The Razor's Edge (original 1944; edition 2003)

The Razor’s Edge is a fantastic book from an amazing author. Apparently I am the only person alive who didn't have to read this book in High School! I'm not sure I would have gotten as much out of it back then, so I am grateful to have been introduced to Maugham later in life.

This book is a charming look at life and the choices we make as we move through it. From the creature in need of security and stability to the one in search of "meaning" in life, Maugham brings his characters to life. I found myself attached to them all at the end, even the one that I found relatively repulsive in the beginning, interesting... yet repulsive. ( )

One of my favorite books ever, and one of the few books I will reread. I read it after seeing the movie versions, and as much as I enjoyed both films the book is much better. I don't think it can all really be captured in a film. It's interesting how the 2 movies covered entirely different parts of the book, so if you watch both movies back to back you get most of it. ( )

This was one of the first assigned books I read in high school, and I remember being utterly blown away by the encounter. I'd supposedly read some fairly "sophisticated" stuff for my age, but this was another level entirely, and I was hooked. It was fascinating to read it again and see what I actually remembered about it, as well as what has stayed with me somewhere below the level of conscious memory. I wouldn't say this book changed my life, but it turns out it's been quite influential in a subtle way. Time to read some more Maugham, I think. ( )

Although Maugham published this in the early 1940s, it actually chronicles society between the wars. We meet a set of well-off socialites and social climbers circa 1920, among them Eliot, who makes it his life's work to be in society in Paris, his young relative Isabel, in the fashionable set in Chicago, and a curiously unnamed narrator we are meant to assume is the author himself, in general bearing witness to the next decade or two in which these characters swim. Moving through this is a young wartime pilot named Larry looking for the meaning of life, or God, or something.

Toward the end of the book, Maugham treats us to Larry's story of his wanderings in Europe and spiritual adventures in India; it must have been the first time many readers encountered a description of Eastern philosophy and mysticism. (Maugham the narrator suggests the reader skip that chapter!) The rest is much more classic: the various ways in which people find or do not find a sort of salvation, or happiness, or completeness in their lives, and what they are made of.

Maugham is a favorite stylist of mine, but I know him most from his wonderful short stories. I am also fond of the games a writer can play with narrative voice as Maugam does here. Even with the ga-ga over India, it was a delight to read. ( )

4.5/5

Maugham has a nigh-unparalleled keenness of observation when it comes to the human spirit. In this book he hones this power into a tool of metaphysical dissection and wields it on a widely differing people with great accuracy. The successful socialite, the genteel lady, the eminent businessman, the capable prostitute, the ruined woman, and the recluse philosopher. Each one determines an end goal to their life, consciously or otherwise, and each one manages to meet it in their own way. What's especially brilliant is how Maugham touches on every life and showcases the attributes and the faults in equal degrees. Not even the near omniscient philosopher is shown to be the perfect answer to what a life should hope to achieve. The philosopher admittedly comes close, in that he embraces the doctrine that one’s meaning of life is always a work in progress, one whose completion before death is not guaranteed. Surely the socialite's death would have been an example of this incompleteness riddled with regrets, had the narrator not bothered trying to satisfy his petty concerns on his death bed.
Speaking of these two beings, the social monger and the wise man define the ends of a spectrum of mentalities along which Maugham lays out all his characters. Everyone else, including the narrator himself, is a much more even mix of materialistic desires and existential needs, forces that become more or less defined during the course of a person's lifetime. These forces may not be physical, but they are no less powerful, as they send one person around the world, another to a work office, and yet another to a brutal end. However, as the genteel lady shows, very few are willing to understand that these widely varying compulsions and lifestyles are all normal displays of the human psyche. Society only has room for a select few of these styles of living; the 'normal' response then is to live a life rife with materialistic distraction from one's existential unhappiness. Maugham works to demonstrate how this life is barely enough, and offers an objective glimpse into the heads of those who refuse to conform.
Social critique aside, I especially enjoyed how Maugham candidly laid out his predictions of the conflict between his goal as an author and the expectations of his readers. This view is encompassed within this passage: 'I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell....I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should not have thought it worth while to write this book.'
You can't get more wittily self-deprecating than that. ( )