Mackintosh

If you accept the scorn of many critics for the works of Somerset Maugham, you may never read him, and thus may miss some of the sharpest character studies in literature. I can only think of Dostoevsky as a writer who so completely involves the reader in his characters' senses and emotions.

The short story "Mackintosh" is one of the most powerful character studies I've ever read. You start out sympathizing with the lanky, fastidious Scotsman and resenting the fat, obscene old Irishman. At first you wonder which one is Billy Budd and which is Claggart. Before the story is over, you have switched sympathies once or twice, and wind up with horror and at last a grim satisfaction.

I've read Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge enough times to wear out your average paperback book, and I never tire of it. Some of his other novels may be more perfect and concise in composition, but the story! The story is the thing, and very few writers have matched his story-telling.

I guess I was born to be an appreciator of stories, rather than a story-teller with any sort of competence.

"...Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day. . .
He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect
But wears a stammer like a decoration.
And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes."
--W.H. Auden, from "Herman Melville"