Tag Archives: Somerset Maugham

by harrisrh | February 19, 2019 · 9:44 am

Poverty in Literature

Someone asked me recently what I do for a living. I explained that I work across a broad range of areas connected to the craft of writing, from translation, blogging, and social media involvement to writing (fiction & nonfiction), editing and proofreading.

“You must be pretty busy,” the gentleman remarked. “And making good money!”

I thought about this for a moment, then responded, “Think of my line of work as similar to that of a professional athlete or a farmer: I sow in some seasons, reap in others, and then “take five,” though not usually by choice.

My low season is roughly December to March, making me, I suppose, closest in work schedule to a baseball player (except as a freelancer I don’t get paid in my time off, no insurance, no benefits, etc.).

That’s why I’ve been thinking a lot about harsh times, poverty, and the like these days. Of course it doesn’t help that I live in the Great White North. As Sarah McLachlan so poetically sings in “Full of Grace“:

The winter here’s cold, and bitter.
It’s chilled us to the bone.
We haven’t seen the sun for weeks,
Too long, too far from home.
I feel just like I’m sinking,
and I claw for solid ground.
I’m pulled down by the undertow.
I never thought I could feel so low.
Oh, darkness, I feel like letting go.

Even in a country like Canada, which has a very generous social safety net, nearly five million of us live in poverty, or one in seven individuals, according to Canada Without Poverty. Another alarming statistic by the same group says that “over the past 25 years, Canada’s population has increased by 30% and yet annual national investment in housing has decreased by 46%.”

This necessarily begs the question, which Kim Redigan has addressed, “Why Do We Hate the Poor?”

On that sunshiny note! This got me thinking about poverty as it’s portrayed in fiction and nonfiction. After an extensive search through Goodreads’ “shelved as poverty” pages, I came up with the following list of must-reads. Again, just my opinion…

MUST-READS (FICTION): All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr), A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams), A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth), The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga), The Good Earth (Pearl Buck), The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver), Of Human Bondage (Somerset Maugham), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz), The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)

MUST-READS (NONFICTION): The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou), No Logo (Naomi Klein), Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt), Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, (Jared Diamond), Infidel (Ayaan Hirsi Ali)

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Tagged as "Full of Grace", "Why Do We Hate the Poor?", A Streetcar Named Desire, A Suitable Boy, All the Light We Cannot See, Angela's Ashes, anthony doerr, Aravind Adiga, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Barbara Kingsolver, Canada Without Poverty, Frank McCourt, Guns Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Infidel (book), Jared Diamond, Jeannette Walls, Junot Díaz, Maya Angelou, Naomi Klein, No Logo, Of Human Bondage, pearl buck, poverty, poverty in Canada, poverty in literature, Sarah McLachlan, seasonal workers, Somerset Maugham, tennessee williams, The Bluest Eye, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Glass Castle, the good earth, The Poisonwood Bible, The White Tiger, Toni Morrison, Vikram Seth

by harrisrh | February 10, 2019 · 10:10 am

A Little Heartbreak, A Dose of Literary Reality

Image result for lee child past tense

I’m hoping this was just a speed bump on the road called Jack Reacher.

I just finished Lee Child’s latest addition to the Jack Reacher series, Past Tense, and was…What’s the word…Saddened? Untitillated? Underwhelmed?

JR is once again the middle of Nowhere, USA. He’s kinda/sorta looking for his father’s birthplace. He gets into a few fights. He wins them all handily. The end.

Of the roughly 3,454 books I’ve read by Mr. Child, this was the first time I felt let down, something many of us have experienced at one time or another with authors/artists we love. We are, after all, human. No artist can remain at the top of their A game forever (although a solid argument could be made for Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, Mr. Picasso’s baptismal name).

I remember the first time this happened to me as a reader of fiction, feeling somewhat crestfallen, that is. I fell in love with Tolstoy at a young age, starting with War and Peace, moving onto Anna Karenina (which his old comrade Dostoyevsky called “the greatest love story ever written”), and culminating in his last novel, Resurrection, in 1899, which had a great premise but ultimately fell flat.

Then it happened with Murakami Haruki. I loved A Wild Sheep Chase. What followed (in English translation) was Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Norwegian Wood, Dance Dance Dance, South of the Border, West of the Sun, and then his opus, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. From there, things went south for me (but not west of the sun), including Murakami’s choice for his new translator. It began with Sputnik Sweetheart and Kafka on the Shore, and then — contrary to what some believe — 1Q84.

Alternatively, there are some “red wine” authors that seem to get better with age, like Ayn Rand (I know, I know…This will be controversial with certain readers), who went from We the Living (amazing, with a terrific ending) to The Fountainhead (profound, nearly led to a complete nuclear meltdown for Ms. Rand) to her true opus, Atlas Shrugged (which had a profound influence on philosophy, politics and social movements). The same could be said of Somerset Maugham, who started relatively early with Of Human Bondage, then The Moon and Sixpence and then, at the tail end of his career as a novelist, his opus, The Razor’s Edge.

Finally, there are the yo-yos of the literary world. Take Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He broke out to wild acclaim in 1846 with a novella called Poor Folk, and didn’t get 15 minutes of fame; he got, quite literally, 15 days of being what Guardian contributor Daniel Kalder called a “cause celebre.” It would be 20 years (of being pissed on and heckled) until Fedya D regained his rightful place as a master of fiction after the release of Crime and Punishment in 1866. His last novel, seen by many to be his opus, was The Brothers Karamazov.

As a final note, and as it pertains to the genesis of this post, 61 Hours and Worth Dying For are my two favourite Reacher novels to date.

Quote of the Day

“The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.”

Gore Vidal

I’m having one of those “I-told-you-so” days, so thought this Quote of the Day was particularly apropos. It all started when I went to the post office to return some merchandise the S.O. bought a couple of weeks ago after being assured in an online ad (i.e. scam) that the beauty products were FREE! FREE! FREE! as long as you filled out a short survey (i.e. you provided your phone number, email and mailing address).

To which I replied, “Nothing in this world is free.”

To which the S.O. replied, “No, no, no. This time it really is free. I swear.”

To which I so wittily and handily replied, “Indeed, you do have a potty mouth, but it doesn’t change the price of tea in China, nor does it make these things free.”

After numerous phone calls to a “No Caller ID” with a P.O. Box as an address, and of course the requisite $30 in postage, the matter is now settled.

I’ll shorten the above witticism to three words: Told ya so.

But back to Gore Vidal, one of those rare – like, really rare – writers that intimidated fellow authors, pundits, critics and politicians back in his day because of his pedigree, breadth of knowledge, Transatlantic accent (ha ha ha), and overall confidence (i.e. smugness) that was perpetuated as much by myth as it was by a shocking understanding of what appeared at times to be everything and everyone. If you’ve ever read Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Gore Vidal was pretty much the real-life version of Elliott Templeton.

Personally, my favourite book by Mr. Vidal was The Golden Age, a novel that offers readers the same kind of inside look into a fascinating period of world history/World War II as Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead; with the former, we’re taken inside the White House and the inner sanctum of FDR; in the case of the latter, we have a firsthand look into how generals plotted the insanely complicated island-hopping battles against the Japanese during the Pacific Campaign.

If you have yet to read anything by Gore Vidal, there’s a ton of material online, from essays and articles to brilliant one-liners and general observances, so go and check him out. Then I can tell you, I told you so!

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Tagged as "The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.", Elliott Templeton (fictional character), Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Quote of the Day, Somerset Maugham, The Golden Age, The Naked and the Dead, The Razor's Edge