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Title: Somerset Maugham: A Life by JEFFREY MEYERS ISBN: 0-375-41475-4 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 17 February, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: An Excellent Life of an Underrated Author
Comment: Jeffrey Meyers is a prolific biographer of literary figures whose books are hit-and-miss - while never less than professional, they are sometimes excellent and sometimes disappointing, depending on the rapport that Meyers has with his subject. But they are always marked by his remarkable industry and erudition. I've enjoyed most of them very much, and his last book, on George Orwell, was excellent.
I'm delighted to say that his new book on W. Somerset Maugham is just as good. It's possible that Meyers feels a rapport with Maugham because, like his subject, Meyers is fantastically prolific and not given his due by the intelligentsia. Whatever the reason, this is an excellent biography of an underrated writer, and immediately becomes the standard life of its subject.
Maugham was a very fertile writer and, like anyone who writes a lot, his production is uneven. Some of his books -- "Of Human Bondage" and "Cakes and Ale" come to mind -- will live as long as any English novels of the last century. Others, such as his historical novel about Machiavelli, "Then and Now," which Edmund Wilson used to unfairly trash his entire body of work in a 1946 New Yorker review, will most likely be forgotten. But Maugham wrote brilliantly in virtually every genre, from the essay to the spy story (his "Ashenden" had a noticeable influence on Ian Fleming's creation James Bond) to the travel book to plays (he once had four plays on the West End at once -- a feat that's been seldom duplicated) to the novel and short story, and the best of his work will live. Meyers illuminates his life with understanding and tact, and avoids (or at least does his best to downplay) the prurient detail so indulged in by other, more sensational biographers (Ted Morgan leaps to mind).
So if you're at all intrigued by the most successful author of his time, or if you're already a fan of his work and would like a sympathetic (yet not uncritical) look at his life, I would highly recommend Jeffrey Meyers new biography. And I can't wait to see which author he tackles next.
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Title: The Razor's Edge by W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM ISBN: 1400034205 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham ISBN: 055321392X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 June, 1991 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Collected Short Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by W. Somerset Maugham ISBN: 0140185895 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: September, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Publisher: The Penguin Press Pub. Date: 26 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black ISBN: 1586481843 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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