First book: W. Somerset Maugham´s ¨Of Human Bondage¨

The first book I´ve read in Nicaragua is W. Somerset Maugham´s ¨Of Human Bondage.¨ This is a great, big book, appropriately thick and engrossing to bring on a long trip abroad.

It´s a bildungsroman about the life of one Philip Carey, set in England just before the start of the 20th century. In it there are insightful ideas about youth and love, art and beauty. I like the way Maugham writes--his style is clear and smooth and, despite the cliché, I really did have trouble putting it down. That´s strange to me because I often didn´t like the main character or agree with his actions, but still found myself completely caught up in the story.

What I really love though about a great piece of artwork -- whether it´s a painting, song, or piece of writing -- is the way that it not only captures the deepest yearnings and intentions of the artist, but that it resonates too in the heart of those readers who are fortunate enough to encounter it.

Consider this passage on the aspirations of youth:

He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illsion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are brusied and wounded.

And this one:

He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.

To me there´s something very knowing in much of what Maugham writes, and as often happens when I come across a great piece of literature, I feel wiser for the experience of having read it.

(Next up: John Steinbeck´s ¨The Grapes of Wrath¨)