Maugham's novels will always be the first love of the past.

I don't know why Chinese people like Maugham so much. Last year, Yilin Publishing House published an 11-volume collection of Maugham's works, and this year, Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House have Selena Hastings's Biography of Maugham, which is said to be "respected by M á Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Borges, Zhang ailing and Naipaul." In fact, in the history of western literature, Maugham has always been regarded as a second-rate writer. British writer H E Bates once said: "Maugham's influence is not and will not be far-reaching and broad in the future." Even Maugham himself called himself "at the top of the list of second-rate writers". It is all too easy to point out the shortcomings of Maugham's novels. First of all, he is so fond of storytelling that he is satirized as "the reader only recognizes his trademark and he promises to deliver the goods to your home." in other words, he writes whatever the reader needs. Secondly, his novel is too superficial, although it expresses the spiritual pain of modern people, it dabbles in it because the great hatred obscures the possibility of his deep thinking, which stems from his painful childhood experience. Hemingway once said that "the best early training for a writer is an unhappy childhood", but overtraining can also have a negative effect. Indeed, Maugham is not using novels to explore the truth of life, but novels to compensate for his inner bitterness.

in sarcastic, sarcastic, vicious words, he seems to find happiness. As soon as he writes about these words, he is brilliant and passionate. On the contrary, the protagonists of his novels are often not so smart. For oriental readers, you may be curious: why is it a disadvantage to tell a good story? This should be seen in different traditions. The biggest defect of stories is the problem of repetition. After all, there are only so many good stories. To win people by stories, you have to arrange suspense, hide information, and take people by surprise, which is not consistent with the natural logic of life. In other words, the better the story, the farther away from the truth. If the novel is only to frighten people and amuse people, it will become a matter of advocating excellence, not by serious writers. The charm of the novel is that it is a way of thinking about the world. In a scientific world, there needs to be a force to restrict it. Only the novel praises love and refuses to understand it as a probability game under the action of hormones. Only the novel will give emotion an orthodox status, rather than regard it as "impulsive" and "anti-national". While modern technology contributes to the Nazi gas chamber, the novel can bravely stand up and defend human dignity and universal justice. One of the most frightening worlds is that of Zweig's "The Story of Chess", where absolute reason completely deprives us of our perception, although ordinary people can defeat chess masters as a result. But does it make sense? When people lose, what do we need to be rational for? In western serious novels, there is a strong tradition, that is, inner monologue. Only when a person is in a monologue, he will sincerely face himself, can he respond to those fundamental questions. This may come from theatrical tradition or prayer. In short, whether it is "A Dream of Red Mansions" or "the Tale of Genji", it is difficult to find similar content. It is very difficult to enter this kind of reading because there is a big defect in the inner monologue, that is, it is too dramatic and untrue, and it is difficult to read beauty from it. But once you enter, you will be quickly conquered by it. Because compared with the external world, people's inner world is more wonderful, without spiritual scenery, what is the meaning of the beautiful scenery? Along the road of inner monologue, we will marvel at how far the human spiritual world can go. From "I'm poor and ugly, but I have the same self-esteem as everyone else" in Jane Eyre to Uncle Tom's Cabin, "isn't it the same tears that flow from the eyes of black people as we white people do? Aren't our sorrows the same in front of God? " If there is an emotional school, then it is not a plot, a story, a dialogue, but hidden in our hearts, which has all the reasons to live, the wisdom to face the world, and something worth dying for. It is understandable that accustomed to inner monologue reading, how unpopular it should be to Maugham's novels. There are too many gimmicks in Maugham's novels, for example, he always pretends to be cruel, cold, and evil, which has nothing to do with thought, but just storytelling skills.

stories need to be strange, and whoever can betray the public's moral imagination to the greatest extent will gain the most eyeballs and win business success. Yes, Maugham also discussed the meaning of life, the separation of spirit and flesh, and pretended to seek the truth from Eastern philosophy, including his dislike of reality, which is very fashionable. Just like today's female stars do not have male girlfriends and the "rich second generation" do not give advice online, they will have a sense of panic abandoned by the times. If Maugham has one great advantage, it is that he understands the reader's needs best and knows how to meet them with dignity. Maugham's novels are very easy to read, the characters are vivid, in addition, there are some gaudy life feelings, there are many golden sentences. If you don't read 10 serious novels, you can't get into the inner monologue-like love mirror, while Maugham only needs 30 pages. He makes you feel a little sad and start to reflect on your life without paying much for it. In this sense, Maugham's novel is undoubtedly the most successful product of the masterpiece. As a result, Maugham sold better than the classics. As early as 1961, he had sold 40 million copies of his novels. If one of the features of the classics is that they are constantly read, Maugham has overfulfilled his task at this point. What really reveals Maugham's true shape is his drama. He wrote 30 plays in his life, which is a very important part of his creation, but today few people mention their judgment of them in the history of literature. it happens to be the word that Maugham doesn't dare to say about Maugham's novels: superficial. To put it leniently, Maugham's superficiality has a strategic side.

