When this was published almost a century ago, I’m sure the story of a man abandoning upper middle-class English life (along with his wife and two children) to pursue the life of a libertine artist in Paris would have packed more of a punch. It’s difficult to write about how and why people do such things beyond just saying, “They must or else, according to the flights of their fanciful imagination, they will wither away and fail to fulfill their truest being.” But alas, that’s not even enough to fill out a short story. Sometimes a short, studied approach like this one works for huge, ponderous questions like the one this novel raises, and sometimes it falls incredibly short.
Maugham’s writing is best suited to short stories or novels like this one, which has such a “short story feel” to it that it could easily be read in a quick sitting. The only other piece by Maugham I’ve read was “Razor’s Edge” which, though written a whole generation later, I remember having much the same literary style. The writing, especially in the first half, is so artful and balanced, and at the same time epigrammatically clever and playful, as to be unbelievable. Some of the quotations jump off the page and straight into your lap, begging to be included in the next edition of Bartlett’s. While this falls off a bit toward the end, this is one of the few pieces of fiction I have read lately where the simple elegance – and sheer, unrepentant wit - of the style can’t help but strike you.
Despite the incredibly controlled writing, judged strictly as whether it was able to shed any light onto the artistic process, or why someone would choose to repeatedly endure the gauntlets of the self-critical artist, I learned little here. Charles didn’t strike me as the heartless cad that I’m sure he probably appears to be to other readers; he’s just pursuing what he thinks he needs to be fully happy. Maybe that’s what Maugham is trying to insinuate through the title: that we should appreciate what we have (the moon – most people seem to be perfectly happy with a spouse and two children without fulfilling their need to run away from everything and start all over again), instead of thinking that we can be well-adjusted people and wanting to absolutely have it all.
Should we hold it against Charles that he makes such a drastic decision? It’s unclear whether Maugham takes delight in punishing Charles, but he certainly weathers a lot of punishment – living in near squalor, dying a slow, painful death. Of course none of this is to say that he couldn’t have mitigated this punishment by being a decent person to Dirk’s wife, who then would have gladly taken him in when he needed her most. Did Charles suffer the fate of being almost wholly unrecognized during his lifetime and the scourge of disease directly because he so eagerly embraced the reckless decision to leave his family? Is Maugham trying to make a moral point? If so, it’s a very subtle one; none of the language in the book comes across as sermonizing in tone.
As with any good story, there are more questions than answers. Charles is certainly supposed to strike us, I would think – to make a forceful point. That point, however, eludes me still. That it might just as easily elude others may have convinced him that he’s nothing but a heartless beast. I’m convinced that he is not one of those. But what is he? That, I don’t know.
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