Este sitio utiliza cookies para ofrecer nuestros servicios, mejorar el rendimiento, análisis y (si no estás registrado) publicidad. Al usar LibraryThing reconoces que has leído y comprendido nuestros términos de servicio y política de privacidad. El uso del sitio y de los servicios está sujeto a estas políticas y términos.
During his life-time Somerset Maugham was unquestionably one of the most successful English authors of the twentieth century. He desired passionately to succeed and was always keenly conscious of the needs of the market, but he also desired to be praised by the best judges, and here his ambition was far less fully gratified. Neither the academics nor, with rare exceptions, the Bloomsbury group, which strongly influenced English literary journalism, deigned to regard him as a creative writer worth taking seriously. In this essay which succeeds John Brophy's study, No. 22 in the series, Anthony Curtis surveys Maugham's achievements as a novelist, short-story writer, dramatist, travel writer and literary critic. He notes as a general characteristic Maugham's powers as an observer; his highly developed visual sense and his keen awareness of surroundings and material objects. By comparison the appeal of the other senses makes little impact through Maugham's prose. A biographical sketch is interwoven with the critical appreciation and this makes the point that Maugham's discovery early in life of his homosexual nature may have influenced the stance which dominates his fiction, that of the detached and sardonic observer, the non-committal recorder of experience. Elsewhere the essay examines the contrast between the Maugham type of story, modelled on Maupassant, which moves in its author's words 'in an even line from its exposition to its close', with the more impressionistic and poetic variety of narrative art developed by Chekhov, to which Maugham himself pays tribute, as filling the reader 'with an overpowering sense of the mystery of life.' Summing up, Mr Curtis sees Maugham as a literary conservative, who believed in the power of linear narrative and descriptive realism at a time when greater writers were breaking with this tradition, and who succeeded in demonstrating what was worth preserving in it. Anthony Curtis, literary editor of the Financial Times, is a well-known journalist and critic. His series of talks on the contemporary novel and modern biography have been broadcast both on the world and UK services of BBC radio. His critical study, The Pattern of Maugham appeared at the time of the Maugham centenary in 1974, and was followed two years later by a pictorial biography of Maugham.… (más)
Anthony Curtis' book offers a wonderfully informative pictorial biography of the famed author and playwright Somerset Maugham. One outstanding feature of the book is its photographs, which trace Maugham's long life (1874 - 1965), from his birthplace (the British Embassy in Paris) to his final years in his beloved Villa Mauresque, on the French Riviera. Among the > 100 illustrations are photographs and painted portraits of Maugham himself from throughout his life, as well as his friends and compatriots (including Winston Churchill, HG Wells, Gerald Haxton, and Hugh Walpole, whom he used as the basis for a character in Cakes and Ale), as well as his wife Syrie and his daughter Liza. Likewise, we see the places that figured importantly in his life -- King's School of his boyhood, St. Thomas' Hospital, where he trained for a medical career, a street scene of Lambeth, the location for his first novel Liza of Lambeth), Tahiti, which he visited in preparation for writing The Moon and Sixpence), and publicity photographs and stage views of several of his plays as well as the movie made from his famous novel The Razor's Edge. The accompanying text traces Maugham's long life and career, and does so with accuracy, respect, and a level of detail quite sufficient for most readers. While several detailed biographies of Somerset Maugham are available (including Selina Hastings' recent The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham), Anthony Curtis' book offers something none of them can -- a superb, heavily- illustrated overview of Somerset Maugham's life and career in the context of the times in which he lived. ( )
During his life-time Somerset Maugham was unquestionably one of the most successful English authors of the twentieth century. He desired passionately to succeed and was always keenly conscious of the needs of the market, but he also desired to be praised by the best judges, and here his ambition was far less fully gratified. Neither the academics nor, with rare exceptions, the Bloomsbury group, which strongly influenced English literary journalism, deigned to regard him as a creative writer worth taking seriously. In this essay which succeeds John Brophy's study, No. 22 in the series, Anthony Curtis surveys Maugham's achievements as a novelist, short-story writer, dramatist, travel writer and literary critic. He notes as a general characteristic Maugham's powers as an observer; his highly developed visual sense and his keen awareness of surroundings and material objects. By comparison the appeal of the other senses makes little impact through Maugham's prose. A biographical sketch is interwoven with the critical appreciation and this makes the point that Maugham's discovery early in life of his homosexual nature may have influenced the stance which dominates his fiction, that of the detached and sardonic observer, the non-committal recorder of experience. Elsewhere the essay examines the contrast between the Maugham type of story, modelled on Maupassant, which moves in its author's words 'in an even line from its exposition to its close', with the more impressionistic and poetic variety of narrative art developed by Chekhov, to which Maugham himself pays tribute, as filling the reader 'with an overpowering sense of the mystery of life.' Summing up, Mr Curtis sees Maugham as a literary conservative, who believed in the power of linear narrative and descriptive realism at a time when greater writers were breaking with this tradition, and who succeeded in demonstrating what was worth preserving in it. Anthony Curtis, literary editor of the Financial Times, is a well-known journalist and critic. His series of talks on the contemporary novel and modern biography have been broadcast both on the world and UK services of BBC radio. His critical study, The Pattern of Maugham appeared at the time of the Maugham centenary in 1974, and was followed two years later by a pictorial biography of Maugham.
)
Google Books — Cargando...
(4.1)
2