he must tell stories and make readers understand, so he has to adopt realism, but this method of writing has inherent shortcomings. Novels always convey philosophical propositions, but philosophy is never realistic, which is a huge dilemma. Either deviate from the reality and express the thought or deviate from the thought and be faithful to the reality. Leo Tolstoy often takes the first option. There is always an ideal character in his novels who overlooks the living. In the hands of the master, this sense of unreality can be more or less restrained. But when it comes to Qi Ruixuan in "four generations living together", Lin Daojing in "Song of Youth" and Gao Daquan in "Golden Avenue", the deficiency of realism can be seen. Maugham did not risk taking the path of Leo Tolstoy, which was opportunistic, so Lawrence said: "Mr. Maugham is a great observer, he is very clever to bring people and places to us, but when these observed characters have to move, they become false." Maugham's writing is not dynamic and peaceful, and Lawrence's criticism is to the point. In the West, the evaluation of Maugham has always been controversial, and negative opinions seem to be in the mainstream for a long time, but from the perspective of Chinese translation, Maugham is almost the most popular English writer. his Chinese translation is much more than Galsworthy, Caretti, Golding, Harold Pinter, and so on who have won the Nobel Prize for literature.

interestingly, in the 1980s, the Japanese chose the greatest writer in the world. The first place was Shakespeare, and the second place was Maugham, which surprised the British people. Perhaps, the oriental understanding of the novel is to tell a story, and no matter how good the stuffing (content) is, it should be wrapped in the skin of the story, and this happens to be the length of Maugham. The Chinese do not immediately accept Maugham but have a tortuous process. When Maugham came to China in 1920, he had completed "the shackles of life", "the Moon and sixpence", and his fame was at its peak, but the response in the Chinese literary world was lackluster, far from being compared with Tagore and George Bernard Shaw. It was not until 1929 that Maugham's name first appeared in the Chinese media. Zhao Jingshen introduced Maugham in the English novel of the past 20 years, and Maugham's first novel translated into Chinese was Horror, translated by Pan Guangdong. Maugham's first novel translated into Chinese was the Emerald Cold Villa (under the moonlight of Florence), which was already 1944. Before 1949, several of Maugham's representative works had no Chinese translation. On the contrary, Zhang ailing, who had read the original English works directly, spoke highly of Maugham. Zhang ailing was also frustrated in her childhood, so she accepted Maugham's cold style of writing and her obsession with stories.

Zhang ailing and Maugham also question love, show excessive sensitivity to hypocrisy, power, and ruthlessness between people, and establish their sense of superiority through mockery. But generally speaking, Maugham has little influence in China at this stage, because the writing group is influenced by the mainstream of western literature, and since it has been defined as "second-rate" abroad, there is no need to pay attention to it, but Maugham's plays have been translated more into Chinese. because the British audience once thought that Maugham was on a par with George Bernard Shaw. After 1949, until 1978, Maugham was also given the cold shoulder, and commentators still repeated the western mainstream view that his literary status was not high, the theme of his works was not profound, and his screenwriting skills were not superb. After 1978, Maugham suddenly became popular in China, and there is a trend of becoming more and more popular, accompanied by the popularity of Sanmao, Qiong Yao, Jin Yong, Xi Murong, and so on. On the one hand, many years of imprisonment were suddenly broken, and people were always eager to choose the nutrients that were most easily absorbed; on the other hand, Maugham's novels met the needs of Chinese society at that time. Maugham's novels are in the middle stage from realism to modernism. He criticizes modernity. Under the impact of the economic side, the hearts of modern people are full of loneliness, hopelessness, and fear, which is difficult to comfort by traditional realism. What's more, realism has become a synonym for alienation in China, and almost no protagonist has doubts about the meaning of life. Compared with these low imitations, The A-goods quality of Maugham's novels can be highlighted. Understandably, tens of thousands of Maugham fans are often overexcited to defend Maugham's first-class status. After all, it was Maugham who brought them into the hall of serious literature and made them understand that literature can respond to the problems of life, that we can live in the world colder and colder, and that people need a value to support them in addition to food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. Maugham is the first love of too many people, no matter how many times he will love in the future, this time is the sweetest. However, fair readers will not forget: sweetness is not perfect, indeed, Maugham taught us to use hate to transcend nothingness, hateful and love may be a life illusion. Therefore, I like the kind of hesitant person: he lives, knows that every reason is not valid, in constant hesitation, gradually grows old, and then dies. I think he can at least be proud that he has never deceived himself in his life, and that he has always been clean in this era full of determinism. Maugham lived to be 92 years old, and it is a miracle for a man to spend such a long, bitter, lonely, unpopular life than his novel. When he was alive, Maugham earned about $100 million today. In the incinerator, Maugham pinched the world for the last time. His bones refused to turn to ashes and had to be broken one by one with a hammer. Everything has its destiny. In short, there is only one way to surpass Maugham's novels: read more.

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