Dominic Ward's Blog

Just finished this crazy little thing from Somerset Maughm.  Is Somerset my favourite writer?  Fuck no.  But with this anthem he gets as close as he ever will.  Hard and fast story of the creative process and the daimons that inhabit genius; a true pictorial of the Dionysian spirit.  Nietzsche paid him heaps for the representation.  Great characters, excellent work with the plot and a steep as fuck, hard to climb climax at the finish.  It has a similar climax to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which alone lifted my spirits no end.  Brutal, dark final final 30 pages.  Somerset must have had some serious Pluto transit when writing this; classic themes of annihilation and creation.  Pluto raping the Sun while Neptune looks on in a day-dream.  A lot of the book is based on olde-English misogyny, which I am not adverse to when done correctly.  In summation, this book was Graham Greene doing Conrad.  And succeeding!  Nice won, dead kunt.