#maugham

It is quite natural at the start of any kind of postgraduate course of study to feel that one is wasting his time; or rather, trying to delay that inevitable transition from youth to fully fledged adulthood. Deciding to remain a student for that extra year or two (or five or ten if one gets engaged in a particularly long PhD. programme) does give you a bit of a disadvantage in the shorter term compared to your peers: while you were in school, they got their career started and perhaps even got a couple promotions under their belt. The obvious response to this fact is that someone with a postgraduate degree has a much higher ceiling to one’s career. This is framed as a fair exchange. I suppose that it is for a lot of people, especially to those who see the purpose of education to be a way to make more money and thus gain social prestige. But for the rest, the procrastination is the point. It is a way to buy just a bit more time until one can figure out what one wants to make of himself.

It was at the beginning of my Master’s studies that I discovered Maugham. I had spent the past year, the final year of my undergrad, reading Dostoyevsky and Hesse, and was considering picking up some Nietzsche. I was looking into all of the books on the “read this if you are a man in your early 20’s who has no idea what to do with his life” list. It was while looking into these sorts of lists that I found the Razor’s Edge. I didn’t think much of it when I bought it but I could not have predicted the impact that it would have on me. There is a point in the narrative when Larry (one of the protagonists of the book) is asked by his fiancé what he wants to do after he turns down a job. “Loaf” he answers. The exchange that follows elaborates on how Larry does not care for money beyond what would be required for survival and does not care for the social capital that comes with having, well, capital. This sort of sentiment is the opposite of what a lot of the books that have entered into the “books for lost young men” genre lately proclaim. Instead of coming up with rules that can easily be turned into a 90 second TikTok called “this is what alpha/sigma/ligma males do,” Larry just… loafs. Or he does whatever he wants to do. The book ends with an allusion to Larry having become a taxi driver in New York. Not because he is broke (he has an inheritance to live off), but rather because it would let him visit the libraries in the city. 

Maugham has, in this book, put into words exactly the way I personally feel about the “what will you do with your life” question. Though Larry gets treated by other characters in the book as though he has gone insane for simply stating that he does not want to work (or rather, does not want to have the sort of career that would make him rich or bring him prestige), he is never chastised by the author for his decisions. Reading the book helped me come to terms with the fact that maybe it is okay to not want to play by the rules of society, the rules that push people into jobs they don’t care for working for people they don’t like, all to fit some sort of image of what a man “must” be. There was, of course, the fact that I had kinda already made my choice. Or at least that’s what it seemed to me.

I never did get to loaf while I was in university and didn’t really think I get to do so after I was done either. After all, it would not be long after I graduated that I would land a job. This, of course, did not happen. A four-month wait followed by eight months of unemployment is what happened. There is an impression that people have about the unemployed, namely, that they are too lazy to get a job. Having been through the process, I no longer have that impression. Every hour of every day of my life in 2024 was absolutely consumed with trying to get a job. According to my spreadsheet (which I stopped updating sometime in December) I applied to 1347 jobs between May (when I got my work visa) and December, of which I heard back from 545, got 3 interviews and landed exactly no jobs. Around October, I started to suffer from vertigo from the stress, caused by not being able to live up to this standard of being employed. I did a lot of things but loafing was definitely not one of them.

Around the same time that the vertigo attacks started I was consumed by this strange desire to draw. Drawing, and making art in general, is one of those things that you get told to do in order to help you deal with stress (and trauma). Could it have simply been my body trying to make me do things that could help it? Perhaps. But it felt different from, say, wanting to not put pressure on the leg with the strained ankle. Not drawing or looking for things to draw felt more like the way one feels after an entire day of fasting or holding one’s breath. I had never been good at drawing, nor had I ever expressed an interest in wanting to learn to be good at drawing. It just was never something that ever registered in my mind. 

But there I was, in spring, obsessed with wanting, no, needing to draw.

This is where the quote comes in. I started reading another book by Maugham this week: The Moon and Sixpence. Near the end of the first act, this is what Charles Strickland, a stockbroker who has left his wife to go paint, says to Maugham when told that one needs to be, y’know, good at painting to cut it as a painter:

“I tell you I’ve got to paint. I cant help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn’t matter how he swims, well or badly: he’s got to get out or he’ll drown.”

It doesn’t matter whether he swims well or badly: he’s got to get out or he’ll drown.

See when you have spent a good three years of your life (or your whole life if you want to look at it that way) trying to get to a certain end because you feels like it will keep you from drowning and it, of course, does not work out, you could be quite content in letting the water take you— or at least it would be easier to accept your fate. But when you have seen a way out, maybe a random pattern of thrashing your body did that momentarily lifted your head above water and you take your first breath for the first time in a long time, “I’m not a good swimmer I shouldn’t even try” just doesn’t cut it. You found a way to keep your head above water and it is only natural that you keep doing that. To give up when there is no way out is logically justifiable. To give up because social convention demands you ignore the way out is not.

But how do I reconcile this with the fact that I have invested so much time (and money) towards an end which brings me neither peace nor joy, and has, for my whole life, done the opposite, only bringing with it an immense amount of despair, stress, and guilt for having not achieved it? 

If I do go out and proclaim at 25 that I wish not to work a corporate job earning the big bucks and instead wish now to become an artist of sorts or to loaf, will I be seen as having had lost my mind, just as Maugham’s characters look at Larry Darrell or Charles Strickland? 

This is what I have spent all of the time thinking about since I read that quote. In this video Steve Huston says that the way he knows that teaching art and “bringing beauty into the world” is part of his purpose in life because of the joy he feels when making and teaching art. One feels joy when one performs his purpose in life. I have finally found something that brings me joy when I do it. Unfortunately, it is not the thing I went to school for. What do I do now? Do I embrace this purpose? Do I keep applying to corporate jobs because it is what I have worked towards? Or do I accept all of the rejected job applications as being a sign from the universe that this is not, in fact my purpose in life and that I am meant, despite my utter lack of skill at it, to be a sort of artist? 

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely. 

Vous ne pouvez regarder le monde dans lequel nous vivons sans dégoût que lorsque vous voyez la beauté que les gens extraient du chaos de temps en temps. Les images qu'ils peignent, la musique qu'ils font, les livres qu'ils écrivent et la vie qu'ils vivent. De toutes les choses que j'ai énumérées, la plus grande beauté est une vie bien vécue. C'est l'œuvre d'art la plus parfaite.

Se sei una donna sai recitare.