The Razor's Edge

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 show more 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. show less

A true test of good writing: take characters who, while not detestable, have flaws that make them slightly unlikable, then tell a story that is engrossing and still makes you care about those flawed people. (Think of it this way – when you can feel genuine disappointment in a character’s actions, you can know that the author has created a living, breathing individual.) Such is Maugham’s success in this book.

This is the story starting between the wars and extending past the Depression, and it is about people who are all probably better off than you and me. Viewed closely, it would be easy to dismiss them as vapid – walking through their lives more concerned about the next fun thing to do, the next important party to attend, the show more next person to impress. But Maugham’s skill does not allow such easy dismissal. Among the people that might so easily be written off are two which do not fit neatly into that description. The first is the narrator who, as a novelist, has snuck his way into this social whirl through the help of Elliot. Elliot is the epitome of the status seeker – the individual who is concerned about who is in attendance and what is being worn. At the outset, the narrator admits that Elliot has many faults, but explains that he has many other attractive qualities. We learn a few, but it is still hard to cozy up this individual. The other person who does not fit the mold is Larry, a man engaged to Elliot’s niece, but a man who has learned a new perspective on life because of events in the First World War.

The lives of these people are followed as the young move to adulthood and the adults move to old age. In the process, the people do not so much change as evolve (implying a slower, more true-to-life movement of events and change.) In most cases this evolution only entrenches them into the shallow attributes that are their lives. And even the people with the best attributes are changed into something that is not quite as nice as we might have thought. But for a very few, the evolution leads to enlightenment, and makes them truly better.

While we may not like them all, they are people we want to learn more about. And the conversations and the events bring a slow enlightment about the people that is revealing, but never overly shocking. Maugham ends with the phrase “…so perhaps my ending is not so unsatisfactory at all.” It is more than satisfactory, the story is more than satisfactory, the event of reading this book is more than satisfactory. And (since this is the first Maugham book I’ve read) I pay it the highest compliment by saying that I am immediately on the hunt for more of his work to read. show less

I read this one when I was a teenager. I didn't feel that I'd quite grasped what was going on, but certain parts of the book stuck with me anyway. Rereading it now, I can see why: Maugham has an almost preternatural ability to sketch realistic, memorable characters. There's hardly a line about Larry, Gray, Isobel and Sophie that doesn't hit its mark. They are, in the final telling, the only real reason to read this book. Maugham spends a lot of time on Larry's spiritual quest, and, -- much like Aldous Huxley in "Eyeless in Gaza" -- ends up with a kind of Westernized version of Eastern religions. This will likely be of limited interest to modern readers, but Larry's spiritual yearnings are real enough.

I found other aspects of the book show more more interesting. "The Razor's Edge" could be described as a Lost Generation novel: Larry is, after all, a veteran of he First World War, most of the characters in the book suffered some setbacks in the Great Depression. It's also an Englishman's attempt to grapple with the United States, then a country that felt young, confident, and very much on the rise. Though Maugham skillfully inserts himself into the narrative, I also felt that there might have been a lot of him in Eliot Templeton, the charming, cultured, and somewhat superficial character that helps bring these characters together. The foursome that make up the core of this novel are not nearly as cultured or as expensively educated as either Eliot or the narrator is -- but the novel forgives them easily. Larry is clearly a deeper, more complicated individual, but Maugham neither begrudges these young Americans their love of nice things or good times, nor does criticize them for their rather conventional goals. The novel takes them very much as they are, and makes them much more memorable by doing so.

For all of the money and high culture on display, "The Razor's Edge" also has a pleasantly seedy edge to it at times. We spend some time in Parisian dives, artist's cafés, and speakeasies. We meet a sympathetic artists' model and a varied cast of toughs and operators. Characters drink and smoke rather a lot and discuss sex and pleasure unblushingly. Readers who enjoy stories that describe the outlaw nightlife of interwar Europe will likely eat these scenes up. The narrator himself comes off as something of an Ian Flemming type, a writer of genre fiction who is well-acquainted with the underworld he writes about and could easily be a minor character in one of his own books. His frank assessments and dry demeanor provide a wonderful and necessary leavener to both Larry's account of his spiritual pilgrimage and Eliot's dandified lifestyle. Apparently they tried to make a movie out of this in the eighties involving, of all people, Bill Murray. It didn't work, and I can hardly say that I'm surprised. In fact, I'm rather surprised that someone even tried to film this one "The Razor's Edge" is best when it focuses on its characters; the rest is mostly talk. "The Razor's Edge" is still worth reading, though. show less

