Neil Macadam by Somerset Maugham – author of The Door of Opportunity https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-door-of-opportunity-by-somerset.html and other fabulous short stories - 10 out of 10

 

Neil Macadam by Somerset Maugham – author of The Door of Opportunity https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-door-of-opportunity-by-somerset.html and other fabulous short stories

 

10 out of 10

 

Neil Macadam is one of the longest short stories, which sounds like an oxymoron (maybe it is), but with 96 pages, it comes close to a short novel, one of the nominees for The Booker Prize last year was just about 120, I think it was the second shortest to be nominated, and a great narrative it was, about orphan girls in Ireland

 

The hero of this story, which has his name, is quite an outré character – I was thinking that you do not see anybody like him today, but then I changed my mind, for young people embrace the extreme right, more and more, instead of having coitus, many choose to stay online, access adult sites and avoid in person meetings

Then you have the fools that are members of the cult of Orange Jesus (that is what leaders in that sect call the fraudster who might well become the most powerful man in the world, again, as if once was not enough to show all what a crook, monster this fella is) and a good number are evangelicals, fundamentalists…

 

Neil Macadam is a Scottish man who travels to the Far East (this is one of The Far Eastern Tales https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/footprints-in-jungle-by-somerset.html so we have to get there) to become an assistant at the museum of Natural Sciences in Kuala Solor, where Angus Munro will be waiting for him

Before he reaches his destination, we have a chance to know the hero better, as he stops in Singapore, and the captain of the ship invites the Scot to have a drink, only he does not touch alcohol, so they will visit a brothel, with white women, and since the youth is not interested, they go to another where there are Chinese women

 

Racism was a big issue – still is in many places – and we find that the Chinese ‘do not like the white men, they say that they smell like corpses’, and thus they stop in a third place, with Japanese women, actually, the four that come in are girls, and they try to entice the visitors and when pressed, Neil refuses and says he will not choose any one

This is because he is a virgin, and wants to keep himself pure for marriage, albeit he is very tall, has the skin that will be wondrous for a woman, and he is very handsome, so much so that the woman who will become infatuated, obsessed (she says she is in love, but was it true, maybe we will come to that) with him says he is so gorgeous

When he arrives at the end of the journey, Neil Macadam is impressed with his boss, Angus Munro, another Scot, and the older man becomes a sort of role model, he will state quite a few times that Munro is many times better than others, one hundred times more than his spouse – a spoiler alert is needed here

 

Darya is the Russian spouse of the museum custodian, or manager, and she is quiet a character, complex, erudite, somewhat pretentious, she has no qualms about saying that the people in the community are ignorant, boring, especially the women, ‘if you talk about the body, they feel this is inappropriate, and if the spirit is in conversation, they find you preachy’, while the Russian woman is all about art, literature and progress

She had had to leave Russia, after the Red Revolution, she was the daughter of a princess, but suffered through hardship in Japan, then she found Angus, honest, delicate, caring, if she does not seem to be all that devoted to him, if we listen to what men in the place say – at the club, they state that she slept with others, before Neil

 

When he hears that, the Scot punches the offender, and the governor has to intervene, asking both parties to apologize, even if ‘that was the truth’, so we wonder about the woman (that is for the male, retrograde readers, the feminist, female ones would see things differently, and they may be, shall we say they are surely right)

She is very intelligent, well educated, and insists that Neil must read Tolstoy, Turgenev https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/home-of-gentry-by-ivan-turgenev.html and Dostoyevsky, the greatest writers ever, and she mentions that Anna Karenina, Fathers and Sons, The Karamazov Brothers have no equal

 

Sine qua non indeed, Darya will refer to the Scot as Aliosa, and we read about father Zosima and the encounter with Dimitry, and Neil will see the inflamed, passionate, exaggerated Russian as a replica of Nastasya Filippovna, the reckless, suicidal, exhilarating, admirable, tragic personage from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Now that I mention that magnum opus https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-idiot-by-fyodor-dostoevsky-one-of.html I realize that the parallel is wider, deeper, because Neil Macadam shares with Prince Mishkin quite a few traits, they are both genuine, immaculate, pure, generous, well intentioned and dramatic

 

Alas, there is a common destiny (there was a spoiler alert, and this reminder serves as a second) and though they want to help, have a horror at the thought of hurting others, especially the ones they care for, they find that they are trapped, and end up causing more than just pain, their fate is heinous, because they bring disaster

Darya keeps trying to seduce the young man (this if obviously not a feminist perspective) she jumps in the pool, in the jungle, naked, where he is without clothes, and wants to come to his bed, at night, even when he rejects her, for he could not do such a terrible thing to his mentor and role model, but will he persuade the married woman?

 

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.”