Joe's Favorite author
J.
favorite excuse for his favorite Guru's plagiarism! Now look!
The cloner appears right on cue!
In article <rnyn2.1865$De2.1...@c01read02.service.talkway.com>, "arelurker"
says...
>
>Joe O'Leary wrote:
>
>"When I was an Eckist I read just about all of Maugham, he was one of
>my favorite
>writers. "
>
>. . . would Somerset have been a favorite author for Joe if he'd known
>the truth about
>Maugham's composition methods?
>
>#############################################################
>Late in 1908 I picked up a book. The title attracted me strongly, The
>Magician. The author, bless
> my soul! No other than my old and valued friend. William Somerset
>Maugham, my nice young
> doctor whom I remembered so well from the dear old days of the Chat
>Blanc. So he had really
> written a book --- who would have believed it! I carried it off to
>Scott's. In my excitement, I
> actually paid for it.
>
> I think I ate two dozen oysters and a pheasant, and drank a bottle of
>No. III, one of the happiest
> champagnes in the famous --- can you say "caterer's"? Yes: --- I mean
>caterer's cellar. Yes, I did
> myself proud, for the Magician, Oliver Haddo, was Aleister Crowley;
>his house "Skene" was
> Boleskine. The hero's witty remarks were, many of them, my own. He
>had, like Arnold Bennett,
> not spared his shirt cuff.
>
> But I had jumped too hastily to conclusions when I said, "Maugham has
>written a book." I found
> phrase after phrase, paragraph after paragraph, page after page,
>bewilderingly familiar; and then I
> remembered that in my early days of the G.'. D.'. I had introduced
>Gerald Kelly to the Order and
> reflected that Maugham had become a great friend of Kelly's, and
>stayed with him at Camberwell
> Vicarage. Maugham had taken some of the most private and personal
>incidents of my life, my
> marriage, my explorations, my adventures with big game, my magical
>opinions, ambitions and
> exploits, and so on. He had added a number of the many absurd legends
>of which I was the
> central figure. He had patched all these together by innumerable
>strips of paper clipped from the
> books which I had told Gerald to buy. I had never supposed that
>plagiarism could have been so
> varied, extensive and shameless. The Memoirs of a Physician, The
>Island of Doctor Moreau,
> The Blossom an the Fruit, and numerous other more or less occult works
>of fiction had supplied
> the plot, and many of them the incidents. The Kabbalah Unveiled1 The
>Life of Paracelsus, The
> Ritual and Dogma of Transcendental Magic and others had been
>transcribed, whole pages at a
> time, with such slight changes as "failed" for "resulted in failure",
>and occasional additions or
> omissions.
>
> I like Maugham well enough personally, though many people resent a
>curious trick which he has of
> saying spiteful things about everybody. I always feel that he, like
>myself, makes such remarks
> without malice, for the sake of their cleverness. I was not in the
>least offended by the attempts of
> the book to represent me as, in many ways, the most atrocious
>scoundrel, for he had done more
> than justice to the qualities of which I was proud; and despite
>himself he had been compelled, like
> Balaam, to prophesy concerning me. He attributed to me certain
>characteristics which he meant to
> represent as abominable, but were actually superb.
>
> He represented me as having treated my wife as Dumas makes Cagliostro
>treat his, with the
> object of producing homunculi, artificial living human beings --- "Was
>it for these vile monstrosities
> that Margot was sacrificed in all her loveliness?" Well, comeliness is
>a cheap after all. To discover
> the secret of life, who would not pitch two thirds of our "maudite
>race" into the bottomless pit of
> oblivion, for which, in any case, they are bound?
>
> The Magician was, in fact, an appreciation of my genius such as I had
>never dreamed of inspiring.
> It showed me how sublime were my ambitions and reassured me on a point
>which sometimes
> worried me --- whether my work was worth while in a worldly sense. I
>had at times feared lest,
> superbly as my science had satisfied my own soul, it might yet miss
>the mark of making mankind
> master of its destiny.
>
> Well, Maugham had had his fun with me; I would have mine with him. I
>wrote an article for Vanity
> Fair (December 30th, 1908) in which I disclosed the method by which
>the book had been
> manufactured and gave parallel passages. Frank Harris would not
>believe that I was serious. He
> swore I must be making it up. He could not believe that any man would
>have the impudence to
> publish such strings of plagiarism. I had to bring a little library
>
> 1.WEH note: Itself a plagiarism entire!
>
> round to the office to prove my proposition, and Harris sat and
>stared, and gasped like a fish at
> each fresh outrage. He cut down the article to two and a half pages,
>but even so it was the most
> damning exposure of a literary crime that had ever been known. No
>author of even mediocre
> repute had ever risked his reputation by such flagrant stupra.
>
> Maugham took my riposte in good part. We met by chance a few weeks
>later, and he merely
> remarked that there were many thefts besides those which I had pointed
>out. I told him that Harris
> had cut down my article by two thirds for lack of space. "I almost
>wish", I said, "that you were an
> important writer."
>
>--- Aleister Crowley
>########################################################################
LOL! Crowley! There's an credible character!
>
>Will Joe repent his evil ways and promptly burn all his Maugham books,
>and denounce
>the plagiarizing literary scum to the world?
>
>Check alt.literature.plagiarism to find out.
>
>Lurk
>--
>Surf Usenet at home, on the road, and by email -- always at Talkway.
>http://www.talkway.com
>
>
Will Richard Pickett admit Mark Twain was as bisexual as Abe Lincoln?
Will Richard then stop invoking Twain as his patron saint of plagiarism?
Stay tuned folks!
Wonder who the devil is cloning Lurk's ID...
arelurker
--- Aleister Crowley
########################################################################
Will Joe repent his evil ways and promptly burn all his Maugham books,
arelurker
> Wonder who the devil is cloning Lurk's ID...
Of all the loveless, lifeless lands that writhe beneath the wrath of
God, commend me to Canada!
- Aleister Crowley, 1923
Who am I? Find out here: http://www.gxtacy.com/explosion.htm