The Razor's Edge is a 1944 novel by W. Somerset Maugham and is considered to be the most accessible of his books. It tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatized by his experiences in World War I along some of the people who had an impact on Larry’s life, including his fiancee Isabel and her uncle Elliot, a snobbish expat American who cannot imagine any other way of life but that of following European high society.

Larry sets off in search of a transcendent meaning to life and although he invites Isabel to join him, she, needing to choose between her love of Larry or her need for a life of wealth and privilege, breaks off their engagement. One unique feature of the story is that it is narrated by a character who show more happens to be the author, W. Somerset Maugham. Larry Darrell spends the book travelling and searching for life’s meaning and intermittently passing his observations on to Maugham who then interprets these concepts of war, death, life, marriage, and profession onto the pages.

I found The Razor’s Edge an interesting read. It’s philosophical theme of finding one’s true purpose in order to live a meaningful life certainly made this reader reflective. Of course it is obvious that one has to find out for himself what the meaning of life is as it is different for everyone. I believe that by exposing his characters inner desires, whether it be stability, spirituality or simply working and caring for others that Maugham was trying to point out that the way to peace and happiness is one’s ability to accept and respect other people’s choices. show less

Oh, Mr. Maugham, there are moments when I love you so much I could burst. Moments when I wish there were a six star rating, so I could put it into your hands and say "I got that part and it resonated with me." Moments when I want to say, "enough of that, get back to the story", only to find That is the story, That is the heart.

This novel made me wish to live in the post WWI twenties and have endless possibilities open to me. It made me examine the life I have lived and wonder if I couldn't have gotten more out of it if I had been bolder or less worried.

It's strange how many people suffer from it (fear). I don't mean fear of closed spaces and fear of heights, but fear of death and, what's worse, fear of life. Often they're people who show more seem in the best of health, prosperous, without any worry, and yet they're tortured by it. I've sometimes thought it was the most besetting humour of men, and I asked myself at one time if it was due to some deep animal instinct that man has inherited from that primeval something that first felt the thrill of life.

How any things have I not done in life because I was afraid to try them? More than a few I can remember. Here at the end, I wish I had been braver, bolder and, yes, a little crazier.

This is surely amongst the best, if not the best, of Maugham's works I have found so far. By inserting himself into the novel, he makes it seem so vital and real, and even while understanding it as a contrivance, it lends these characters heft and weight and importance. For each of them, life is about choices and one has to question which of these characters is the most fulfilled. In the end we are told they all got what they wanted, but did they? Eliot wants to be very important, but is he? Does anyone truly want death? Should we choose security over adventure and love? Is a higher truth worth striving for? Can a man ever identify and know God?

The Maugham who is a character in this book is only an observer, no wiser than the others, unable to give us the answers and willing to accept the failures. The Maugham who wrote this book is wise and savvy and enlightened. He knows. This book is like an onion. I kept peeling it back to find another layer, and another layer, and a layer deeper even than that.

Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else, and passion thrives not on satisfaction, but on impediment. What d'you suppose Keats meant when he told the lover on his Grecian urn not to grieve? 'Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!' Why? Because she was unattainable, and however madly the lover pursued she still eluded him.

Perhaps true knowledge is as unattainable as love, always more to know, always another place to seek in, always a little out of our reach. In the hands of God, who might reveal it to us at the moment of our deaths or might send us back to strive again and again until we have gotten it right. show less

I picked up The Razor's Edge because my GR friend, Joe, called it possibly the best novel he's read since joining this site. I knew that I'd read a Maugham novel in high school, when I was going through my "I'm too cultured for this podunk town" phase, but I couldn't remember which one. I'm certain it was this one, because some scenes were so familiar ( Larry's encounter in the hayloft, the author's plan to convince Elliott he's been invited to Edna Novemali's party (which nearly backfires), and all the Eastern philosophy ). Although I enjoyed the novel both times, the more than 20 years (and many, many other books) between readings has changed my perspective. At 17 or 18, I was fascinated by the Yogi wisdom that Maugham expounds show more through the character of Larry. At 39, I'm more interested in the social relationships of the characters, the posturing, the manuevering, the consequences for characters who refuse to follow the rules of society.

