The Summing Up by William Somerset MaughamThis is one of the best books I have read, written by one of the top five authors in my personal favorite list. It is after all The Summing Up- a conclusion penned at the end of a full life, an analysis of the most important books and authors, a look at religion and philosophy. It is a mesmerizing read.It is an extraordinary combination of autobiography, literary criticism, advice for the young at heart and much more. This is a wise, old man who has reached an astonishing level of understanding, sharing with his readers perspectives on a wide range of subjects, authors, plays and novelsWe learn about the time spent in Seville, love affairs, albeit without too much detail and learning languages. Maugham learnt Russian and read Chekhov, but came to the conclusion that learning more languages is not worth his time:-tI met polyglots and they did not impress me as extremely smartOn Shaw and Ibsen, Maugham has remarked that they were lucky to have arrived at the right moment.Shaw had the chance of a young generation rebelling against severe and excessive conservatism. George Bernard Shaw had wit, talent and produced clever comedies that soon became a hit with the public.On Ibsen Somerset Maugham is harsh. Women had had an inferior, unequal position and that was changing exactly when Ibsen came about. Maugham dismisses the plots of the Norwegian’s plays in a few words:-“we can almost say that all the plays of the Norwegian have the same scenario- a stranger comes into a stuffy room and opens the windows shaking all the others in the room as he does so. It all ends tragically” this is not an exact quote.Advice:-tRead classic Literature, not just the latest- Virginia Wolf-tAn author should have more than one or two great booksHere I beg to differ- yes, it is great to have an important body of work, but one good book is fine with me. I wish God gave me the ability to write that (short, tiny- please, please) book.Maupassant had an influence on Maugham, especially on the earlier work, which Maugham explains: he feels that some of the early works have been rather bad, but there have been some circumstances, like some money he felt he needed for a romantic interest, which by the time the money came had been already gone. Instead, he went with that money to Egypt.Maugham read Maupassant and even took out pages; the word might be stole- from the works of the French writer whom he esteems to have been better than many English writers of that time.Maupassant took advice from Flaubert and the latter prevented the former from trying to publish anything for a few years. Maugham feels that was a great advantage and he wished he had such a mentor as Flaubert.Somerset Maugham writes that no writer wishes to live in squalor. If that happens it is not by choice and it is most unfortunate, for the writer is better off with servants and living a good life.Maupassant was lucky to have a job which allowed him to have both money and time to write. Sometime in the 1920s the young writers have made a great progress, in the Maugham’s view, by becoming more mature and accomplished much faster than when Maugham was making his first literary attempts.Writers take their inspiration from real life. Stendhal is mentioned and Julien Sorel. Maugham commends Stendhal for three quarters of the book that are excellent. But towards the end and the finale included become incredible because Stendhal is going back to the real story that had inspired him, that of a young man who kills his lover and is then executed.Some writers keep notes on the real people that have inspired their characters, but the real persons who are the source of such inspiration hate it when the character is not perfect. Friends mock each other on the flaws discovered in a novel that seems to present one individual or another.Somerset Maugham writes about the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, which at point he has selected as a very attractive system of thought. But Maugham has come to understand that Russell is like the architect who convinces you to build a house of brick which is the best material, but after a while says that the stone will be best and then again, he affirms that the house made of concrete would be the best possible solution, and in the meantime you have no roof over your head. The kind of philosophy a man adopts depends on the kind of man he isMaugham is writing also about a story that I had heard before, which is traced to Anatole France: a king wants his wise scholars to gather the books that contain the most important thoughts of humanity. They come with a number of camels which carry 5,000 books that have this important content. The