Whisky, Cakes, Ale, and the Moon

 

The Movie Poster rather than the book cover

Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie A-

He wrote this book in 1947, six years after Monarch of the Glen. It features all new characters, but refers to characters in the fist book in his loose set of Highland stories. It is set in 1943 on two small, fictional islands, Greater Todday and Little Todday, that lay off the west coast of Scotland. It concerns the everyday life on those islands through the lens of two marriages and a drought of whisky, and then a flood of it. It opens with Sargeant-major Odd returning to the islands after a stint in North Africa, eager to meet his fiancée and set a date for their wedding. Her widowed father, however, is not eager to see her married, and drags his feet about setting the date. In the meanwhile a mild mannered school teacher also wants to get married, but he must find the courage to overcome the opposition of his domineering mother. As the story opens, the war has disrupted the supply of scotch to the island there’s no whisky on the island for 15 days and counting, to the dismay, and despair of the inhabitants of both islands. Toss in a number of colorful characters, the wreck of a ship carrying 50,000 cases of scotch whisky bound for the US to pay for the war on the rocks of Little Todday in a fog, the concerns of the non-native captain of the Home Guard (Dad’s Army) and Mackenzie has his canvas to paint his humorous picture of rural life in the Scottish highlands and the home front in the midst of WW ll. I have often said that I like small stories – that I don’t need someone saving the world – to make a story interesting, and Whisky Galore is a perfect example of one such story.

I have the third story in the omnibus edition I purchased, The Rival Monster yet to read. I’ll probably get to it before the end of the year.

Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham B+

I came across this book in a review by Michael Graeme, here . He does it more justice than I can. It is a story about writers, and being one myself, I was curious enough to read the “Look Inside” sample on Amazon, which I found to be just the sort of writing I love. That is to say, clever, witty, satirical. If nothing else, just read it. The story concerns the narrator, an author, who is asked another author to jot down his memories of yet another now famous and dead author, that the narrator knew in his youth. The central question is how much can he tell about the early career of this famous writer and his first wife? The story was rather controversial in its day, as Maugham based his fictional characters rather closely, and rather unflatteringly, on real authors, the live one being Hugh Walpole with the dead one being Thomas Hardy.

As for the story itself, it tells its story more than shows it, as it is the fashion of today. Maugham uses the story to talk about writing and the social life writers of the late Victorian period, as the spins his fictional memoir of his youth and the goings on of his fictional writer, Edward Driffield and his wife of that period, their sins and virtues as well as his. While it is not my ordinary style of story or writing, I enjoyed the change of pace, and in fact, went on to read his The Moon and Sixpence.

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham B

In his introduction Maugham says that he has no problem using real life event, places, and things he comes across as the basis of his novels. In this case he uses the life of the painter Paul Gauguin who famously went off and painted his masterpieces on the island of Tahiti. Maugham spent some time on Tahiti during the first world war. In the novel, Charles Strickland, the fictional Gauguin is a stockbroker that leaves his wife and two children to take up the life of painting first in Paris and then in Tahiti. Strickland is portrayed as a man totally committed to creating beauty, as he sees it, without any regard for anyone else. He comes across as rude, cruel, thoughtless, selfish, and careless of the harm he inflicts on everyone around him. The major part of the story is set Paris as told by the first person narrator, a writer like Maugham who also lived in Paris for a time – after leaving his wife. Strickland’s life on Tahiti is told by people who encountered him during his years on the island since the narrator arrived on the island after the artist’s death, and after he became famous.

Once again, Maugham uses his story to speculate on a wide range of subjects as well as art. He carries on a conversation with the reader as he tells rather than shows the story, though, like in Cakes and Ale, there is always scenes with dialog interwoven in the telling of the story. I don’t usually like unpleasant characters, and this book hasn’t changed my mind on that, but it was interesting enough – and described life a hundred plus years ago vividly enough to keep me reading, and mostly enjoying the story. I have no idea how closely this piece of fiction traces the life and personality of Paul Gauguin, though I suppose the answer is just 12 key strikes away. I just haven’t done that yet.

There are four more novels in the omnibus edition of W. Somerset Maugham I purchased. I might give The Razor’s Edge a try at some point in the future. We’ll see. But for now, I think I have all the Maugham I care to sample.