The novel begins slowly, and with phrases like, "I suppose that by the exercise of invention I could fill the gaps plausibly enough and so make my narrative more coherent," I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it through the whole novel. Thankfully, after that very wordy introduction in which Maugham claims the tale is autiobiographical, even though it is actually fiction (as opposed to [b: Of Human Bondage|31548|Of Human Bondage|W. Somerset Maugham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924695l/31548._SY75_.jpg|2547187], which presents itself as a novel, but is actually aotobiographical), Maugham introduces us to Elliott Templeton, an American ex-pat living in France, and snob extraordinare:

He was a colossal snob. He was a snob without shame. He would put up with any affront, he would ignore any rebuff, he would swallow any rudeness to get asked to a party he wanted to go to or to make a connexion with some crusty old dowager of great name. He was indefatigable. When he had fixed his eye on his prey he hunted it with the persistence of a botanist who will expose himself to dangers of flood, earthquake, fever, and hostile natives to find an orchid of perculiar rarity.

By the fifth chapter, when Maugham and Elliott end up visiting Chicago at the same time, the story picks up pace. Elliott invites Maugham to meet his widowed sister and niece. At nineteen:

Isabel was a tall girl with the oval face, straight nose, fine eyes, and full mouth that appeared to be characteristic of the family. She was comely though on the fat side, which I ascribed to her age, and I guessed that she would fine down as she grew older. She had strong, good hands, though they also were a trifle fat, and her legs, displayed by her short skirt, were fat too. She had a good skin and a high colour, which exercise and the drive back in an open car had doubtless heightened. She was sparkling and vivacious. Her radiant health, her playful gaiety, her enjoyment of life, the happiness you felt in her were exhilarating. She was so natural that she made Elliott, for all his elegance, look rather tawdry. Her freshness made [her mother], with her pasty, lined face, look tired and old.

Isabel has a fiance, Larry, who Maugham describes as "in no way remarkable." He left school during The Great War, ran away to Canada where he convinced them he was 18, joined the air corps and was fighting in France at the time of the armistice. The war has changed him and now he has no desire to take a job and settle down as he's expected. Instead, he wants to travel and "loaf," satisfied to live off the modest allowance left to him by his deceased parents.

Elliott and his sister do not approve. They want Larry to take a job or for Isabel to find a more suitable husband, like Larry's best friend, Gray Maturin, the son of a successful investment broker, who is also in love with Isabel. At twenty:

Gray Maturin was striking rather than handsome. He had a rugged, unfinished look; a short blunt
nose, a sensual mouth, and the florid Irish complexion; a great quantity of raven black hair, very sleek, and under heavy eyebrows clear, very blue eyes. Though built on so large a scale, he was finely proportioned, and stripped he must have been a fine figure of a man. He was obviously very powerful. His virility was impressive. He made Larry who was sitting next to him, though only three or four inches shorter, look puny.

By the time Maugham departs Chicago, Larry has decided to spend two years in France. Isabel will remain engaged to him while he is away, with the condition that after those two years, he'll return to the U.S. and get a job. When Maugham next encounters Elliott back in France, he learns that Larry has rebuffed all of Elliott's attempts to integrate him into Parisian society, instead living in a tiny room and spending his days reading. When Isabel and her mother come to visit Elliott, intending to bring Larry back with them, he refuses, saying that he prefers his current life.

"You're so wrong, Larry. You're an American. Your place isn't here. Your place is in America."
"I shall come back when I'm ready."
"But you're missing so much. How can you bear to sit here in a backwater just when we're living through the most wonderful adventure the world has ever known? Europe's finished. We're the greatest, the most powerful people in the world. We're going forward by leaps and bounds. We've got everything. It's your duty to take part in the development of your country. You've forgotten, you don't know how thrilling life is in America today. Are you sure you're not doing this because you haven't the courage to stand up to the work that's before every American now? Oh, I know you're working in a way, but isn't it just an escape from your responsibilities? Is it more than just a sort of laborious idleness? What would happen to America if everyone shirked as you're shirking?"

