As leituras levam-me sempre por caminhos inesperados e, de vez em quando, deixo livros a meio. São raros aqueles que não li completamente, porque a eles sempre volto para os concluir e fechar a última página.
Um desses casos é The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham de Selina Hastings que deixei a meio para perseguir Eliot, Duras, Clarice e Cecília. A biografia de Maugham, apesar de temporariamente esquecida, regressa pouco a pouco às minhas leituras.
Maugham não é e dificilmente será um dos meus autores favoritos, mas a vida dele agrada-me, por mais que não seja, por puro entretenimento.
Max Beerbohm in the Saturday Review hailed Somerset Maugham as "the hero of the year... [whose] name is a household word even in households where the theatre is held unclean."
With four plays running, why not five?
Max speculated:
Five plays running simultaneously! Stupendous!... Yet, after all, what are five theatres among so many? Why shouldn't all the theatres in London be Maughamised?
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham - Selina Hastings
Nonetheless they [Gerald Kelly and Somerset Maugham] had a number of attributes in common: they were both tolerant and unshockable, both had a quick wit and a hot temper, although Maugham was better at controlling his; they both had a passion for travel; and they took pride in their intellectual integrity:
Both of us obstinately refused to pretend to admire what really we did not admire - even when we had been told we should admire it.
-said Kelly.
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham - Selina Hastings
In October 1897, Maugham received his diploma from St Thoma's qualifying him to practise as MRCS (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons) and LRCP (Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians).
Somewhat to his surprise the Senior Obstetric Physician offered him an appointment, but with his ambition set on a career as a writer he turned it down. He had proved himself competent in medicine and in later life he would always acknowledge the debt he owed to his training.
"I think", he wrote in old age, "I learned pretty well everything I know about human nature in the 5 years I spent at St Thoma's Hospital".
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham - Selina Hastings
Liza of Lambeth, written in three French school-exercise books, was completed in six months, and on 14 January 1897 the manuscript dispatched to Unwin, with a descriptive note, typically pessimistic, attached.
This is the story of a nine days wonder in a Lambeth slum... [which] shows that in this world nothing very much matters, and that in Vere Street, Lambeth, nothing matters at all.
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham - Selina Hastings
