IM W. Somerset Maugham, died December 16, 1965
SteveMR200
friends that you know famous men proves only that
you are yourself of small account.
--William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
_The Summing Up_ [1938]
We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures
of our heart, but they have not the power to accept
them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not
together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
--William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
_The Moon and Sixpence_ [1919]
I learnt that men were moved by a savage egoism,
that love was only the dirty trick nature played
on us to achieve the continuation of the species.
--William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
_The Summing Up_ [1938], Chapter XXI
--
Steve
John Bonanno
Blanc in the Rue d'Odessa, near the Gare Montparnasse, where a number of
artists were in the habit of dining: and from then on I dined there every
night ... one of the casual visitors was Aleister Crowley. He was spending
the winter in Paris. I took an immediate dislike to him, but he interested
and amused me ... at the time I knew he was dabbling in Satanism, magic and
the occult." A Fragment of Autobiography, W. Somerset Maugham
"I have come to the conclusion that it is very dull and
stupid."................"I do not remember how I came to think that Aleister
Crowley might serve as the model for the character whom I called Oliver
Haddo; nor, indeed, how I came to think of writing that particular novel at
all ... though Aleister Crowley served, as I have said, as the model for
Oliver Haddo, it is by no means a portrait of him. I made my character more
striking in appearance, more sinister and more ruthless than Crowley ever
was. I gave him magical powers that Crowley, though he claimed them,
certainly never possessed." W. Somerset Maugham
"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 ... 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." Aleister Crowley
"Some response did seem called for, however: "Maugham had had his fun with
me; I would have mine with him. I wrote an article for Vanity Fair . . . 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 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" (pp.
571-2).
According to Crowley, "Maugham took my reposte 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'" (p. 572). But of course Maugham could not
afford to respond publicly to the accusations of plagiarism leveled by
Crowley's review, so in print -- and years later -- he told a different
story. "I did not read it," he says of the article in his introduction, "and
wish now that I had. I daresay it was a pretty piece of vituperation, but
probably, like his poems, intolerably verbose"" Thelema Lodge Calendar April
1997 e.v. (Page references: Crowley's Confessions) Above quote and "How to
Write a Novel! After W. S. Maugham" found in below link:
http://www.billheidrick.com/tlc1997/tlc0497.htm