William Somerset Maugham's "Bag of Books."

December 23, 2010 at 10:14 P.M. "Errors" inserted in writings have been corrected. My turn tomorrow, boys and girls.

November 27, 2010 at 5:01 P.M. Finally, after trying several times and seeing my computer turned off by hackers, I was able to complete a scan and, painfully, to make my way back to this blog. I will do my best to continue writing from public computers tomorrow.

November 24, 2010 at 11:14 A.M. One letter removed from the text overnight has now been restored to this essay. A date was changed in the list of sources. Still less than I expected. Come on, boys. Don't let me down. ("The Heidegger Controversy" and "Cubanazos Pose a Threat to National Security!")

November 23, 2010 at 10:26 P.M. Spacing was affected since my previous review of this essay, but there was less vandalism than I anticipated. Are the Cubanazos running out of gas? ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba" and "Miami's Cubanoids Protest Against Peace!")

My oasis during a difficult adolescence ("you're still an adolescent!") was the old public library in the urban industrial town where I lived. Dusty shelves untouched for decades contained forgotten volumes of poetry and adventure by once celebrated authors. I especially liked a section of the fiction shelves devoted to "boy's adventure books."

Yes, this area of the library contained all of the James Bond novels. In fairness, however, there were also Mark Twain's stories and Jack London's tales for boys. This was not entirely a British enclave. Among late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novels in that wonderful library, I discovered books by Stevenson, Kipling, Saki, Conan-Doyle, Wells and many more. Reading became an exiting adventure as opposed to the boring and excruciating torment endured at my school.

Girls -- whose mysterious and annoying ways were baffling and relegated to an alternate universe only beginning to delight me -- were endowed with their own section in the fiction ailes that contained books of bizarre vintage about subjects like tea sets, dresses, and dolls. Fantasy stories, like "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan" (curiously), were also in the girls' section. Few adventure stories were then described as "fitting subjects" for girls.

Today we recognize that girls and boys are equally entitled to have adventures and be heros. Harry Potter would be at a loss without Hermione Granger. Let us now take a moment to feel superior to our ancestors. With a sip of our imported bottled water and a deep bite into our "organic" kiwi fruits, we may sigh at the unelightened age from which we have escaped. On the wall to my left as I type at my home computer is a sign that I purchased for my daughter when she was an adolescent which reads: "Girls rule, boys drool!"

Anyway, after our orgasm of political correctness, I close my eyes to conjure a vivid image of William Somerset Maugham's A Writer's Notebook and The Summing Up, also On Literature. In one of those original editions, I found Maugham's description of South Sea journeys and notes for his celebrated short stories. George Santayana described these brief fictional works as characterized by the "logic of dreams and the imagery of high art." Borges found them fascinating. I cannot think of a better review for a short story writer. The goal is to "fascinate" the reader by performing an unforgettable magic trick in every story. ("Serendipity, III" and "Out of the Past.")

Maugham was much celebrated in the first half of the twentieth century for his acerbic and disturbing stories. These stories were deemed superior to Maugham's novels (debatable), including Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge, or The Moon and Six Pence. Maugham is one of the literary Masters who can teach you how to write a short story -- an art form which is unique and, like drama in verse, nearly vanished in the age of "The Simpsons" -- because short story writing is a literary craft with a moral purpose. Does all literature have a moral purpose? Please discuss and argue all points of view. Anyone who can write a good short story can also write a novel. ("Master and Commander" and "Magician's Choice.")

Stories in the Edwardian period were meant to instruct the young, like Harry Potter movies today. J.K. Rowling may be a more attractive version of Maugham reincarnated and in drag, except that Maugham was Maugham reincarnated and in drag. With his celebrated upper-crust lisp and curl of the lip, cutting and witty remarks glittering on the page -- Maugham's literary voice occasionally hesitates for effect -- Britain's answer to Maupassant, friend to Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward and Joseph Conrad, sighed in one thousand words or less over the loss of an empire, finding solace in revealing the intimate and sordid secrets of fading colonial beauties together with their adulterous (or murderous) adventures when Edward was king and all was right with the world. (That was a pretty good sentence!)

The need for compression of ideas, together with the telling effect of a single image or the sounds of words in brief fictions stayed with me. I have tried to develop these methods in working on a long novel, as did Maugham and his master, Thomas Mann. The influence of the Maugham technique can be seen in the short works of diverse writers such as Cheever, Updike, Pym (novels as short stories), Le Carre, Roth, Vidal, Bowen, Salinger and many more.

