"The Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maugham

My acquaintance with Somerset Maugham began long long ago and I can proudly say that his books are for me the proof of the fact that sometimes what teachers make us read is not only useful but also fascinating. I’ve met quotes from his novels in English textbooks of all kinds and his adapted stories were among my first proper English reads. In the university we read his novels and analyzed them from the point of view of stylistics, lexicology, grammar and literary studies. One should become sick and tired of any texts seen so often but strangely enough, I’ve come to really love his stories and now I see Mr. Maugham as an old friend who can always cheer me up.

So after a series of experiment with Booker prize nominees and some extremely postmodern things it was good to pick up The Razor’s Edge. and remember my student years. The novel is a nice piece of writing all soaked with the interbellum mood, one of the later works of Maugham (and therefore a bit uncharacteristic of him). The style is distinctively Maugham’s but the atmosphere is more like Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s or Ernest Hemingway’s novels. (My personal associations are A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises and Tender Is the Night).

Despite being told in the first person narrative, it is very polyphonic. Although we see much of the narrator (who is partially the author himself), the story’s focus is not on him but on another character, Larry Darrell, and his spiritual searches throughout the world. The author ties the stories told by different people who knew this young man into a single narration and thus lets the reader see his life from all possible points of view. Curious enough, Larry himself appears in the novel only in a few episodes and it is quite difficult to figure out his own opinion about his life. This makes the image feel very realistic, the author proposes to judge about the character as you would do in real life – from other people’s opinions and your own impressions but being unable to reach into the depth of his soul and see his inner thoughts and motives.

Larry, a very young man who has nevertheless experienced a traumatic war period, decides to part with conventional lifestyle, which everybody expects him to lead, and starts with the search of his purpose in life embracing different cultures, religions and professions. Having faced violence and anger of war he desperately wants to understand how and why it became possible and studies everything from psychology to Hinduism in search of an answer. The latter is of special interest both to the author and his protagonist as Maugham was already feeling the rising interest in Asian cultures and religions in society which later influenced the work of many famous writers such as Herman Hesse or Jerome David Salinger.

To contrast this unusual and often ascetic life the author presents the Bradley family and Elliot Templeton and a row of other secondary characters to show the sparkling bourgeois lifestyle of Paris and New York from which our character has so willingly refused. While Larry travels the world in search of the truth all the others do so looking for fame, money, power and happiness, with equal thrive and decisiveness.

Travelling with his characters through many different countries Maugham also doesn’t forget to give the reader his opinion of different nationalities so the pages of The Razor’s Edge are full of ambitious and businesslike Americans, hard-working and strict Germans, sensual and outgoing Frenchmen, philosophical and hard-drinking Poles, spiritual and cheerful Indians. These images, sometimes stereotypical, are nevertheless very bright and charming, the author’s aim here is not to blame anybody for their faults or habits but rather to describe and marvel the diversity that he himself has observed throughout the world.

I have already mentioned that The Razor’s Edge is a lost generation novel as Larry is a brightest representative of it, but there is one great difference from the other writers of the period. Maugham doesn’t desert his characteristic optimism and his character despite his unusual lifestyle doesn’t seem actually lost. In fact, Larry concludes that the violence he has observed was quite unavoidable:

“The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth's crust. ... Isn't it possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil?”

So what shall we do if we cannot get rid of the cruelty and anger in the world? That is quite simple, Larry decides, we should learn to appreciate all the kindness and pleasure we meet around us and try to enjoy and be satisfied with what we have. Maybe we cannot destroy violence but reducing it and focusing on positive things will surely make us all happier.