Of Human Bondage

Many scholars have answered “why read classics,” and I couldn’t answer better than, say, Harold Bloom. If I had the choice, I’d pick contemporary books for pleasure. I wouldn’t voluntarily pick up a classic. But this summer, I read Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham for my research.
As a literature student, my initial reaction was that its writing style felt outdated. It doesn’t employ experimental techniques, no stream-of-consciousness, no unreliable narrators, no free indirect discourse. It simply follows a boy growing into a man, told in straightforward chronological order. I thought it was going to be dull. But… show more.

This was one of the few books I read during my teens that seemed to describe accurately the angst of growing up in a world where no one teaches you how to be an adult, and you learn simply to cope and, possibly and with luck, thrive after a series of bad personal experiences. 

The protagonist in it is born with a club foot (which most equate to Maugham's stutter or, more likely, his closeted homosexuality), which makes him always an outsider yet also a keen observer of others.  I have always thought this to be one of the best… show more.

This book’s magic comes from its plot. I would say it is the most unputdownable book I have ever read. But once again, it deals with a simple human experience—in this case, of a young man obsessed by a woman. There are times when you feel like shouting at the main male character: “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” And of course he does do it, and you want to find out what happens. I remember that I recommended this novel to a friend, who didn’t believe it could be so unputdownable—but he found himself… show more.

I first read Maugham’s 1916 semi-autobiographical novel in the sixth form. It describes late-Victorian adolescence and early manhood but, from my self-absorbed point of view as an Eighties teenager, it could have been written specially for me.

The one element that jarred was Mildred, the waitress with whom Philip Carey falls madly and inappropriately (because of their class difference) in love. Maugham makes her so ghastly, it’s hard to know what his hero sees in her.

Her character makes much more sense when you know (as I didn’t at the time) that the author was discreetly gay. Maugham’s own transgression… show more.