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William Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s.
After losing both his parents by the age of 10, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a doctor. The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full time.
William Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s.
After losing both his parents by the age of 10, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a doctor. The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full time.
During World War I, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he traveled in India and Southeast Asia; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.
Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end, but Maugham felt the contrary. He was living in the great city of London, meeting people of a "low" sort whom he would never have met otherwise, and seeing them at a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the value of his experience as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..."
Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his medical degree. In 1897, he wrote his second book, Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing midwifery work in Lambeth, a South London slum. Maugham wrote near the opening of the novel: "...it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue."
Liza of Lambeth's first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. Maugham, who had qualified as a doctor, dropped medicine and embarked on his 65-year career as a man of letters. He later said, "I took to it as a duck takes to water."
The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and to live in places such as Spain and Capri for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of Liza. This changed in 1907 with the success of his play Lady Frederick. By the next year, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards.
Maugham's supernatural thriller, The Magician (1908), based its principal character on the well-known and somewhat disreputable Aleister Crowley. Crowley took some offence at the treatment of the protagonist, Oliver Haddo. He wrote a critique of the novel, charging Maugham with plagiarism, in a review published in Vanity Fair. Maugham survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation.
In his later years Maugham wrote his autobiography, Summing Up (1938) and works of fiction such as The Razor's Edge (1945), Catalina (1948) and Quartet (1949).
William Somerset Maugham died in 1965.
Text interpretation
1.Introduction. “Mackintosh” is a short story published initially in 1920 and included in the collection “The trembling of a leaf”. Set at Talua (Savaii) the largest island of the Western Samoa archipelago, this strongly psychological piece conserns the clash between Walker, the island administrator for the past 25 years and his assistant Mackintosh, a native of Abeerdan who has held the post for 2 years. It is a very interesting story and it also is a very good look at colonial life in the South Seas.
2.Characters. There are only two real players in the story, Mr. Walker, the administrator of a colonial island and his assistant, Mackintosh, an idealistic young man from Glasgow just starting his career as a colonial administrator. Marckintosh and Walker have opposite tempers. While Mackintosh is protagonist; quiet, sober, literate, Walker is antagonist; loud, drinks a lot, sleeps with natives. He is always sure to be within his rights, whatever he does. Mr. Walker is the very stereotype of a paternalistic bullying colonial ruler. He looks after the residents of the island ("the natives") as his children and he does honestly try to do what is best for him. He is financially incorruptible and never uses his position to enrich himself, as was quite the rule. He does force the natives to follow his directive and he does enjoy having fun with the women but his road building program has brought real prosperity to the island. Macintosh hates him and he also bullies him and treats him like he is a wet behind the ears wimp. He feels a strange mix of envy, hatred and derision for his boss. Maugham is simply marvelous in his creation of these two persons.
3. Plot development is based on dispute of these two men. Walker can’t respect Mackintosh’s boundaries. He makes fun of him, not realizing “there was nothing Mackintosh could stand less than chaff”. Despite these differences, he likes Mackintosh and he is convinced that Mackintosh likes him too, when the latter only feels a growing hatred for him. Mackintosh despises Walker although he acknowledges he is a good manager for the island. He tries to improve the roads and does not exploit the natural wealth of the place for his own fortune. Walker runs his island as a British aristocrat would run his estate. He’s fond of this land and he considers the natives as his peasants.
The fragile balance between the two men cracks when a native named Manuma comes back to Talua. He has been in Apia, the closest city and is better educated than his people. So when Walker wants some villagers to build a road for half the salary paid in Apia, he rebels. Silently, like Gandhi, the villagers rebel. They will not build the road. Walker then uses his knowledge of the Samoan customs to break the rebellion by a trick. The villagers surrender. The road is built.
But Manuma now considers Walker as his enemy. The enemy of my enemy being my friend: how can this new hatred help Mackintosh? The assistant hates his superior to such a degree that he allows disgruntled native Manuma to still his revolver, he manipulates the boy into killing Walker. Although technically not guilty of murder, for, eventually, Manuma would have done the deed by some means or another, Mackintosh suffers to such an extent form a guilty conscience that almost immediately after Walker’s death, he takes his own life.
4. I think this short story is a jewel because everything is there: action, psychology and politics. It can be read through different lenses. On the first level, there is a basic story of hatred between two men. The psychological analysis is clever. Mackintosh is an apple name and like Adam, he is about to be thrown away from the Garden of Eden. He’s going to lose his innocence.
5. On a higher level, the story contains metaphor of colonialism. Walker is a perfect colonialist, the white man patronizing the natives that he calls his children. He thinks ‘They love me’, ‘They won’t rebel’. Blinded by the love he is sure they feel for him, he thinks he can do whatever he wants. No harm can be done, no consequences should be feared.
6. “Mackintosh” called in me great interest and astonishment. This story is really easy to read, prose is absolutely clean and I’m convinced that Somerset Maugham is really good at writing short stories.