Yesterday I held in my hand a novel by Le Carre (The Constant Gardener) that I want. I shed a bitter tear as I replaced the book on the shelf at Barnes & Noble rather than "drop," as it were, the fifteen bucks it would cost me to take this orphaned volume home. Life is loss and fond farewells. I will have to wait a week to get that book. Luckily, I am now reading the novel (at last!) and found the DVD for less than I would have paid for it at Barnes & Noble. Given recent events in Nigeria, this novel is scary in anticipating history. Literature has that power.

I recall an essay entitled "A Bag of Books," which offers an essential guide for the explorer of the human heart travelling to (at the time) His Royal Majesty's colonies in the Pacific and China Seas. Maugham insists that one must be well-supplied with one gigolo or courtesan -- depending on taste -- a single canteen with good English brandy (which is difficult to find among "wogs," like me), suitable clothes (including evening attire), and one large "bag of books." A pistol was deemed optional, unless one was travelling to America where a firearm was deemed essential -- especially in Chicago. Henry James warned Maugham to be very careful in Chicago. Some things never change. William Somerset Maugham refused to set foot in New Jersey.

During the forthcoming holiday, I will be travelling to New Jersey. I will carry a whip, gun and camera, together with a worn leather backpack. I will wear a pit helmet. I will also take a "bag of books" for my journey on the sinister and ancient steam train provided by New Jersey Transit that was once called "The Orient Express." Evil persons wearing eye patches -- like Bob Menendez or Richard J. Codey -- hover around every corner in New Jersey.

At the hotel where I stayed in Paris all the fixtures came from the original Orient Express trains. I felt like a character in an Agatha Christie novel in that hotel. I will be ready for the usual adventures that await me in that sinister territory of swamplands and political corruption. I mean New Jersey, not Paris. The stench of the Garden State is sufficient to inform visitors of the evil that thrives in that territory, growing and spreading like a foul fungus. Xanadu is the next stop. All aboard.

What will be in my bag of books? Several volumes of short stories will accompany me since I have finished Howard Jacobson's opus on "Finklers" of all varieties. I will study these stories by the great masters for technique and form. In the event that I am accosted by New Jersey politicians, I will be ready for tea and biscuits -- or fisticuffs, as the case may be -- as any proper Edwardian gentleman should be. ("Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author.")

I can only hope to avoid Christopher Christie who is known to the natives of the Garden State only as "Kong." Mr. Christie insists on the sacrifice of a virgin on every holiday, preferably a blond female. This year it has been difficult to find a suitable victim in Trenton -- or in New Jersey! Mr. Sweeney will not do.

A single effective short story can plant a question or image in the mind of the reader forever. I believe that I have succeeded on a few occasions in writing good short stories, despite being "retarded," according to New Jersey's experts. I am working on a short fiction, at the moment, describing the most singular adventure of Ms. Jane Bond of the C.I.A. and an essay on the legal theory of H.L.A. Hart. I am also finishing the first draft of the introduction to a long autobiographical novel. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold. Nothing feeds one's hatred better than coping with "errors" inserted in these writings and looking into the smiling faces of hypocrites one knows to have assisted enemies in plunging daggers into one's back. Maria? Lots of luck. ("More Trouble for Ridgewood, New Jersey" and "Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'")

"It is not hard to state what Poe meant by a good short story: it is a piece of fiction, dealing with a single incident, material or spiritual, that can be read at a sitting; it is original, it must sparkle, excite or impress; and it must have unity of effect or impression. It should move in an even line from its exposition to its close. To write a story on the principles [Edgar Allan Poe] laid down is not so easy as some think. It requires intelligence, not perhaps of a very high order, but of a special kind; it requires a sense of form and no small powers of invention. No one in England has written stories on these lines better than Rudyard Kipling [William Somerset Maugham?] Among English writers of short stories he alone can bear comparison with the masters of France and Russia. At present he is unduly depreciated."

William Somerset Maugham, "The Short Story," in On Literature (New York & London: Signet Classics, 1967), at p. 87.

Bag of Books:

William Somerset Maugham, On Literature (New York: Signet, 1967).

J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories (New York & London: Bantam, 1977).

Irving Howe, ed., Jewish American Stories (New York: Signet New American Library, 1977).

Fredrick R. Karl, ed., The Signet Classic Book of British Short Stories (New York: Signet, 1985).

Burton Raffel, ed., The Signet Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (New York: Signet, 1986).