Review (Of Human Bondage) and reflections

Gah, I've just realised how long it's been since I last checked in here, and how slack I've been about both reading from my list and writing about what I've read. Crossing off my reads from the last couple of months just now, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'd read a couple from my list by accident -- and then unpleasantly surprised to find that I couldn't remember anything about some of the books on my list or why, back in May, it seemed vital that I read them. I must have had my reasons, though; with luck it'll be more fun than not to rediscover them...

I've read a few books from my list since I last blogged here. The first was Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. It was a struggle. It was long. Under pressure, I might admit to having skimmed during the third quarter... Oh, look, I think I just have a prejudice against this kind of lengthy, physicaly detailed realism. It lacks the wry humour and absurdity of English Bildungsromans that came before (anything by Dickens, say), and the (similar?) playful absurdity of modernist novels. It's like there was a dry patch around the turn of the century -- meticulously described, carefully written, often autobiographical realism... it just doesn't do much for me. I'll speculate crazily and completely unqualified-ly and say that in my (limited) mental library, Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has a foot in both camps -- it does a bit of what Maugham does, carefully documenting material details of his childhood memory -- but it's more mindful of strucutre and plot, and more willing to break away and experiment with language and humour.

And that's all I have to say about that. Mostly, this book made me think about other writers whose work I much prefer, even when it's perhaps less carefully, comprehensively done. I suspect this just isn't a period I "get", aesthetically speaking. Sorry, Somerset...