I was on a roll the night before last! I mean the words just flew from my mind like honey from a hive. I wrote a beautiful analogy between Somerset Maughm’s writing and my own personal experience involving my gifting several Maughm short story books to a friend. It involved lots of coincidences that arose, incidents that may or may not have been related to the gift of books, and lots of surmises and analytical thinking on it all by yours truly.
Oh, surely you known Maughm, “Of Human Bondage”, “The Moon and Sixpence”, “The Razor’s Edge”, “The Painted Veil”, and the list goes on and on…… Many of his writings were produced as Hollywood movies. Maughm writes about human frailties – you never know a person really. Even the quietest or most conservative or the worst rascal, has a side that will only reveal its other self under the most curious or unforeseeable circumstance. Sometimes its about the tipping point, and sometimes a moment in time.
My father introduced me to Maughm – my father was a lover of a well told tale of the human condition. (and he also introduced me to the likes of Kipling, Defoe, Trollope, and many others, but my introductions to these other writers will make for another blog). Maughm perhaps understood human nature more than most. He had an uncanny ability to weave his knowing into the development of his characters. The cast – their choices, consequences, and their journey as they go through life, unfurl the circumstances and that moment in time that can change a life in an instant. Maughm themes and characters show us that you can’t judge a person by their history – just like you can’t judge a book by its cover. (I did judge Robert Louis Stephenson by a bad cover – shame on the publisher, editor, or whoever choose the cover. I judged wrongly of course, being human, ’cause Treasure Island is one of my all time favorites! The plain red cover was deceiving.) Though Maughm’s characters show us our own human frailties, those are the qualities that make us love them. After all, we’re all just human. (Yes Einstein, (my dog) even you!)
The Maughmium theme of my lost blog was just that – human frailty, and the friend who was gifted the Maughm stories, choices that were made changed lives forever. What looked like solid ground by us all, was really quicksand – unsubstantial, swallowing our conceptions based on outside appearances. The illusion of all’s right gone, like a tumbling tumbleweed, swept away by a gust of the Oklahoma wind. On and on I wrote, such beautiful prose, so good in fact, that I can’t seem to reproduce it! My dog might as well have ate it! (and he would have too, if it weren’t texted)
After spending hours texting my opus on my tiny phone keyboard, I wasn’t sure how to publish the blog on the mobile phone version of WordPress, and damn it, I hit the back button instead of the return arrow at the top and poof!, one poor choice and the blog disappeared forever. I was stunned. As you can see in your mind’s eye – me, snuggled with Kitty Murr on the couch, I tried everything I knew to bring it back! Sometimes you just have to accept, it isn’t going to happen. The smart phone outsmarted me and took advantage of my human frailty.
I’m sorry you won’t get to read the wonderful blog post that isn’t; but it’s just as well because after thinking on it, the story would have been read by some that might have been wondering if it was about them, or maybe it would have been taken by another as biased – and not towards them, or any other silliness that sharp analysis causes! Human frailties.
I love when fiction mirrors life as it must. I wonder if books we read subconsciously act on us, even contrary to what we deem as our own true nature. Have you read a book that influenced your actions, and surprised yourself by what you did or chose???
Now you really want to read the lost blog too, don’t you – that’s just human, and just what Maughm would expect. And me too.
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