, Bartleby, the clerk who always shouts “I am not part of your nutritious breakfast-I am a Free Man!!!” whenever the boss asks him to do something. Darrell goes from shocking the sensible businessmen of 1920s-era Chicago by sitting around their clubs reading good books instead of taking a job in an office, to shocking the socialites of Paris by living in a Spartan apartment and improving his mind instead of living decadently, to wandering in Weimar Germany as a laborer, to studying mysticism in India, and back to Paris and America. Along the way, he comes to peace with himself, and that’s most of what happens.
A lesser writer than Maugham would have given Darrell a supporting cast of foils representing excessive materialism, jingoistic nationalism, church hypocrisy, etc., all of whom would condemn Darrell and end up being exposed as unhappy losers and failures in the end. That kind of story has been told dozens of times. Instead, most of the characters who make other choices with their lives turn out more or less content. The closest character to an earnest object lesson, the social climbing Elliott who finds himself snubbed in old age when he can no longer give the fashionable parties-it seemed to me that he lives the life he wanted right up to the end, and with the help of the narrator (Maugham appearing as himself), has the last laugh on his enemies from beyond the grave. The primary love interest, Isabel, despite one unforgivable action late in the novel, is presented as basically a good sort who whose values are just too different from Darrell’s to make theirs a relationship that would work out. Another friend, Gray, devotes himself to a career which, though it has its ups and downs, is ultimately fulfilling, while the tragic Sophie is presented as closer to Darrell in “getting it” than any other supporting character. Maugham, commenting with detached bemusement, has some affection for them all and seems to give the message that any choice can be the right one, as long as one is true to oneself.
The Razor’s Edge is a pretty short, moderately paced novel that can be read in an evening or two and that gives the reader a good deal to think about on a couple of levels. High recommendations.