Short Story – The Art, and An Artist

 

‘It is natural for men to tell tales, and I suppose the short story was created in the night of time when the hunter, to beguile the leisure of his fellows when they had eaten and drunk their full, narrated by the cavern fire some fantastic incident he had heard of’. Thus speculates Somerset Maugham on the origin of short story in his eponymous essay. This was the story he wrote and he wrote a many.

Maugham was immensely popular as a writer of short stories in the first half of the twentieth century, notwithstanding the turn of cold-shoulder – doubtlessly spurred by his huge commercial success – of the literary high-brows. His stories stand out by their bewitchingly singular simplicity, a plain, conversational prose that is effortless to read, and a plot that binds your attention from the first word to the last.

Many of his tales are constructed around a quirky human behaviour, one that most men will find immoral. In a score of them he juxtaposes good and dishonourable in the same person. In the essay Maugham says that a writer ‘writes as he can, and as he must, because he is a certain sort of man, he has his own parts and his own temperament, so that he sees things in a manner peculiar to himself, and gives his vision the form that is forced upon him by nature.’ Maugham’s unconventional personal life fashioned his unique world view. This gives his stories a freshness that often takes your breath away. His capacity, at least as a narrator of the tale, to be an indifferent, non-judgemental purveyor of the human drama is unparalleled. One is tempted to believe that he was as tolerant of human foibles in life as he comes across in his stories.

Another conspicuous feature of his short stories is his brevity – there is not a word too many and not one too little. He quotes Anton Chekhov, another master story-writer known for his extremely sparing prose, - ‘Everything that has no relation to it [story] must be ruthlessly thrown away. If in the first chapter you say that a gun hung on a wall, in the second or third chapter it must without fail be discharged.’

Broadly, writers of short stories are either realist or inventive. Former give reader a slice of unadorned life as it exists in nature. Chekhov wrote highly appreciated stories in this genre. An inventive writer takes interesting facts from life and arranges them in a pattern so as to produce the effect he has in mind. Maugham was in the latter category. He believed that ‘Fact is a poor story-teller. It starts a story at haphazard, generally long before the beginning, rambles on inconsequently and tails off, leaving loose ends hanging about, without a conclusion’. To give the reader only bare facts, is not offering him a story. Such authors only ‘give you [reader] the material on which you can invent your own [story]’. He stressed that ‘fiction should use life merely as raw material which it arranges in ingenious patterns’.

Maugham believed that proper aim of the writer of fiction is not to instruct but to please. For he believed that ‘most people read work of fiction because they have nothing much else to do. They read for pleasure’. Fiction is not to enlighten them about the intricacies of living, the moral dilemmas, the conflicts in society, or the subtleties of human behaviour. Its prime objective is to gratify the yearning for pleasure in some dreary, idle moments – ‘For only the very ingenuous can suppose that a work of fiction can give us reliable information on the topics which it is important to us for the conduct of our lives to be apprised of. … The novelist is incompetent to deal with such matters, his not to reason why, but to feel, to imagine and to invent.’

Now, it would be naïve to assume that good stories have not been written that combine joys of reading with an astute commentary on the society, and the human condition. Charles Dickens’s enticing tales were never divorced from the depravity of the society in his time. Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, VS Naipaul amongst innumerable others composed engrossing tales, that elegantly and often poignantly portrayed varied facets of life as were prevalent in the times they wrote and which they chose as a muse for their art. But the element of entertainment was supreme in their narrative. And all of them employed the universal attributes of a story i.e., plot, surprise, and drama, to put forth their point.

In the art of story writing Maugham considered Guy de Maupassant his mentor. Like Maupassant’s tales, most of Maugham’s unforgettable stories are knit around an anecdote. It is his awe-inspiring felicity with the art of story-telling, through which he builds up events, characters, and the atmosphere around this anecdote to achieve the effect he has in mind. Throughout the tale, he never loses grip of this objective. In the essay, he clearly elucidates what a good short story is – attributing these thoughts to another great master of short story, Edgar Allan Poe, - ‘It is a piece of fiction, dealing with a single incident, material or spiritual, that can be read at a sitting. … it should move in an even line from its exposition to its close’.

Maugham believed that a short story’s soul lay in its plot – ‘The skeleton of story is of course its plot … a plot has … a beginning, a middle and an end. It is complete in itself’. His capability to dramatize and his sense of timing were matchless – perhaps honed by decades of involvement in theatre as one of the most successful playwright in London.

