SOMERSET AND ALL THE WORDS

 

I first saw the movie, A Place in the Sun, my guess when screened on television in 1958.  It had been a major Hollywood opus, and signalled the “growing up’” of child star Elizabeth Taylor - who was 19 when it was released in 1951, although she was 17 when production commenced.  The film traverses the tragedy of a young man (played by Montgomery Clift) who is saved from his penurious circumstances by affluent relatives – and meets the said Miss Taylor, with whom romantic possibilities soon develop.  But he also pursues a liaison with a young woman less refined; and from there tragedy ensues.  See the film, or read the book; but, if the latter, be aware that it is titled An American Tragedy.  

 

The film, although some two hours two minutes in duration, confines itself to the second part only of the book.  A big film, and an even bigger read – 800 pages.  I didn’t know this when the late-teenage me determined to secure a copy; which I did by placing a two-line “classified ad” in the Saturday Age Literary Supplement, as it then was; and which you could then do at the time.  I had one response - but that was enough - from a lady living a few suburbs away; and I duly collected my prize and handed over the agreed one pound five shillings ($2.50).  

 

An American Tragedy was published in 1925, and is one of a number of weighty novels by American writer, Theodore Dreiser. 

 

Dreiser (1871 to 1945), although taken seriously enough in the day to be contender with Sinclair Lewis for the 1930 Nobel Prize in literature – Dreiser lost – has not endured lasting regard.  Fashion perhaps, or simply too many words.  But “words” is the undercurrent of this blog.

 

When I started to read An American Tragedy, I was, right away, confronted by a richness of words new to me such that progress was impeded.  So, I proceeded with dictionary in hand…….and impeded progress even moreso by recording each new (to me) word on the inside cover, together with its definition - continuing thence on to the fly leaf.  I remember still the first such word: asseverate, a word likely not mainstream in 1925, nor in 1958, and certainly not today.  If you don’t know it, and if you care to look it up, you may be embarking on a lifetime habit.

 

I long ago lent and lost An American Tragedy, and somewhere out there perhaps some latter-day reader is trying to marry each of my scrawled fly leaf listings to the relevant page in the book.

 

My quirky custom of recording inside the cover of a book words found in it that were previously unknown to me continued with Of Human Bondage.  This novel by Somerset Maugham dates from 1915, and is said to be semi-autobiographical…….in the sense that both the hero of the story, and Maugham, had a physical affliction (club foot and stammer, respectively), and each was a medical student (Maugham, in fact, qualified as a physician, although he never practised).  Apparently, once these similarities were identified no further autobiographical conjecture was necessary, although Maugham certainly didn’t suffer the fate of his fictional character.

 

Somerset Maugham (1874 to 1965) was one of the leading English writers of his era, with an output of 20 novels, and numerous short stories.  And some 32 works for the theatre.  At one time in 1908 some four of his plays were running simultaneously in the West End.  Maugham’s output, popularity, and fame – and longevity – made him rich beyond the conception of the average writer, and his later years were spent in his imposing villa on the French Riviera.  In earlier times he had spent years travelling the East, and the thrall of the Orient suffuses much of his writing.

 

I had read a number of Maugham’s novels years ago, but didn’t recall On a Chinese Screen, which recently beckoned from a bin in a holiday op shop.  Not a novel, as it happens, but a collection of short stories, fifty-three in total.  Some of them are a mere page or two, a fragment, not even a plot.  Each of them has a Chinese mise-en-scene, incidents and impressions from Maugham’s 1919/20 journey to China.  Many of them have the droll ending so often favoured by short story writers.  As with Of Human Bondage, dripping with words.

 

This time I didn’t list the words that tripped me, but I did take note of some of Maugham’s more elegant phrases and sentences, which I want to share.  I give you a dozen, randomly selected.  Overwritten, perhaps; the style of another era, obviously; but triggering a heartbeat of admiration, sometimes a gasp:

  

#. She was certainly fifty, but a life of convictions harassed by never a doubt had left her face unwrinkled.  

 

#.  He was perfect and you were half afraid that he knew it, for in repose his face had the look of one who bears an intolerable burden.   

 

#. There are philosophers who look upon evil with a certain complacency, since without it, they opine, there would be no possibility of good. 

 

#. No one knew better than he that he was an important person.   

 

#. The human race has existed so long and each one of us is here as the result of an infinite series of miraculous events.  

 

#. He had lived so much alone that his natural tendency to eccentricity had developed to an extravagant degree.

 

#. Mrs. Fanning was a little plain woman, wizened like a crab-apple, with a big nose and bad teeth.  

 

#.  ……the old gentleman, whenever he could scrape a little money together, spent it wantonly in the streets inhabited by ladies to describe whom a euphemism is generally used.   

 

#. When he waved to you or with a broad gesture took off his hat, you felt that it was incredibly affable of him to take any notice of human beings.   

 

#. He looks as though he were a little too large for his skin and you feel that he would be more comfortable if it were a trifle looser.    

 

#.  ……something touching……like the appeal of a woman who cannot believe in the loss of her beauty and implores the compliment which reassures her but no longer convinces her.   

 

#. He had better manners than are usually found in the medical profession which, though blessed with many virtues, neglects somewhat the amenities of polite behaviour.  

 

Gary Andrews