king is a busy leader, who has to rule the country and so says that there are too many books, we need less. The wise men get to work and come back after a time with 500 books, but this is still too much, for a man busy with affairs of state, so they need to narrow it down further. After some years, they come back with 50 books and needless to say, with age and all, it is still too much. They need to get all of this in one book, because the king is old now. When they came back he is dying.This metaphor that Maugham uses to point out that he was looking for a philosophical system that will satisfy him, but it was hard work.Religion- Maugham explains the experience he had with religion and religious people, whom he could meet first hand. He had an uncle who was a clergyman and was visited by others in this profession who have proved to Somerset Maugham that very often, priests teach one thing and do the other. When he gave up on religion, Maugham felt somewhat liberated and exhilarated, albeit he was still afraid of the devilMaugham had exceptional views on philosophy, religion and almost anything else. And he is open to suggestions and ideas coming from other people.His views on God are sensible:-tI will not believe in a God who is less tolerant than I am. There is this strange feature of a God who throws his wrath around and insists on being loved and worshipped which Maugham criticized and I cannot agree more with his logic-tThen he mentions a gentleman who used to pray with his family, but would strike out the passages praising God ostensibly. This friend of the writer said that it is very ungentlemanly to insist on such lavish praise and that God surely wouldn’t like itIndeed, there are some aspects that Maugham reveals that appear to have so much common sense and yet they are ignored and make God seem vain, jealous and sometimes even mean- with all that insistence on exaggerated praise, humble attitude towards a Being that comes out as insecure, unsure of Himself and not Godly at all, if we take these teachings and analyze them.
Ever since I read "Of Human Bondage" a few years ago I've always felt the urge to revisit this writer every so often, picking up a couple of his books and devouring them. Some have been excellent, some not so. In "The Summing Up", a non-fiction book detailing Maugham's own personal philosophy, I thought I'd enjoy it far more than I did. I assumed because the blurb says that he looks back at his work that this would entail detailed views on the background of each book, the circumstances in which it was written, what the aim was, the reception, and now looking back X years later what the author thinks about them. In part his is true, a couple of books are singled out, but their sections are few and far between and much too short for my liking. Instead there are lengthy and quite tedious sections on subjects such as the theatre world and the role of the theatre director, or philosophy as a subject and the practitioners of it. He writes at length on God and religion which, despite concluding in favour of atheism to which view I subscribe, I found quite dull as it contained many arguments I've heard and read from various sources over the years. His views on philosophy are also quite tedious and amateurish. And the lengthy treatise on the theatre world held no interest for me whatsoever. It's a world that's quite petty and dull behind the scenes, his views being out-dated today. For a book just over 300 pages, it's quite unsubstantial in it's contents. The tone of the book is very chatty and Maugham writes clearly and eloquently about whatever's on his mind, but the book has no structure and no clear path to the topics. Maugham rambles and goes wherever his mind is on the day he's writing. This approach, to me, felt very lazy and haphazard as quite often Maugham isn't saying anything particularly interesting and for a man who lived as interesting a life as he did, it's a shame he forgoes a lot of it to tell you what he thought about the work of Matthew Arnold or Hazlitt. This could have been a great book if it had been more focused and, for a fan like me, centred around the work he produced, thus being a real summing up of his massive body of literature. Instead it felt like a missed opportunity and, despite the occasional gem found here and there, was overall a very boring book that I was glad to set down once I'd finished it. Maugham is an excellent writer but a biography written by someone else is the best way to go if you're looking for views on his life and work. "The Summing Up" is unfortunately quite sparse in both departments and ends up being a very dry read.
What do You think about The Summing Up (1992)?