Maugham was a ‘teller’ of tales and not a ‘writer’ of stories. He told stories that ‘you can tell … over the dinner table or in a ship’s smoking room’ and thus ‘hold the attention of your listeners’. His stories are thus fundamentally different from Chekhov’s. Chekhov wrote about the day-worn life situations of ordinary people. Maugham wrote about ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations. Defending the ordinary in everyday life Chekhov said, ‘People do not go to the North Pole and fall off icebergs; they go to offices, quarrel with their wives, and eat cabbage soup’. To this Maugham’s quip was, ‘in order to make a story they must steal the petty cash at the office, murder or leave their wives, and when they eat their cabbage soup it must be with emotion or significance’.

It is with an open-mouthed wonderment that one appreciates the consistent precision of Maugham’s short stories in his vast oeuvre. Maugham was often paid the back-handed compliment of being a competent writer. Perhaps, his critiques were euphemistically saying that he wrote stories with the uncanny accuracy of a mathematical formula, hinting that art is not this accurate, it follows a less meticulous and freer meandering path, breaking from the confines of any imposed restrictions. Maugham was only too aware of this deceptive praise. In preface to an anthology of his short stories, he explained his alleged competence thus, – ‘My prepossessions in the arts are on the side of law and order. I like a story that fits. … [A writer] arranges life to suit his purposes. … He distorts facts to his advantages, according to his plan. … I do not care for a shapeless story. To my mind it is not enough when the writer gives you the plain facts seen through his own eyes. … I think he should impose a pattern on them’. Reader’s gratification was supreme in his mind. Reader, he thought, ‘does not like to be left wondering. He wants to have his questions answered.’

Despite this meticulous care he bestowed on his writing, he wouldn’t discount the role of fate in the success of a story, - ‘It is a ticklish thing to write a short story, and its success depends, more than the author’s conception, power of expression, skill in construction, invention and imagination, on luck. … Whether you hit upon a story of not, whether it comes off or not, is very much a matter of luck. Stories are lying about at every street corner, but the writer may not be there at the moment they are waiting to be picked up’.

Maugham wrote short stories of varied lengths – from a mere fifteen hundred words to staggering fifteen thousand. But the form he excelled in, and was an unequalled master of, was the long short-story. This sounds, and is, an oxymoron. But it aptly describes a story that is too long to be called a short-story, and too short to qualify as a novella. His long stories appeared in five collections between 1921 and 1933. Later, his complete short stories were issued in four collected volumes. Maugham himself curated this anthology, leaving out many stories he had written in his youth and which he thought were so ‘immature’ as to be ‘best forgotten’. In these volumes he follows a group of long stories with a group of short one. He also tries to group the stories of a similar locale together.

I read all the volumes – devoured hungrily, would be more appropriate – decades back. I have read many of his stories repeatedly in these years. But I did not again read a volume from its first page to the last. Well ensconced in middle-years, I have now reached a truce with my insatiable greed for gorging on new books. I frequently, and deliberately, pick up books that I read sometime back, and which were a source of unalloyed joys. These books are like the pillars on a metro rail line. They inform the address of the locality – the localities I passed through, and am still traversing, in my riveting journey of reading. 

I begin with stories in Volume I. Rain is the first story in this volume.

 

Maugham could not find a publisher for his most famous short story when he wrote it in 1920. Maugham had visited the South China Sea islands in 1916-17, his El-dorado, which he incessantly mined for his stunning tales. One night, he chanced upon the young American playwright John Colton at the Hollywood Hotel, who was sleepless and looking for something to read. Maugham gave Colton the unpublished story ‘ Rain’, then titled ‘Miss Thompson’, to read. Next day, Colton was wild with ecstasy. He wanted to adapt the story into a play, but could not afford the rights. Story soon found a magazine, The Smart Set, and launched Maugham’s roaringly popular career in magazine-stories. It was an instantaneous hit. And went on to earn Maugham close to one million dollars in his lifetime – it has been dramatized, filmed three times, turned into musical, and made basis of a ballet.

On his Pacific tour, Maugham visited Pago-Pago island, capital of American Samoa. He was delayed on the island due to a quarantine inspection and was quartered in a lodge, that also sheltered few other inmates of the boat he had travelled in. His notes, later published as A Writer’s Notebook, contain three entries from his stay at Pago-Pago. These describe the characters of Miss Thompson, The missionaries, and the lodging house. Four years later he modelled Rain on these notes.

Maugham faithfully copied his impressions onto the story, not even bothering to change the name of the prostitute, who is Sadie Thompson in the story. His note on Ms Thompson had described her thus.

Miss Thompson. Plump, pretty in a coarse fashion, perhaps not more than twenty-seven: she wore a white dress and a large white hat, and long white boots from which her calves, in white cotton stockings, bulged. She had left Iwelei after the raid and was on her way to Apia, where she hoped to get a job in the bar of a hotel. She was brought to the house by the quartermaster, a little, very wrinkled man, indescribably dirty.