He proposes a bohemian life to Isabel, traveling on the cheap, toting their babies with them, but she can't picture herself living that way and breaks the engagement. Although they remain on good terms, she returns to Chicago with her mother, Larry leaves Paris, and Maugham loses touch with both of them, although he hears from Elliott that Isabel has married Gray.

Ten years later, having lost everything in the wake of the stock market crash, Isabel and Gray move to Paris to live in Elliott's vacant apartment with their two young daughters. Maugham renews his acquaintance with them, finding them both much changed: Isabel has matured into a stunning (and no longer "fat"...::sigh::) lady, while Gray is a broken shell of the man he once was, balding and truly fat. And then Larry also returns to Paris, and the four become an odd little social group. Complications arise, of course, as Isabel struggles with her complicated feelings for Gray and Larry. Another woman from their old Chicago social circle shows up, broken from her own loss, and complicates things further.

I couldn't help but notice a few parallels between The Razor's Edge and The Great Gatsby. Both are told from the POV of a narrator who was in the midst of the action, but as much of an observer as an active participant, not wholly part of the society in which the main characters move. Both feature a young woman who chose money over love when choosing a husband. But that's where the simarities end.

Maugham's characters are more rounded and more likable than Fitzgerald's. While Isabel can be snobby and self-serving, she's nowhere near as vain and selfish as Daisy. Gray can be a bit thick, but he's a much better man than Tom Buchanen:

Gray's conversation was composed of clichés. However shop-worn, he uttered them with an obvious conviction that he was the first person to think of them. He never went to bed, but hit the hay, where he slept the sleep of the just; if it rained, it rained to beat the band and to the very end Paris to him was Gay Paree. But he was so kindly, so unselfish, so upright, so reliable, so unassuming that it was impossible not to like him.

And Larry, of course, is the anti-Gatsby. Instead of accumulating wealth and material possessions, Larry gathers knowledge and quests for universal truths. With many similarities to Maugham, some critics see Larry as an alter-ego of the author: a way for him to explain all the things he's learned through his own traveling and "loafing." Conversations between the characters of Maugham and Larry, especially the one which takes place over the course of a late night in a Parisian café, are really just literary soapboxes for Maughan the author. It's prefaced with this caution:

I feel it right to warn the reader than he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book.

Even if Maugham's primary goal with this novel was to introduce the Vedanta, the Hindu religious system that Larry studies, and which Maugham himself studied in his own visits to an ashram, this novel is so much more. He takes on upper-class snobbery, societal expectations, personal fulfillment, female independence (this review hasn't even touched upon the characters of Suzanne and Sophie, but they are both fascinating), all within a well-crafted narrative. show less

For a work about self-absorbed characters on concurrent quests to attain enlightenment or materialism, the novel ignores the trope of complete condemnation of one and crowning of the other and is sparing in its use of metaphors and florid literary embellishments. Instead, the novel is Larry personified, quietly unassuming, sporadically appearing in the timeline to discourse on philosophical and existential ideals in its own conversational and non-judgmental way, accepting of its fellow character's flaws.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the novel is the characters. The best is, of course, Isabel whose self-awareness of her petty jealousies and spoiltness is a refreshing relief, standing out even in a cast of characters such as this one, each show more with their selfish desires and vices. With the exception of the Great Depression during which all the characters basically escaped unscathed, nothing of importance really happens, or at least, things happened but everybody still managed to live the life they wanted. Yet somehow, some inexplicable combination of ordinary prose, ordinary characters and ordinary plotting contrived to make this an extraordinary read.

Aside:
- how excellent is Suzanne Rouvier's way of referring to her illness as "my typhoid"?
- what is with the author-character's obsession with Isabel's "fat legs"?
- lots of typos in my Vintage Classics copy.
- on page 320, when Maugham tells Larry that "you're free, white and twenty-one.", isn't Larry in his thirties by then? show less