The Other Way

♠
'An English writer and friend of Maugham, Francis King, argues that Philip's clubfoot was "a metaphor for a graver disability than the stammer that most critics have assumed it to have been": that is, his homosexuality. Referring to his sexual nature late in life, Maugham once told his nephew that his great mistake was that he "tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer - whereas really it was the other way round." In this confession can be seen one of the most fundamental and damaging conflicts in Maugham's life: that between his natural impulses and his acceptance of society's definition of normalcy. He had, after all, seen Oscar Wilde destroyed at the peak of his fame for his sexual orientation, and he lived during a period in which British society considered homosexuality abnormal and unacceptable.'

-- Robert Calder, Introduction to Maugham's Of Human Bondage

I love that story of Maugham's shifting understanding of his normal/queer ratio as an example of the subtle but profound deceptions of the self in which we engage, and which can take a lifetime to come around and accept.

Although Monk has loved to keep some poetry in his reading, as he has wanted to keep some immersion in those beautiful phrases and rhythms, he has broadened that part of his reading life to include deeper literature in general. This is distinguishable from pop fiction such as detective stories and stories by such escape artists as Dean Koontz or John Grisham, the kind of books in which the pages practically turn themselves in our hunger to get to the next lurid, sensational, or fantastic bit.

xXx

The Other Way

♠
'An English writer and friend of Maugham, Francis King, argues that Philip's clubfoot was "a metaphor for a graver disability than the stammer that most critics have assumed it to have been": that is, his homosexuality. Referring to his sexual nature late in life, Maugham once told his nephew that his great mistake was that he "tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer - whereas really it was the other way round." In this confession can be seen one of the most fundamental and damaging conflicts in Maugham's life: that between his natural impulses and his acceptance of society's definition of normalcy. He had, after all, seen Oscar Wilde destroyed at the peak of his fame for his sexual orientation, and he lived during a period in which British society considered homosexuality abnormal and unacceptable.'

-- Robert Calder, Introduction to Maugham's Of Human Bondage

I love that story of Maugham's shifting understanding of his normal/queer ratio as an example of the subtle but profound deceptions of the self in which we engage, and which can take a lifetime to come around and accept.

Although Monk has loved to keep some poetry in his reading, as he has wanted to keep some immersion in those beautiful phrases and rhythms, he has broadened that part of his reading life to include deeper literature in general. This is distinguishable from pop fiction such as detective stories and stories by such escape artists as Dean Koontz or John Grisham, the kind of books in which the pages practically turn themselves in our hunger to get to the next lurid, sensational, or fantastic bit.

xXx