I struggle to read much modern fiction because the publishers of fiction are staffed mainly by women and their output is designed to appeal mainly to women, principally by flattering them and portraying women as superior to men. The female characters are almost invariably smarter and emotionally savvy than the male characters. One has to go back some way to find the work of authors who depicted men and women honestly, I greatly enjoy reading anything by George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh… and in more modern times, Philip Roth.
One of my favourite authors was W Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). I’m currently reading Of Human Bondage (1915), thought by many to be his masterpiece. The principal character is Philip Casey, an orphan with clubfoot (congenital clubfoot is the most common congenital malformation of the foot with an incidence of 1 per 1000 births).
When Casey is 20 he starts at an art school in Paris. A visiting (male) art professor visits weekly to critique the work of the students. One of the students is a bad-tempered 20-something woman who’s been studying at the school for over two years. The professor tells her that her work is utterly hopeless and no better than might be expected from a five-year-old child. He recommends that she give up art immediately and take up another interest.
The woman is very upset and disinclined to accept the professor’s assessment of her abilities. She asks Casey to come to her apartment to review what she considers the best of her work. He does so, and quickly realises it’s all appalling. He’s a painfully polite young man, disinclined to hurt anyone’s feelings. She asks his opinion of her work, the next section is an extract from the book, starting after he’s seen all the works put before him:
Philips was no more truthful than anybody else, but he had a great difficulty in telling a thundering, deliberate lie, and he blushed furiously when he answered:
“I think they’re most awfully good.”
A faint colour came into her unhealthy cheeks, and she smiled a little.
“You needn’t say so if you don’t think so, you know. I want the truth.” [J4MB emphasis.]
“But I do think so.”
“Haven’t you got any criticism to offer? There must be some you don’t like as well as others.”
Philip looked around helplessly. He saw a landscape, the typical picturesque ‘bit’ of an amateur, an old bridge, a creeper-clad cottage, and a leafy bank.
“Of course I don’t pretend to know anything about it,” he said. “But I wasn’t quite sure about the values of that.”
She flushed darkly and taking up the picture quickly turned its back to him.
“I don’t know why you should have chosen that one to sneer at. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure my values are all right. That’s a thing you can’t teach anyone, you either understand or you don’t.”
“I think they’re all most awfully good,” repeated Philip.
She looked at them with an air of self-satisfaction.
“I don’t think they’re anything to be ashamed of.”
[End of extract.]
Very few men are immune to lying to women to keep them happy. A lady friend recently gave me some of her homemade mayonnaise, saying it was “so much better than the rubbish sold in shops”. Let me tell you, if it were sold in shops, nobody would buy a second jar. It was terrible. Needless to say, I told her it was delicious. A hypocrite, moi? I just hope she doesn’t give me any more.
My first ill-fated wife, when she was a child, gave her grandfather a large bag of Pontefract cakes for Xmas. He said he was delighted because he liked them so much, so she duly sent him a bag every Xmas. But it became apparent one day that he didn’t like them, because when he died 30+ years later, a chest of drawers in his kitchen was found to contain 30+ bags of Pontefract cakes.
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Justice for Men & Boys 