Throwback Thursday: A Nod to Somerset Maugham

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 2010

I am currently reading The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham, one of the great writers of the last century. My first awareness of Maugham was in 1964 when our family moved to Bridgewater, New Jersey, in Somerset County. One day while I was in the car with my mom in Somerville, we drove very slowly down a street with a row of old houses with porches. She slowed to a near stop in front of one, and said, "Somerset Maugham used to sit on that porch." She said it in that tone of which even though I was but eleven I knew meant something significant.

Maugham was 91 when he passed away the following year at his home in France.

There's no question that Maugham was a gifted writer. Reading The Painted Veil, one becomes intensely aware of his ability to describe in microscopic detail the inner workings of the human heart. I also think he is gifted at putting into words many of the thoughts and feelings we often conceal because we're too considerate. The seamless manner in which inner workings of the heart intersect with plot in this story is impressive.

Maugham was one of the highest paid -- if not the highest paid -- writers of the 1930's. In that pre-television era he was able to connect with readers who agonized while waiting for the next segment in his serialized novels and short stories.

His father and grandfather were lawyers, and as an uncertain youth he spent some time studying for a medical career. This Wikipedia note helps one to not only understand Maugham's ability to portray the cholera epidemic in The Painted Veil, but perhaps gives insight into why the Anton Chekov, himself a doctor, was such a master story teller:

Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end, but Maugham himself felt quite the contrary. He was able to live in the lively city of London, to meet people of a "low" sort that he would never have met in one of the other professions, and to see them in a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the literary value of what he saw as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..."

Maugham carried the burden of being a homosexual at a time when it was less acceptable, a factor that complicated his life. He was not known to be a cheerful man. On one occasion while among the literati in Mexico City he departed for some other destination with his young partner. D.H. Lawrence famously remarked, "He wasn't happy here and he won't be happy there."

My two favorite Maugham short stories are The Verger and Mr. Know-All. Each has a payoff worth pursuing. The latter can be found in Volume I of The Complete Short Stories of Somerset Maugham. The Verger will be discovered in Volume IV.

Memories: Both a Comfort and a Curse

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories."--Somerset Maugham

While assembling quotes about writing, by writers, I stumbled upon the above quote by Mr. Maugham, which so resonated with me.

It somehow seems that as the years pass, experience offers us new perspectives on our past, like a receding landscape while ascending a mountain. These new views from a higher elevation reveal much that we missed when we were in "the thick of it" so to speak.

Life is an experience. For much of that experience we weren't as attentive as we might have been. "I was there but where was my head at?" we may be asking ourselves.

In reflecting on life we see highlights such as weddings, breakups, transitions, travel experiences, deaths. These major moments and events each left a mark on our inner narrative. But in truth, there were other events which seemed so insignificant at the time that we failed to notice them. Or we noticed but failed to give them their due respect.

My grandmother's poem Aftermath of a Stroke shows how the good times, remembered, bring us comfort in our later years. This may be why as people age and slowly distribute all the things accumulated over the course of  lifetime, the last thing they part with are photos of the children and grandchildren and those special people in their lives.

As I've aged, I seem to have become increasingly aware of that other class of memories that causes one to cringe, to be ashamed. Friendships destroyed by one's own careless stupidity, relationships marred by one's failure to see what was really happening, opportunities wasted by personal weakness. How could I have been so blind, so foolish. Worst of all, I have only myself to blame.

I accused, I misunderstood, I failed to see. I spoke when I should not have, and failed to speak when I should have....

Marcel Proust in Swann's Way wrote, "We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full."  Maybe this is why the more painful memories still surface from time to time. It may not be possible to go back and find resolution through asking forgiveness from those we've hurt, but we can choose to accept, even embrace, the pain it causes us, instead of denying it or trying to escape it. Fully experienced, it loses its sting as we forgive ourselves.

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I don't know if every generation has paced so much emphasis on "living in the now" or "in the moment" but it's certainly been an oft-repeated message over the course of my own lifetime. I doubt that anyone really does this fully, though. There are simply too many experiences and so much nourishment received as we relive them through our memories.

It was this kind of thinking that led me to write my short story The M Zone 25 years ago, which you can read here on Medium. The story also appears in my eBook Newmanesque.

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EndPoint: Each day is an opportunity to make new memories, for ourselves and for others. Wherever you be, live with your eyes open wide and make a difference.