S. Maugham

The legacy of S. Maugham is unequal, and modern researchers are increasingly inclined to think that its importance and place as an artist in the history of English literature is determined by the contribution to the art of the small genre. The writer also repeatedly emphasized his special attitude to the short story. The best proof of the skill of Maugham-novelist are the responses of his fellow writers. The starting point of the writer's characterology is the idea of the extraordinary complexity and inconsistency of the human phenomenon. Maugham doubts that hardly anyone " fully comprehended human nature." "I have studied it, consciously and unconsciously, for forty years, but even now people are a mystery to me," he wrote in his book Summing up. We find a similar thought in another work of the writer: "Man is the only inexhaustible subject. You can write about it all your life and touch only the surface of the topic."

Maugham held a high opinion of his own "ability to look closely at people." This requires, as he believed, " an open mind and a great interest in people." In addition, a necessary prerequisite for the artistic analysis of man for Maugham was medical education, which allowed him to deeply "understand human nature." The writer States:"I can almost without exaggeration say that I undertake to write a tolerable story about any person with whom I spent an hour of time."

In this story, Maugham touched upon a social problem such as the problem of parasitic Bohemia. It is possible to adore art, to admire talents, but at the same time to feel huge contempt for a caste of so-called "unrecognized geniuses" (which, obviously, so nobody recognizes). Especially those that are pulling the juice out of "the poor and the deprived of a creative vein" workaholic. This is without a drop of gratitude to the attitude of those who give them the opportunity to spend time in conversations about high, in idle idleness. Spiritual, not of this world, where they descend to earth.