chuckle-inducing passage from Maugham's description of his grandfather: "An old solicitor, whom I knew when I was a boy, told me that as an articled clerk he was once invited to dine with my grandfather. My grandfather carved the beef, and then a servant handed him a dish of potatoes baked in their skins. There are few things better to eat than a potato in its skin, ... but apparently my grandfather did not think so. He rose in his chair at the head of the table and took the potatoes out of the dish one by one and threw one at each picture on the walls. Then without a word he sat down again and went on with his dinner. I asked my friend what effect this behaviour had on the rest of the company. He told me that no one took any notice." p.13
—Harold
I must write as though I were a person of importance; and indeed, I am- to myself.-W. Somerset Maugham(1874-1965)The Summing Up (1938) is an introspective attempt at bringing together Maugham's thoughts on subjects that had primarily interested him through the course of his life- ideas on literature, art, religion, ethics, and philosophy- in a conclusive, coherent manner. Maugham began by stating that this book was neither intended as an autobiography nor a book of recollections. In fact, he clearly noted that certain aspects of his life would remain unmentioned, private; and provided no license for any biographies in his lifetime. He felt that to give them weight would detract from the important life points upon which he wished to focus.He was always bothered by setting down his thoughts in the first person, considering that he was more comfortable speaking through the characters in his novels."Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."Mixing fact and fiction, Maugham's characters and themes were "created" from many of his acquaintances and experiences. Not one to be enamored of celebrity or fashionably co-mingling with the famous, he felt that "the prestige you require by being able to tell your friends that you know famous people proves only that you are yourself of small account." Maugham was more interested in the socially obscure, "since they have never been in the public eye, it has never occurred to them that they have anything to conceal. They display their oddities because it has never struck them that they are odd." To him, the less distinctive group proved a writer's more fertile ground.Maugham shared his memories of his childhood with brevity (much more of it was written in Of Human Bondage), his natural writing instinct and developing flair for writing easy dialogue. He acknowledged strong literary influences by writers such as De Maupassant, Dryden, Voltaire, Swift, among others.Of particular interest to me, and which left an indelible impression, was the attention he gave to explaining his philosophy, for this was the backbone of all Maugham's works. Of the worthiness of his writing (or writing in general), he contemplated that "it is hard not to ask oneself whether it is anything but futility to write plays and stories and novels..when men in millions all living on the border-line of starvation, when freedom in great parts of the inhabited globe is dying or dead, when a terrible war has been succeeded by years during which happiness has been out of the reach of the great mass of the human race, when men are distraught because they can see no value in life and the hopes that had enabled them for so many centuries to support its misery seem illusory." He would later reflect that he felt born to such a purpose: "some of us are so made that there is nothing else we can do. We do not write because we want to; we write because we must."With confidence in his moral standards, religious and agnostic views, of human behavior- humanity's bad vs good attributes, of purpose in life, Maugham's words ran fluent with clear meaning, in spite of the obvious constraints he exercised to ink the personal convictions he strongly held."It may be that in goodness we may see , not a reason for life nor an explanation of it, but an extenuation. In this indifferent universe, with its inevitable evils that surround us from the cradle to the grave, it may serve not as a challenge or a reply, but as an affirmation of our own independence."The Summing Up is a marvelous (albeit miniature) self-portrait , colored boldly with feelings and opinions. I felt it was too short to do justice to an author successfully accomplished in so many literary forms (novel, short story, personal narrative, literary and art criticism, drama, book travel, essay). Maugham ended the book with a quote by Fray Luis de Leon: "the beauty of life is nothing but this, that each should act in conformity with his nature and his business."As a Maugham fan, I do feel that he might have undeservedly sold himself short in The Summing Up of his life. It is, however, a great starting point to gain insight into the philosophy that shaped such novels as the Razor's Edge, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale, The Moon and Sixpence.********Extensive biographies have been published without Maugham's stylized eloquent input( Maugham by Ted Morgan,1980; and The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography by Selina Hastings, 2010) - posthumously, and authorized through his estate, after some legal foot-work.
—Nicole~
I am hooked on SM stuff. I have been reading his short stories, plays, novellas...this was much more an intellectual essay about his ideas than an autobiography about his life. I enjoyed his reflections about God and felt sad about his frustrations in love so succinctly explained. It is somewhat dissatisfying to finish the autobiography feeling I don't know that many new things about the facts of his life. What shines through is his spirit, his way of approaching life, not expecting much of anyone but having a tender sense of humor about everything and a kind, non judgmental approach to people's lives.
—Cris
