The proper function of fiction is to tell an interesting story--W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham at home, writing at his desk.

"...the proper function of fiction is to tell an interesting story."

In 1952, W. Somerset Maugham said,


"The anecdote is the basis of fiction.  The restlessness of writers forces upon fiction from time to time forms that are foreign to it, but when it has been oppressed for a period by obscurity, propaganda or affectation, it reverts, and returns inevitably to the proper function of fiction, which is to tell an interesting story."

These excerpts are from his Preface to the 1952 edition of "The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Volume 2, 'The World Over'"

"I have written now nearly a hundred stories and one thing I have discovered is that whether you hit upon a story or not, whether it comes off or not, is very much a matter of luck.  Stories are lying about at every street corner, but the writer may not be there at the moment they are waiting to be picked up or he may be looking at a shop window and pass them unnoticed."

In the 1930s, Maugham was the world's highest paid writer.

 "He may write them before he has seen all there is to see in them or he may turn them over in his mind so long that they have lost their freshness.  He may not have seen them from the exact standpoint at which they can be written to their best advantage."






"It is a rare and happy event when he conceives the idea of a story, writes it at the precise moment when it is ripe, and treats it in such a way as to get out of it all that it implicitly contains.  Then it will be within its limitations perfect."

 "But perfection is seldom achieved."

"I think a volume of modest dimensions would contain all the short stories which even closely approach it.  The reader should be satisfied if in any collection of these short pieces of fiction he finds a general level of competence and on closing the book feels that he has been amused, interested, and moved."

Maugham, in his office, Villa Mauresque, Cap Ferat, 1939

Maugham, W. Somerset.  The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vols. 1 and 2.  Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1952.

"You know what home is."

New York, Long Island, Connecticut from space station

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am presenting, for a couple of days, excerpts from Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of the Senses.  Why I am doing this is explained in the 3/9/14 post.

Here, at the conclusion of the Vision section in her book, Ms. Ackerman reflects on her sensations and realizations after she'd had her first flying lesson. From pages 284-285:

"You know what home is.  For many years, you've tried to be a modest and eager watcher of the skies, and of the Earth, whose green anthem you love.  Home is a pigeon strutting like a petitioner in the courtyard in front of your house.  Home is the law-abiding hickories out back.  Home is the sign on a gas station just outside Pittsburgh that reads "If we can't fix it, it ain't broke."  Home is the springtime on campuses all across America, where students sprawl on the grass like the war-wounded at Gettysburg.  Home is the Guatemalan jungle, at times deadly as an arsenal.  Home is the pheasant barking hoarse threats at the neighbor's dog.  Home is the exquisite torment of love and all the lesser mayhems of the heart.  But what you long for is to stand back and see it whole.  You want to live out that age-old yearning, portrayed in myths and legends of every culture, to step above the Earth and see the whole world fidgeting and blooming below you."

For a little ambiance while you read, I've inserted here one of Ms. Ackerman's favorite pieces of music; she listens to it obsessively before she begins to write.  I give you the Adagio, from Allessandro Marcello's Oboe Concerto in d minor. 

Embedded video & music courtesy of Ron de Leeuw, The Netherlands.

Monterey Bay, California from space

Images courtesy of NASA.

"The visual opium of the sunset was what I craved."

Sunset in Missouri, courtesy of Dianne Irey McDonald

As I mentioned in my March 9th post, I will be presenting, for a couple of days, excerpts from Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of the Senses.  Why I am doing this is explained in that post. Today, I have a piece for you from the Vision section, pages 255-256:


"Some years ago, when I had taken a job directing a writing program in St. Louis, Missouri, I often used color as a tonic.  Regardless of the oasis-eyed student in my office, or the fumings of the hysterically anxious chairman, I tried to arrive home at around the same time every evening, to watch the sunset from the large picture window in my living room.

Each night the sunset surged with purple pampas-grass plumes, and shot fuchsia rockets into the pink sky.  The visual opium of the sunset was what I craved.

Sunset at Creve Coeur Lake, in Missouri.

Next day, ...I stood chatting with one of the literary historians.  I was paying too much rent for my apartment, she explained.  True, the apartment overlooked the park's changing seasons, and was only a block away from a charming cobblestone area full of art galleries, antique stores, and ethnic restaurants.  But this was all an expense, as she put it, with heavy emphasis on the second syllable.

