The Gentleman in the Parlour by Somerset Maughan

Thailand trip

The Gentleman in the Parlour (1930, this edition 2001) is written about the author’s travels, taken in 1922, to Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand), and Cambodia. The new edition is sub-titled: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong. This is a more appropriate title. Maugham’s original title comes from a chapter in a book he was reading during his travels that he refers to as Hazlitt’s Essays (likely to be William Hazlitt’s 1817 book The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners).

The introduction by travel writer Paul Theroux sheds light on Maugham the traveller, rather than of him as an author. For example, Maugham did not travel alone, but with his companion Gerald Haxton, yet the novel does not mention this, and therefore it appears that he made the amazing journey on his own. However, Maugham’s shyness and stammer are well-known, and Haxton enabled Maugham to meet many people on his travels that he would otherwise have not been in contact with. This is not a travelogue as such – it is more of a travel story.

British novelist William Somerset Maugham (1974-1965) does acknowledge in the Preface to this edition (the preface written in 1935) that the hiatus between the travel and the novel enabled the impact of the journey that changed him to take effect and to see the experience with fresh eyes. It also enabled him to ‘manipulate’ his material so that the book flowed more harmoniously.

The book itself starts from Rangoon on his way to Mandalay. So it is not until page 21 that the book really progresses creatively: ‘Mandalay is a name … the falling cadence of the lovely word has gathered about itself the chiaroscuro of romance.’ Disappointingly, Mandalay is covered in only four pages.

Some of the more interesting sections include the 26-day mule (Shan pony) ride from Taunggyi to Keng Tung (chapters 15-17), and the week in Keng Tung (chapters 18-21). From Keng Tung he travels to Siam and onto Cambodia.

Maugham is at his funniest when he writes of Bangkok in Thailand, and at his creative best when describing the magnificent lost city of Angkor Wat in Cambodia (chapters 36-39) and Hanoi.

From: https://martinasblogs.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/the-gentleman-in-parlour-by-somerset.html

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Thailand trip

The book begins with the funeral of artist Molly Lane. Guests at the funeral include British Foreign Secretary Julian Garmony, newspaper editor Vernon Halliday, and composer Clive Linley. The three share certain attributes: each has a very high opinion of himself, each was at some time Molly’s lover, and each regards the dead woman’s husband, George, with a mixture of amusement and contempt.

Clive and Vernon muse upon Molly’s death. It seems she had some kind of rapid-onset brain disease (not specified) that left her helpless and mad. Neither man can understand her attraction to Julian Garmony, the right-wing Foreign Secretary who is about to challenge his party’s leadership.

Clive returns home to continue work on a symphony he has been commissioned to write for the forthcoming millennium. Much of the work is complete, save the crucial signature melody. He resolves to go walking in the Lake District, as this tends to inspire him.

Vernon is the editor of a newspaper whose readership is diminishing. He is trying to change the content of the paper to be more sensationalist. George, Molly’s husband, gives him a golden opportunity, but he and Clive argue furiously about the moral responsibility of the act.

In the Lake District, Clive faces a difficult moral decision himself. He chooses to walk away from a potentially dangerous situation he could have helped with, because his elusive melody, the crucial notes, have arisen and he has to get them down. Instead of helping, he crouches unseen besides a rock and writes his music.

During the course of the book Clive and Vernon become mortal enemies bent on exacting revenge. The consequences of their decisions, and a pact made between them, lead them both to Amsterdam where the novel’s dénouement plays out.

Wikipedia

The Divide

Old Vic

The Divide is an exhausting, laborious watch. At 3 hours 50 minutes long it’s positively abridged compared to the two-part six hour original version at the Edinburgh International Festival last year, but it remains a work that’s preoccupied by exposition rather than narrative.

Alan Ayckbourn’s latest play is epic in scope, packed full of teenage melodrama. His dystopian world is part The Handmaid’s Tale, part Romeo and Juliet, with a large dose of sci-fi: a plague carried solely by women is lethal to men, resulting in a split society where men live in the urban north and women the rural south. Same-sex couples are the norm; men and women are forbidden to touch, so children are bred through artificial insemination. Men dress in pure white, women in shameful black – all wear masks for protection. World rules are stated in a religious tome strictly adhered to.

Ayckbourn goes to such lengths to establish this cruel fundamentalism that he too readily forgets about his characters. At the heart of the plot is a simple love triangle: the young Soween has fallen for her friend Giella, but Giella (daughter to progressive parents) is in love with Soween’s brother Elihu. Forbidden love and rebellion against staunch parents in a frightening dystopia that darkly mirrors our own world – it sounds like the plot of a young adult novel, because that’s precisely what this should be.

Instead, Ayckbourn has written a play that’s hardly a play at all. Its problem is with form. In an interview in the programme, he describes it as “a strange sort of piece… It’s a narrative for voices.” In practice, this means a series of spoken diary entries, letters, reports and council meetings that barely hang together and give the impression of being lectured to. The old adage of “show don’t tell” is long forgotten. It’s not helped by Annabel Bolton’s direction that too often involves characters simply addressing the audience in front of a black curtain.

The design, from Laura Hopkins, is sparsely monochromatic and certainly suggestive of this bleak world, but aside from the odd image it feels drained of interest. And behind it all is an orchestra and choir performing music from Christopher Nightingale: a mix of classical instruments and futuristic synths that add a faux sense of operatic grandeur. None of this is subtle, but then neither is Ayckbourn’s script, so keen is he to hit us over the head with his gender politics and religious views.

Yet in the middle of it all is a genuinely beautiful story of sexual awakening and the triumph of love. Amongst a cast of characters lacking humanity, Erin Doherty offers a gripping and complex performance as the young Soween coming of age in a tragic, relatable manner. In an evening of dreary, stagnant over-moralising, she is a vital spark of youthful energy.

Ed Nightingale in exeunt