Studies in the Novel, March 22nd, 1997
W. Somerset Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence" demonstrates that true genius is beyond the understanding of conventional minds. The novel is a biography of the fictional artist Charles Strickland. Critics have contended that the novel failed but the failure was intended by Maugham. Conventional methods such as standard biography will always fail to capture genius.
Sheldon W. Liebman argues in a recent essay that "the central character in The Moon and Sixpence is not Strickland, but the Narrator."(1) Liebman recognizes the inadequacy of Maugham's novel (1919) as a "biography" of its ostensible ...
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