The Moon and the Sixpence 

– by Somerset Maugham

An old copy of this book which I picked up at a second hand book store – I don’t even remember when- was sitting on my bookshelf for a long time. I picked it up the other day as I wanted a break from the heavy and dry contents of Mein Kampf. And such a good thing I did. This is the story written in first person voice by the author about an artist who pursues his art with an almost  violent passion; an artist who honours his calling only at the age of forty after  living a normal middle class stock brokers life. Charles Strickland lives with his wife and two kids a regular life of an English stockbroker when all of a sudden he decides to give up everything and moves to Paris to become an artist. The author, who has met Mrs.Strickland during the parties she hosts for writers and poets; finds himself in the midst of the Stricklands family scenario by virtue of his friendship with Mrs.Strickland. The rest of the novel traces the life of Charles Strickland and his dogged pursuit of his art.

Maugham explores the madness of Strickland through the narrator’s voice and observation. The story begins with the present time frame and personal interactions between the artist and the author  in the first part but goes on to a retelling in the past in the second part where the author pieces it together from narratives of various people who have met the artist along the way. The story draws inspiration from the life of the artist, Paul Gaugin. While it does have some threads of similarity to Gaugin’s life such as Gaugin too was a stockbroker or he too moved away from his family in order to pursue art, the story in no way is that of the life of Gaugin. I did have to look up the relevance of the title “Moon and the sixpence” and according to Wikipedia “ the title, the meaning of which is not explicitly revealed in the book, was taken from a review in The Times Literary Supplement of Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage, in which the novel's protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as being "so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet."[3] According to a 1956 letter from Maugham, "If you look on the ground in search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon." The book pushes the reader to look deeper into what makes the madness of a creative genius justified  and to what end does an artist go to redeem himself and his art. The satirical end leaves one amazed at the nature of the societal memory and ability to twist things to context. A compulsive read!