The Painted Veil

William Somerset Maugham, CH (January 25, 1874 – December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was one of the most popular authors achieving recognition as the highest paid of his profession during the 1930s.Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could.Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham himself attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work.It seems equally likely that Maugham was underrated because he wrote in such a direct style. There was nothing in a book by Maugham that the reading public needed explained to them by critics. Maugham thought clearly, wrote lucidly, and expressed acerbic and sometimes cynical opinions in handsome, civilized prose. He wrote in a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and won critical acclaim. In this context, his writing was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way"[16].Maugham's homosexual leanings also shaped his fiction, in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for distinguished authors of his time. "Liza of Lambeth," "Cakes and Ale" and "The Razor's Edge" all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result.Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he traveled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied in 1938: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."Maugham's public account of his abilities remained modest; toward the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club[17]. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, it began its exhibition life and in 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden.

出版者:Vintage; Reprint edition

作者:W. Somerset Maugham

页数:256

出版时间:2004-2-10

价格:USD 13.95

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9781400034215

图书标签:毛姆W.SomersetMaugham小说英国文学英文原版女性英文爱情

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Shallow, poorly educated Kitty marries the passionate and intellectual Walter Fane and has an affair with a career politician, Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter discovers the relationship, he compels Kitty to accompany him to a cholera-infested region of mainland China, where she finds limited happiness working with children at a convent. But when Walter dies, she is forced to leave China and return to England. Generally abandoned, she grasps desperately for the affection of her one remaining relative, her long-ignored father. In the end, in sharp, unexamined contrast to her own behavior patterns, she asserts that her unborn daughter will grow up to be an independent woman. The Painted Veil was first published in 1925 and is usually described as a strong story about a woman's spiritual journey. To more pragmatic, modern eyes, Kitty's emotional growth appears minimal. Still, if not a major feminist work, the book has literary interest. Sophie Ward's uninflected reading is competent if not compelling.

读后感

一直以为这只是一个以神秘东方背景为卖点的爱情故事，一对互不了解却匆匆结合的夫妇，军阀混战时期一个霍乱横行的中国南方小城，异国他乡，生与死的考验，绝望中的互相理解与抚慰，爱情的温暖战胜死亡的寒冷，一点也不像毛姆。但是我错了，竟然让好莱坞先入为主。 毛姆...  

在看这本书的前90%的过程，我都在想凯蒂怎么可以如此的愚蠢，可是看到最后，我瞬间想通了，释然了。 这世界上形形色色的人，每个人有着不同的价值观世界观人生观，这些观点与他们的生活环境、从小到大的教育息息相关，怎么能够奢求每个人都和自己的想法一样呢。这本书讲述的故...  

该《面纱》的初版紧随电影问世，后又被列入“重现经典”再版，但仍“重现”着初版中的错误，粗略统计近三百处，恐怕是近年来翻译作品中不多见的，很大程度上扭曲了这部优秀作品的真实含义。 其中，有望文生义、或粗心看错造成的误译： 比如，沃尔特弥留之际醒来，说了一句:“...  

一直以为这只是一个以神秘东方背景为卖点的爱情故事，一对互不了解却匆匆结合的夫妇，军阀混战时期一个霍乱横行的中国南方小城，异国他乡，生与死的考验，绝望中的互相理解与抚慰，爱情的温暖战胜死亡的寒冷，一点也不像毛姆。但是我错了，竟然让好莱坞先入为主。 毛姆...  

用户评价

与电影的爱情和救赎的主题相比，书更像是一个女性的自我觉醒

I like how Maugham exposes the weakness of humanity without mercy. Kitty tried so hard to be free, to have control of herself and to be a better self but all in vain. She just could not escape the confinement of her upbringing. Truth is few people can. Maugham was such a humanity observer and he did not try to beautify it.

结尾太平了吧 感觉像草草收尾 不爱的人永远无法爱上吗 本能的爱和精神的爱 没有前者 后者的力量竟会如此薄弱吗

毛姆笔触真的很冷静犀利，但是书中的人物一个都不喜欢。感觉毛姆笔下的男人都是一个类型啊。

alas..