All About Books discussion

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As I mentioned in my review, I found Larry a little too good to be true and the character I enjoyed most was Elliott. Maugham is so good at rendering his fiction realistic that I wonder if Larry is based on a real person. Does anyone know?
Also I revelled in Maugham's limpid prose and was delighted to discover the word "frowsty" which is almost onomatopeaic in conveying a dusty, dingy atmosphere.

I’m wondering if Larry drives anyone else crazy. In each of his “relationships” there is (for me) a disturbing one-sidedness. Larry seems to be pretty much exclusively interested in Larry’s enlightenment. Even when he is generously helping Suzanne, it is on his own terms. When she makes love to him, he has such a take-or-leave-it attitude that it’s downright disturbing. When he is going to marry Sophie, it feels way more like a project to bring about the beautiful soul that only he can see than actually loving her. Is love the desire to bring about the spiritual/moral beauty of the object? Somehow that kind of love seems kind of sterile to me. When, in their youth, he asked Isabel to join him on his quest for the holy grail, there was at least a feeling of comradeship, but as always, the venture had to be on his terms. Oh, but his smile was so benign and sweet and beguiling. He could/would visit his friends when he wanted, but they weren’t ever to know where he stayed, they weren’t ever really to approach him.

Steve wrote: “I’m wondering if Larry drives anyone else crazy. In each of his “relationships” there is (for me) a disturbing one-sidedness. Larry seems to be pretty much exclusively interested in Larry’s enlight...”

I wouldn’t have noticed that on my own, probably, but it’s a pretty accurate description. And though I can’t say it drove me crazy about Larry, it did keep me from caring very much about him at all.

It’s interesting, though, to think about Larry’s spiritual realization in juxtaposition with Elliott’s. I think they each were successful, according to the terms they set out for themselves. Of course, they’re depicted in the book as pretty much diametrically opposed approaches. Elliott’s “salvation” is all about sybaritic self-glorification, whereas Larry’s enlightenment leads him to a nearly ascetic abstinence. I think I might have called Larry’s approach “self-negating,” except that you’re right—it still really is all about him. Maugham himself points it out: “self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling.” He’s talking about sacrifice for another, but he does immediately clarify that “the object doesn’t matter.”

Both cases are as you describe—entirely one-sided. Elliott is depicted as hypocritical for it, and Larry as heroic. But they’re both just all about themselves. Neither is devoted to any other individual human, or to any community. They casually take on people, places, groups, ideas, and then shed them just as easily.

I agree with all of you, it seems Maugham has personified principles. Human characters are not just white and black. What you all think of Isabel, she has shades of greys in her character and is more human than Larry and Elliott?

Isabel does seem much more human and less aloof than most of the characters. Of course, it is hard to (or impossible) to forgive her for her calculated, jealous and hateful treatment of Sophie. It is difficult to warm up to her pragmatism, which contrasts with a great deal of idealism in the various characters. In spite of her many faults she is more relatable than most of the characters.

I really appreciate the comments by Nidhi and Spoko. Very instructive and enlightening!

Why do you think Maugham titled the book The Razor’s Edge? Is it to emphasize the “sharp” contrasts between the characters and the lives they live, the philosophies they represent? Perhaps it is to emphasize the narrowness and almost arbitrary divisions in each life between enlightenment and shadow, happiness and deathly sorrow, “success” and failure. Perhaps it is the line between East and West?

( The Upnishadas) The Razor's Edge is difficult to pass(path toward Salvation or Nirvana), very few (like Larry) can do it, but in turn they pay the price in solitude and social detachment. There again in Siddhartha Hesse provides the solution of middle way.

In this book for the first time I was influenced by Maugham's power of characterizing. I used to hold Uriah Heep ( David Copperfield) as the ultimate villain in literature, but Maugham made hate Isabel at such intensity that I was surprised at my capability of dispising a character in print.

I thought Gray and Isabel were pretty straightforward symbols of the American bourgeoisie. Gray is a typical WASPy glad-hander, who stumbles into success because it’s placed right in his path, and who (owing to his connections) doesn’t suffer repercussions even when he theoretically loses everything. Life takes its toll on him, in the form of recurring headaches, but just a hint of Eastern philosophy is all it takes to whisk that away. He’s a nice enough guy, I think, but he certainly gets better than he deserves.

As for Isabel, she both props Gray up, and keeps him on the beaten path. Her treatment of Sophie is basically the same impulse at a societal level—in America, as in many patriarchal societies, keeping up the guardrails of proper behavior is a woman’s role. Especially when she is a wife and mother. Larry may be allowed to drift and wander all over the globe (and the moral spectrum); that’s his prerogative as a man. But Sophie must be punished for her trespasses, and she certainly can’t be allowed to interfere with Larry. All the more so, because that’s a role Isabel had available to her, and she rejected it.