Four essays on an unexplained departure, Stroeve’s unbearable recognition, genius without excuse, and two truths the canon prefers to merge.
Maugham’s fictional Charles Strickland has been absorbed into the modern myth of abandoning the sixpence for the moon. The novel itself is less consoling. Compulsion produces art and harm; retrospective admiration is always tempted to convert the first into an excuse for the second.
The essays keep those truths separate. They also attend to the narrator, whose curiosity constructs Strickland for us while repeatedly admitting that explanation remains unavailable.
W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence. Full-book spoilers throughout.
Strickland’s departure resists both scandal and inspiration: no affair, no noble speech, only a compulsion he cannot translate.
Dirk Stroeve can recognize greatness in the man who has destroyed his marriage; that recognition is both noble and unbearable.
Genius can explain the scale of Strickland’s compulsion and the later value of his work; it cannot retroactively authorize the people he used.
The paintings are great; Strickland harmed people. Mature judgment begins by refusing to purchase either truth with the other.
四篇文章，从没有理由的离开、施特略夫难以承受的识见、不能成为借口的天才，到经典化试图合并的两件真事。
毛姆虚构的查尔斯·思特里克兰德，后来被吸收到“放下六便士、追逐月亮”的现代神话里。小说本身远没有这样安慰人：内在强迫同时产生艺术与伤害，而后来的赞美总想把前者换成后者的借口。
四篇文章坚持把两件事实分开，也关注那个为读者建构思特里克兰德、却不断承认解释仍不可得的叙述者。
威廉·萨默塞特·毛姆《月亮与六便士》。全书剧透。