The Moon And Sixpence: Students Edition

The Moon and Sixpence is a beautifully written novel about the personal cost of being an artist. W. Somerset Maugham has a very clear focus for this slim volume, intent on exploring what feels like an age old question - should we seperate the art from the personal life of the artist? It's a topic that has become increasingly relevant in the current era of online activism, accountability, and cancellation. Maugham makes his feelings clear from the novel's first chapter, suggesting that not only are the artist's personal failings a worthwhile sacrifice to make for their art, but indeed it's those failings that allow an artist to ascend from merely great to infamous.

I enjoyed a lot of the drama to be found in the novel, especially in the first 60% or so. The characters posed interesting dilemmas. There was tragedy, and comedy, and an unnamed narrator watching to relay each of painter Charles Strickland's sordid affairs to readers. However, just past the midpoint, I began to struggle with a dilemma of my own. Not as worthy of an entire novel like Maugham's, maybe, but a prickly one which, nonetheless, began to actively diminish the novel's hold on me. Am I capable of appreciating this novel, despite the language and ideas contained within that have aged horifically? Now, I'm no stranger to disagreeable social attitudes in books from before my time. It goes with the territory. However, for such a short text, Maugham has managed to pack in a lot to make the modern reader cringe.

I don't have a good answer to the question this novel gave me. I can't lie, however, and say the endless stream of misogyny and slurs in the book's back half didn't lower my esteem for it, nor that that fact isn't reflected in my rating. Maybe you will have a better stomach for these facets than me, and I don't begrudge any reader the experience. There's a good story to be had in these pages. However, for me personally, The Moon and Sixpence started out as a palette cleanser and transformed into an excercise in finding the line where a book begins to actively spoil in my hands. Despite that, I have a feeling this won't be my last book by Maugham (the prose really is that good), and it may not even be my final reading of The Moon and Sixpence. In fact, that may be the strongest endorsement of Maugham's thesis - the art above all else - that I can give.