 

On a ship bound for Apia, are Dr Mcphail, his wife, and the missionaries, Mr Davidson and his wife. On Pago-Pago island, a case of measles is discovered and ship is detained, to rule out a case in the crew, before it is allowed to sale on to Apia. The four Americans take shelter in a bedraggled lodge-house, belonging to a half-caste.

Story is narrated from Dr Mcphail’s point of view. He is a neutral character, not unlike the writer. Davidsons are self-righteous prudes. They have found the natives of the islands sinful, a godless people. Davidsons would rid them of their sins. When they arrived on the islands, Mrs Davidson tells Dr McPhail, natives ‘had no sense of sin at all. … They broke the commandments one after the other and never knew they were doing wrong’. The most difficult part of their job was ‘to instil into the natives the sense of sin. … They were so naturally depraved that they couldn’t be brought to see their wickedness’. Davidsons have had to ‘make sins out of what they [natives] thought were natural actions. … not only to commit adultery and to lie and thieve, but to expose their bodies, and to dance. … For a girl to show her bosom and … for a man not to wear trousers’.

On the ship to Apia is also travelling Sadie Thompson. Earlier she worked in a red-light district of the Iwelie town. Persistent agitation by missionaries had forced the authorities to close the district and evict all sex-workers. Miss Thompson is also headed for Apia, in search of work. She too has taken a room in the same lodge as houses the missionaries and McPhails.

Soon, sounds of loud music and wild mirth announce that Miss Thompson has setup her business in the house. Davidson is enraged. He will not allow the house he lives in to be turned into a brothel and goes to advice Ms Thompson to change her immoral ways. She turns him out.

Davidson in now possessed with an insane zeal to root out the sin; and the sinner with it, – ‘I shall act and I shall act promptly. If the tree is rotten it shall be cut down and cast into the flames’. He uses all his clout with the governor of the colony, who is forced to evacuate Miss Thompson to San Francisco, a punishment she dreads. For, a jail term of three years awaits her there. She is shamed, brought down on her knees and pleads with Davidson to intervene with governor. He will not rescind his word – ‘She’s sinned, and she must suffer. … She will be starved and tortured and humiliated. I want her to accept the punishment of man as a sacrifice to God’.

Atmosphere at the lodge-house becomes suffocating – ‘The whole household, intent on the wretched, tortured woman downstairs, lived in a state of unnatural excitement. She was like a victim that was being prepared for the savage rites of a bloody idolatory’.

An incessant rain starts and falls menacingly in Pago-Pago. Maugham uses rain to enhance the forbidding, dark, and brooding atmosphere of the story. Rain and the evil lurking in the air makes all the inhabitants, except the missionaries, jittery. ‘Dr Mcphail watched the rain. It was beginning to get on his nerves. It was not like our soft English rain that drops on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignance of the primitive powers of nature. It did not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled on the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence that was maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own. And sometimes you felt that you must scream if it did not stop, and then suddenly you felt powerless, as though your bones had suddenly become soft, and you were miserable and hopeless.’

Miss Thompson soon understands that she must meet the ordeal but she is numb with fear. She asks Davidson to pray with her. He obliges willingly – ‘She hung upon him with a slavish dependence. … Meanwhile the rain fell with a cruel persistence. You felt that the heavens must at last be empty of water, but still it poured down … with a maddening iteration, on the iron roof.’

Davidson spends long hours in orgies of prayer in Miss Thompson’s room. Maugham hints and very feebly, that these may not have been the orgies of only prayer. Few nights before Miss Thompson’s deportation, Davidson is down with fever, so passionately is he repenting with Miss Thompson, to save her soul. He tells his wife that he had been dreaming about the mountains of Nebraska, in the last few nights. Dr Mcphail is intrigued as Mrs Davidson tells him this. He has viewed these mountains once from the windows of a train in America. And ‘it struck him they were like a woman’s breasts’.

On the morning of Miss Thompson’s departure, Davidson’s body is found lying on the beach, his throat cut, in a self-inflicted wound, from ear to ear.

The gramophone that was silent for long starts playing again in Miss Thompson’s room. Dressed once again in her finery, her face painted, she spits as Dr Mcphail passes by her door. ‘You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You’re all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!’ She screams with contemptuous hatred.

Without once being judgemental, Maugham masterfully exposes the hypocrisy of religious piety. He narrates missionary’s religious zeal as dispassionately as the coarse and vulgar ways of Miss Thompson. The bigoted cruelty of religion is as much a physical element in the story as is the menacing rain.

Rain is a perfect story told in a narrative style. From the first word to the last, it follows the line, as conceived by its author. Descriptions of nature and surroundings are minimal and are only an aid to advance the plot. Maugham’s vast body of work is studded with such gems.

 

This essay, purporting to speak about the beauty in Maugham’s short story, unlike its muse, threatens to become ungraciously huge. I would dawdle on few other stories in Vol I, in the next post.