Maugham

I knew the answers alright. My hobby: reading fiction, my favorite authors: Asimov, Dahl and Maugham. And I’d repeat a hundred times why I liked three, so different from each. Kept repeating, until I was overwhelmed by the emotional cacophony that was my undergrad and which drowned everything out from my life before. I got a chance to revisit and with joy discovered Maugham back I read volume 3 of his collected short stories. Each story is written in the words and senses of a writer deployed as a spy who travels around Europe during the war. The premise offers detachment from his characters yet compels detailed studies of their behavior, their interactions and their motivations. Several of the stories have a decidedly tragic end, come to think of it, I think, all of them do. But the beauty of the way the book is written is that unless you were really paying attention you wouldn’t notice what happened. The picture of the person has so surrounded you that the story seems irrelevant. The story never weighs you down because you are always made aware of the distance, that you are but a spectator who would never be affected by the unfolding events, that you could just walk away from what happened and maybe whistle on the next turn. It is like letting you delectably sample a person, not letting you gorge on the dish, but giving you just enough to let you ruminate on its flavor and decipher the spices maybe:).