Cakes and Ale: Or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard

Somerset Maugham has made a career of exploring the role of the troubled artist in society. In CAKES AND ALE, as in MOON AND SIXPENCE, he dissects a society with a literary scalpel merely to expose the wriggling corpse of the artist/prophet on the slide known as the novel. Here his focus is on two novelists. The first is the narrator Ashendon (Maugham himself) who is not the primary character. He rather reports the events over a period of many decades, beginning as a callow youth and ending as a mature doctor/novelist whose success in the latter is less than in the former. The second is Edward Driffield (Thomas Hardy), a writer who has achieved success despite his talent rather than because of it. Maugham goes to great lengths to emphasize that no one, least of all Driffield himself, can explain his eventual rousing acceptance as a literary lion. The best that anyone can do is to imply that becoming a successful writer is nothing more complex than hanging around long enough to convince a fickle public that here is a novelist worthy of the tag of greatness. Much is made of the novel's pointed satire. Since Maugham as Ashendon was a novelist, it followed (at least to him) that there were rules for advancement. Driffield was just as astonished as anyone at his success. Ashendon could apprehend on a surface level that longevity was surely the key but on a deeper visceral level, he simply could not buy into what the fickle public demanded: that any best-selling author must be ready at any moment to be savaged by dunder-headed critics who could pick apart his latest novel. Maugham is great at name-dropping, or rather job-title dropping. His book is replete with constant reference to meetings, lunches, and soirees with critics, interviewers, and agents, none of whom is the least qualified to spot true genius but all of whom are sure that they have their fingers on the pulse of what passes for literary acclaim by a public that reads the best seller list as assiduously as it does the best sellers on it. Yet, CAKES AND ALE is more than just one author in search of his Muse. Over the decades that Ashendon pursues the Truth About Writing, the figure of Rosie Driffield floats like an interlinking blanket. It is she who appears at convenient moments throughout, first interesting Ashendon to pursue a literary career, then later interesting him in having an affair. We know precious little about Ashendon, about Driffield, or anyone else save her. They are all flat and static. Rosie is a lightning bolt of reality mixed with raw sensuality. She loves men with a fierce abandon and does not confuse the pleasures of the body with those of the soul. She knows the difference as surely as she does the inner reason why her husband's books sell and why other writers' works do not. But for her, success is limited. She requires a man who can supply her the basics of a successful life. When along comes another who can add to the pot, she couples with

In the late 1920's, an aged literary lion, a venerated late Victorian novelist, Edward Driffield, has died and his widow thinks his life should be written down. She appeals to a younger novelist, Alroy Kear, who had attached himself to their society. In turn, he appeals to a friend who he knows must have known the legend earlier in life. The friend he turns to is the first-person narrator of CAKES AND ALE, Ashenden, also a novelist, who gradually reveals to the reader the truth of the deceased's early life. How much he will reveal to the other characters is another thing, and even if he did, the controlling widow, the man's second and much younger wife, would most likely excise what does not fit the public image she had worked hard to preserve. When it comes to pinning down a protagonist, however, the novel turns on the character of Rosie, Driffield's long-gone first wife. Several things are going on in CAKES AND ALE. One is the real history of Edward Driffield (whose stature and career bear something of a resemblance to Thomas Hardy, who died in 1928), and the narrator's own interlinked coming of age. Then there is the narrator's scathing look at literary society and the machinations by which critical success and public favor are won. He drops a lot of industry insider jokes, and several actual personages are discussed, but he also returns to the eternal writers' theme of who among them will be read past their deaths. Lastly, the sharp contrast between Victorian life and 20th century existence emerges as a dramatic theme; there is the sense that those with one foot in each culture will never be able to fully absorb the rapid change in mores and fashions. The only figure who floats across the divide is the person who from the outset bucked convention of any kind, Rosie. Maugham infuses the narrative with a sharp wit and good conversation. It is very shrewd and justifiably cynical about human ambitions and weaknesses. The dramatic story unfolds slowly but with tensions and secrets that keep going until the very end. This remains very satisfying reading 75 years after publication.

This is the first book I have read in a LONG time. If you are like me your practical experience with fiction evolved formulated novels (Brown, Clancy, and Ect). Don't get pissy if you like them, I like them well enough but all the books follow the same format. It's like reading the same story, over and over. This book held my attention and I finished it in like 8 hrs, my personal record. The characters develop fast enough and the plot is deeper than you average rock'm sock'm fiction of current. Maugham has an interesting way of giving a person incites in to what makes a person tick. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys the human condition in all its idocencrisy.

This book reads like an autobiographical account of a young man coming of age whose live is intertwined with that of a literary couple. The narrator reflects on his long association with the Driffields, an author many suspected of being modeled after Thomas Hardy, and his wife. It's absorbing as it plods along, but at the center of it is a revelation so brilliant that it leaves the reader stunned (gobsmacked - UK). Reading Cakes and Ale is like peeling away the layers of an onion and finding a diamond inside.

This is the second book by Maugham that I've read, the first one being "The Moon and a Sixpence". It strikes me that the author cherishes the idea that one should live one's life as one pleases. Just for that, this book is worth a read.