Home by Somerset Maugham – one of my favorite writers, author of A Casual Affair https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-casual-affair-by-somerset-maugham-one.html and other mesmerizing works - 10 out of 10

 

Home by Somerset Maugham – one of my favorite writers, author of A Casual Affair https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-casual-affair-by-somerset-maugham-one.html and other mesmerizing works

 

10 out of 10

 

 

Home is just twelve minutes long, in audio book format, but like all the other Far Eastern Tales, the Ten collection and the magnum opera of Somerset Maugham in general https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/jane-by-somerset-maugham-author-of.html it is a wonderful story

 

George Meadows is one of the characters, who has this Home, from the title, a farm, where he is not the ‘boss’ nevertheless, it is his mother, Mrs. Meadows who calls the shots, George’s wife is called ‘Mrs. George’, presumably she cannot get the aristocratic title yet, as long as her mother-in-law is alive, maybe forever…

They are not nobles, but they are ‘outstanding’, with a patriarchal life, happy, the mother is ‘twice the man her son was’, he is fifty, and the parent is seventy, humorous, despotic but kindly, hardworking and ‘a character’, with a good sense of the ridiculous, and as we will see, with a great puzzle in her life, an important choice

 

We find that uncle George Meadows is about to return from China, this uncle and Tom, his brother have both courted Mrs. Meadows, when she was Emily Green, and after tom became her husband, Geroge went away, as we will soon see, to get over the chagrin, a pain he may never recover from, not completely anyway

Spoiler alert – I am about to tell you the whole short, or flash story, so you should leave now, if you are still about, they thought George had died, and not only that, but for decades, only to get this message from the uncle, about his imminent arrival, and indeed, we meet him instantly, there are only so few pages in Home

 

Fifty years before, George went away to China, would send gifts for another twenty, and then he was informed that tom, his sibling, had died, only he does not reply to these tragic news, so they conclude that he also must have departed to the other world – if there is one, which I do not believe, maybe you do think angels have wings

Mrs. Meadows had chosen Tom, because George, the uncle, was not so steady back then, even if she wonders at the end of the tale if she had made the right decision, she says she often, or was it always wondered about that

This uncle corrects the narrator, when he is addressed with mister, because he is now ‘captain’, then they get down to some racist remarks (for our age, not for those days, when everyone looked down on people from Asia, Africa) because they had assumed that the ‘captain’ had married a native woman, or more

 

They referred to them as ‘black’, but he says they are ‘yellow’ and then they go on to say they thought ‘he suffered from jaundice’, anyway, the main point being that he said ‘he will never marry anyone but Emily’, a name that sounded as an impropriety, everybody called her ‘Mrs. Meadows’, they did not even think of her other name

Alas, after this brief stay, the old man dies during the night, which reminds of another Somerset Maugham tale P&O https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/p-by-somerset-maugham-his-of-human.html in which one colonizer, Gallagher, is returning to his home country, Ireland, or that is the plan…

 

He is on this ship, where he starts to hiccup, and he can never stop, to the point where he does not eat, is so sick that the doctor knows he is close to death, however, the cause of death would be a…curse, you see, the white fellow had lived with a native woman, and he just abandoned her after all those years, to get to Ireland

She says nothing, until he is about to get on the ship, and she states that he will not set foot on land again, and here we have it, she just drops dead, after days of sickness – another twist on living in the Far East, with a local partner is in The Force of Circumstance https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-force-of-circumstance-by-somerset.html

 

This time, the white representative of the queen is sent to a remote location, where he brings his white bride, and soon, she hears an argument between her husband, and this native woman, who has a baby with her – when asked, the man invents some story, only it does not stand, because we see the mother and child again

Eventually, he has to admit that he had lived with her, they have three children together, but this racism, colonizing attitude meant that the white men felt they could take partners, just for sex, and then send them packing, when they have had their fun, providing for the kids, but from a distance, because they are half caste

 

In this tale, the man receives an unexpected rejection from the white spouse, who tries to understand him, but still, she is also racist, it is not because of the lying, well, I need to correct that, without going back and deleting, it must be the disingenuous stand the spouse had taken for quite some time, in part, but it is the race of the woman that counts

The white bride stays for a while, in a different room and bed, they have no coitus, and then she comes to the conclusion that they will not be intimate again, and she leaves him to sail for Europe, and then he calls the native mother and his children back to the house…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”