The Summing Up Book

I was seriously contemplating dumping this book, but then it turned around. It improves after a while. I am definitely glad I read it, but I would not recommend the book to any except true fans of the author.

This is not an autobiography. Instead, at the age of sixty-four, the author is ruminating about his career choices, the theater, literature, religion and philosophy. He avoids discussion of his personal life, saying nothing about his marriage, his child, his homosexual relationships and very little about his parents, his youth, his initial medical career, or his work as a British intelligence officer during the First World War.

The focus of the book is his writing career, but it does not detail his own short stories, plays or books. He talks about authors he admires and what exactly he admires about them. He has studied other authors to improve his own writing. He writes about different kind of literature—their idiosyncrasies and what they require of an author. When discussing drama, for example, he discusses the use of verse or straight prose, the differences between drama and cinema, how an audience, a director and the actors influence a theater performance. A playwright must take all these aspects into account when writing a play. He analyzes meticulously different literary forms. He explains why he grew bored with drama and returned to fiction.

Anyone interested in Maugham’s writing will surely have noted his ability to write in different genres, on different topics and in different styles. That in this book he focuses on the requirements of each is scarcely surprising. Given the wide scope of the author’s own writing, it is not strange that he felt the need to analyze the characteristics and requirements of each. That the book is as it is is what you would expect given his writing career.

The final third veers off into an analysis of the author’s life philosophy and religion. He was an agnostic. How and why he came to be so is discussed. A wide range of philosophical ideas are discussed, as are the concepts of evil and goodness, life after death and the essence of love, truth and beauty. His reading of world literature and his study of religious and philosophical beliefs were extensive. He read to answer his own queries on religious and philosophical beliefs and on the art of writing. Such reading, along with his life experiences, have molded him as an individual and as a writer, and this is why he discusses his views here.

The book’s chapters are exceedingly short. The first ones felt disjointed and messy. They started, they ended and I was left wondering what had been their point. Topics are thrown at the reader and then abandoned—not gone into with adequate depth. At the beginning, we are not even told that he was born in 1874, at the British embassy in Paris, France. We are told that his mother died when he was eight and his father when he was ten. Later he mentions that he stammered. He died at the age of ninety-one in 1965, many years after this book was written.

The audiobook I listened to was narrated by Andrew Wincott. It is not difficult to follow, but I cannot say I am in love with its sing-song timbre. I have given the narration three stars of five.

My ratings of Maugham’s books :
*Then and Now 5 stars
*Mrs Craddock 4 stars
*Cakes and Ale 4 stars
*The Painted Veil 4 stars
*The Verger 4 stars
*Liza of Lambeth 3 stars
*The Razor's Edge 3 stars
*The Summing Up 3 stars
*The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong 3 stars
*The Magician 3 stars
*Up at the Villa 3 stars
*Christmas Holiday 3 stars
*Theatre 2 stars
*The Moon and Sixpence 2 stars
*Of Human Bondage 2 stars
*The Merry-Go-Round 1 star

You can see I appreciate W. Somerset Maugham's writing, if not all of his books. Each has different content and style. His writing is not lyrical, but he is adept at dialog and observant of the world around him. His humor is most often ironical. If someone were to ask where to start, I would say Cakes and Ale or Mrs Craddock.