W.Somerset Maugham had thoughtfully written The Razor’s Edge in 1944, which is long before the common population could grasp the nature of stupid men and women, whom we now know as Page-Three people. The story is told in first-person narrative and Maugham interacts with the characters in a very subtle way; you would think he is also a fictional object in the book. Although I fully understand the theme, I find impossible to explain it. But that is a how his books are, so abstract, so universal and so serious. Maugham was an honest writer, a quality that most writers today do not have. He did not conceal his limitation; in the author’s note he acknowledged that he would be doing injustice if he tried to make his characters sound like Americans, so he asked nothing from the readers. It was considered a poor practise in the old days (it still is now) if a writer from one region tries to make the characters sound like the local populace of another region. For example, English writers using American slang or American writers English slang – a fake is a fake. Maugham used American characters in this book, but he had not decorated or manipulated the voice of Larry Darell, an American boy who is also the central figure in the story. The absence of canned dialogues makes The Razor’s Edge a true masterpiece. On a side note, look at the pathetic use of American accent in The Inscrutable Americans by an Indian author. I do not remember the author’s name though.
In The Razor’s Edge, readers will find lots and lots of parties thrown by some industrialist or some socialite whose only aim in life is to show their diamond ring or their new villa in the hills; very rich and boring people float freely in the pages. Their lives are purposeless and they put immense effort to impress one another with their social sense, which in fact is good wine and money. Achievement means a large number of well known guests attending a party.
This is the background in which Maugham planted Larry Darell, a young man in his mid-twenties, to form the plot. Larry makes acquaintance with Elliot Templeton, a classic American snob, who thought Larry would become a gentleman when he becomes fully mature. And there is Isabel, the fine young woman who loves Larry but who is unable to decide between love and wealth. There are many other interesting characters in the story as well, but I would like the prospective reader to discover them by reading the book, so I will limit my review only with the main characters.
Larry had joined the infantry in the Great War, and everybody around him thought he would settle down with a pretty wife and a respectable job when he returns; he does the opposite. He showed no intention of returning to the normal way of life as any man would do, instead he spent his time doing whatever he liked but which never worth anything at all. He was searching for peace, for the answers to the riddles of life, for god; it happened because of the horror he saw in the war.
Although he had no money, he started to travel. He comes to Paris and stays for some time in a dingy hotel where he did a lot of reading. Then Isabel finally decides not to marry him because he had no proper source of income and had been considered worthless by his circle. She used common sense and exercised practicality in making the decision because even though she loved him, she knew that it would be suicidal to have a husband who spends his time on theories and daydreams instead of finding ways to fill the stomach and mend the roof.
Larry travels to London and many other places before he lands in India, where he takes refugee in an ashram in the south. He probably finds the answer to his question there because after some time he returns to America to earn a living – driving taxi.
I will leave a blank space on Elliot Templeton, this because his nature is too typical to explain here. The prospective reader will enjoy reading about him in the book. Anyway Templeton is a man who spent his lifetime in doing and receiving favours for this or that celebrity, and who, when he was old and dying was not invited to a grand party he had always wanted to attend. This is what Maugham wrote about him:
“I had not the heart to laugh at Elliot any more; he seemed to me a profoundly pathetic object. Society was what he lived for, a party was the breath of his nostril, not to be asked to one was an affront, to be alone was a mortification; and, an old man now, he was desperately afraid.”
The end of the book looks like a non-fiction account. The characters silently disappear into their normal course of life. There is no event out of the ordinary as in other novels that mark the end; however, the reader will find the end really satisfying. Each character got what he or she deserved.
One more thing, at the beginning of my review I wrote that I find it impossible to explain the theme of The Razor’s Edge. I will tell you why. Maugham had explicitly said to many interviewers during the course of his career that he prefers to sow hints at his pages and to leave the final conclusion to the hands of readers. The message would be prone to misinterpretation, which he said is okay as long as good readers (not readers) roam the earth, because they would eventually know what he was trying to convey through his written work.
And most unsuspecting readers believe that The Razor’s Edge offers a fine argument to return to spirituality. That is okay. But Maugham never said Larry Darell was a good man in the novel. He just offered comments here and there with a few examples but never really gave any judgement on Larry except this:
“I am of the earth, earthly; I can only admire the radiance of such a rare creature, I cannot step into his shoes and enter into his innermost heart as I sometimes think I can do with persons more nearly allied to the common run of men. Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world’s confusion, so wishful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful, and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States. That is all I can tell of him…”
It appears on the last page of the novel. I think I know what Maugham was trying to say. If I take a walk at Paharganj near the New Delhi railway station, I would find lots and lots of Larry Darells in untold numbers sleeping in the hotels.
Spirituality is good, but it is harmful to totally ignore earthly goals. In the story, Larry happens to fall in love with a woman, Sophie, who Isabel disliked. Sophie dies in a freak accident and Larry is unable to arrange a decent burial for her because he had no money. Maugham paid the fee for it. It would be a mistake to consider Larry as the hero in The Razor’s Edge because the author never said he was. A boy who grew up in America, who went to war, who was loved by a pretty girl, who was offered a highly paid job by his friend, and all of this without any effort of his – he could have made a good living.
What could one say of a man who got every possible opportunity in life but did not take them for a desire to unravel personal mysteries and who travelled the world in search of it only to end up as a taxi driver in the end when conscience came and when the stomach growled for food?
I recommend this book to every good reader. I assure them that they will be glad for having read it during their lifetime.