W. Somerset Maugham, starts out The Moon and Sixpence , New York: Random House, Modern Library Edition, originally published in 1919, p. 1.
He says:
I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles Strickland I never for a moment discerned that there was in him anything out of the ordinary.This is a very innocent sentence, maybe I would have deleted the "that there was" to make the sentence a little tighter, but in 1919 that was the style. People had more leisure time.
Here point of view is established right off the bat. It's clear you're going to see Charles Strickland the artist filtered through the experience of the narrator. You detect a little unreliability about the narrator and wonder what that's about. And the exaggeration in "never for a moment" establishes an attitude. And here again, it's retrospective, so the time of the action in the novel is in the past, but the narrator is telling you this in the present.
And he says, "I confess." Why does he feel the need of confessing.
This is an absolutely wonderful book. Read it and keep it on your bookshelf. Then read it again a year later.
What do you think? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know. And follow me on Twitter.com
Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.
Ian Kearney, the director of the Kearney Music School, an elite musical training school in Philadelphia, dies after a fall from a balcony during a recital. World-famous cellist, Henry Harrier, recently forced from the faculty, returns to investigate Ian's death when his prized former student is arrested. Henry shows through his brilliant and single-minded pursuit of the truth that, as usual, they have it all wrong. This Sherlock Holmes-type mystery leads the reader through the world of classical music and lays bare the conflicts which dominate the lives of talented adolescents when placed under the pressure of studying for a demanding, stressful, and often elusive career as a classical music performer. Henry Harrier is part John Le Carre's George Smiley, part Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, and part Orlando Cole the beloved teacher, renowned chamber musician, and until his own retirement, the premier cellist of the Curtis Institute.
Tim was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1946. In 1951 he moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, where he lived through high school. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio, from 1964 to 1968. He graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in history and philosophy. He received his Ph. D. in history in U.S. history in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending 2.5 years in the U. S. Army. Most of his army service was completed in Wuerzburg, Germany, from 1969-1971. In 1972 he returned to Madison to complete his doctoral study. His dissertation, Those Who Moved; Internal Migrants in American 1607-1840, combined the statistical analysis of genealogical and biographical data with the study of traditional literary diaries, letters, and journals.