That evening, as I watched the sunset's pinwheels...I thought: the sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on."

Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses

A couple weeks ago I finished reading Diane Ackerman's beautiful book, A Natural History of the Senses.

  I still can't get it out of my head, and during the read I almost daily regaled my friends Theresa and Joe with reading aloud small excerpts about something she says on Vision, or Touch, or Smell, or Taste, or Hearing.  I'll still reference something from her even on my walks with Joe to the library, or on a Sunday afternoon, wielding a knife while I'm making a vegetable & cheese platter in anticipation of wine and Canasta with Theresa, and Joe with a beer and the Los Angeles Times.  Besides the fascinating scientific insights that she imparts about our senses, her prose draws you in like a lover holding the bed covers open for you to slip inside.

This is one of several excerpts I'm going to post; it's from page 256:

"When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.  It probably doesn't matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are.  It probably doesn't matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady's slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric.  Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move."

 [Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses, New York: Vintage Books, 1991.]

Steven Pressfield's The Afghan Campaign. Some things never change.

     “...that which binds the individual to the family, the tribe, and the ancestors.  Most important are the ancestors.  When they turn their backs on you, God turns his back, too.”

     I tell him about Shinar and the burden of shame she seems to bear.  He affirms this.

     “You should have killed her,” he says, “instead of protecting her.”

     The crime I have committed, Elihu explains, is called...al satwa.  It means to bring shame upon someone by performing an act of responsibility that they have failed to perform themselves.

     “If a stranger stops at my father’s gate,” Elihu says, “and my father has no food to offer, this is unfortunate but no crime.  If our neighbor, however, then provides a meal to the stranger, he has committed al satwa against my father.  Do you understand, Matthias?  The neighbor has shamed my father before the stranger.

  This is a terrible transgression in our country.  The crime is even worse in your case, for you have rescued a sister when her brother should have done so.  You have shamed him mortally, do you see?”

      “Well, where the hell was he,” I ask, “when Shinar needed him?  I wouldn’t have had to do anything if he had been there to look out for her!”

     “Exactly.”

     “He should be grateful to me!  Haven’t I defended his sister?  Haven’t I saved her life?”

     No, says Elihu.  “You have shamed this woman’s kin by doing for her what they should have done themselves--and for that, they can never forgive you.  As for her, she is the vehicle of this shame.  The ancestors have witnessed.  This is what she experiences now, being with you. And if you evoke feeling in her, her shame is double.”

     “In other words,” I say, “to an Afghan it would be preferable that Ash the muleteer continue to beat and abuse Shinar, even kill her, than that I should help her.”

     “Indeed.”

     “Or that ...some other scuff should rape and outrage her.”

     “Precisely,” says Elihu.

     All I can do is shake my head.

     “Every act of kindness you perform toward this woman will only drive her deeper into shame.”

(Excerpted from Steven Pressfield's The Afghan Campaign)

A couple of millenia have passed, and things haven't really changed over there. And things won't change.  Women are still subject to tertiary citizen status by ego-maniacal men whose oppression is supported by religious texts.  Or so they claim. Well, religious texts with AK-47s and RPGs.   In 2,000 years, the only change has been the weaponry, because the savagery wears the same face, the same clothes, exhales the same lies.  The country was a mess then, it's a mess now.

As I was reading Pressfield's book--and it is a good book, it's exciting, informative, monstrous in its realistic portrayal of the cruelties of war--it was impossible not to think of the current day's predicament of Western armies battling the Afghan tribes high in the mountains, or in the streets of Kabul or Herat or Kandahar.  It was impossible not to see the perfect comparisons between Alexander's troops in 330-327 B.C. and the Russians in 1979-1989 A.D.  Whether Bactrian tribes or Taliban, Sogdians and Pactyans or the mujahideen, there is still the invader, and there is still the tribe.

Alexander was chasing Oxyartes, Bessus, Spitamenes; Brezhnev, Andropov and their boys were after Massoud and Haqqani; we were after Osama bin Laden & friends.  In each case, although I benefit from over 2,000 years of historical record, I wonder continuously what was Alexander's point then, and what is our point now, in being there?

 Pressfield's book is not only a story of 330 B.C., it's a story of our time as well.