itEVIEW OF BOOKS
George Axelrod on the moon and two and a half new pence
The Pattern of Maugham Anthony Curtis (Hamish Hamilton £3.50) If I were teaching a course in creative writing' (that there is something called 'creative writing ' and that. it is possible for it to be taught are concepts widely-held in America and have resulted in such phenomena as 'The Famous Writers' School", which promises, by means of a series of printed lessons sent through the post, to turn anyone literate enough to siga his name at the bottom of a £350 cheque into a best-Selling author) I could think of only one more inspirational guide and textbook for my eager students than The Pattern of Maugham by Anthony Curtis; and that, of course, would be the novel Cakes and .4Ie by the Master himself.
l'or some reason my opening paragraph seems (even to me, upon re-reading it) like a bit of a put-down. It's certainly not meant to be. My admiration for the work of Somerset Maugham is unbounded. Not, perhaps, so unbounded as Mr Curtis's. But pretty unbounded. And, while my admiration for Mr Curtis's book does indeed have some very definite bounds, it (the admiration) is also very, very real.
Let us assume for the moment, however, that I, clutching tensely my two chosen volumes, am about to address my class: several hundred thousand Cleveland housewives and an equal number of sloe-eyed, but bearded, young garage attendants — potential creative writers' all! We would begin, as indicated, with a study of Cakes And Ale which, in addition to .being Maugham's best novel, and being vastly entertaining and impeccably constructed, is also a celebration of literary life' of such incredible glamour as to cause both me and my students to positively drool with envy, let the split-infinitives fall where they may! Look, if Cakes And Ale don't turn 'em on to wanting to be best-selling, hotshot writers, then I don't know what will.
I lie. Yes; I do. My second choice. But hold a moment longer.
" Listen, children," I say, "lust remember that being the sort of writer-as-international-celebrity-figure that our hero Uncle Willie was ain't all cakes and ale or "gin and tonic" (as some smart-ass once called it in a book in which he attempted to make fun of The Master), or even just villas at St Jean Cap Ferrat, or lunches at the Ritz, or sailing off to Samoa on a trade-wind of royalties. No sir! You see, children, there's a whole other side to it. I hate to break this to you at your tender age, and you not even got a letter to the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer published i Founded in Westport, Connecticut in 1952 as an adjunct to the already-flourishing 'Famous Artists* School', which offered mail-order courses in 'Oil-Painting', 'Cartooning and • Basic uesign . / otter this intormadon as a parody example of the mildly irritating and frequently pointless footnotes which mar the otherwise useful and interesting work that I am attempting to review. yet, but there's a lot of people around who, well, kinda resent it when a writer gets to be all that rich and famous and lives that well and sells all that many copies and they make films of his short stories with real live moving pictures of himself (at God knows how much money an hour!) just sitting there opening the pages of one of his books at the start of each film and him having genuine oil-paintings by people like Gaugin that belong in museums
hanging right there on the t
wall of his wriing-room. No, indeed! They , don't care for it at all! In fact, certain people, like critics and socially-conscious journalists and even some less successful fellow-writers start whispering things like, story-teller! and popular entertainer! and even strange, dirty-sounding foreign words like kitsch! about wonderful books like the one we've been studying all semester. Then when everything is at its blackest — thank heavens! — there comes alone a book by Mr Anthony Curtis that tells it like it was. Okay, class, if you don't mind, we will now slip out of our corn-porn American accent and address ourselves to the second volume of our two-volume course."
I believe I said, in my one and only footnote, that Mr Curtis's book is a useful one. And I think that is the word I meant to use. It is (thank God!) unpretentious. While Mr Maugham's pattern is possibly ever-soslightly more complex than Mr Curtis imagines, his own pattern is clear, almost always interesting, and certainly (once again) useful. What Mr Curtis has done, with great care and in enormous detail, is to fill in the
ever-changing emotional, social, literary and historic climates in which Maugham's vast body of work was written.
In a review that was scheduled to appear in these pages but has been delayed because of a possible libel action, I might well have remarked the curious fact that the author, Douglas Day, was a considerably better writer than his subject, Malcolm Lowry. This is not the case here. Mr Curtis is not even a very good writer. He is much given to clich6 (for example, " Maugham's determination to storm the fortress of the theatre was unwavering throughout his twenties "). But it doesn't matter. His text is beautifully researched (If over-abundantly footnoted) and is, happily, studded with apt quotations from the Master's own gracious prose. He quotes, for example, the first five sentences from Cakes And Ale — a book which, after praising, he then rather nervously dismissed from major importance by saying that it is "an essentially humorous novel', the humour being of a particularly inbred kind," and compares it unfavourably to the over-written, over-romanticised, semi-autobiographical Cy liuman Bondage. Hell, if there ever was a truly ' autobiographical novel it's Cakes And Ale. In it Maugham iS not only the narrator and the author, Driffield, who goes on to become the "grand old man of British letters," but also Alroy Rear, who planned his own career in the world of letters with such terrifying care. Poor old Alroy! He would have invented an anti-evileye trademark for his own books, if only he had had the brains or sense of salesmanship to think of It.
The point is, Maugham was a born performer. And Curtis is a perfect audience, kindly, informed, appreciative. He runs a beautifully-guided, discreetly-conducted tour through his subject's life and work.
I met Mr Maugham but once. It was at a party in Monte Carlo given by a well-knoWn American singer of Italian descent. We were introduced. Maugham and I stared at each other for a moment, then he said, " Mr Axelrod, I understand you are v-v-very young and v-v-very talented. Thank God, I am too old to give a sh-sh-shit." It was, on my part' love at first sight. And this affection embraces not only Maugham's own books, but books written about him. It certainly embraces Mr Curtis, whose first published full-length book this is. Soon, God willing, I too will be too old to give a sh-sh-shit. But, meanwhile, I enjoyed The Pattern of Maugham eery much.
George Axelrod, the American playwright and novelist, is now living in London.
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