THE NARROW CORNER, Part One, Somerset Maugham
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Published 2024-06-25
In Somerset Maugham's "The Narrow Corner," Dr. Saunders, an opium-smoking doctor, embarks on a sea voyage with Fred Blake and Captain Nichols, escaping their pasts in Australia. As they journey through the islands of the Dutch East Indies, Fred, hiding under a pseudonym, reveals he fled Sydney after being involved in a scandalous duel over a woman. The travelers encounter a range of characters, including the enigmatic Erik Christessen and his daughter Louise, who becomes romantically involved with Fred. Tensions rise as hidden truths and moral dilemmas surface, culminating in Fred's decision to confront his ........
All Comments (6)
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I'm very muchenjoying this story and looking forward to part 2. Thank you.
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I’m hooked. Great storytelling. “Narrow is the corner…” Thank you for broadening ours.
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I rather listen to Somerset tell the story than others’ pseudo-intellectual outrage. Doubtless they are failures in everything they do, but anyways have an excuse or a dozen.
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A lengthy description of a man's character - but, to what end? Ditto, the description of the "Desperado" type come to visit the shop keeper. This story seems more like a preface to a novel...except, that the novel is absent.
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Though dated , and sometimes voicing prejudices , class/race/sexism, and to our ears now, outmoded, yet Maugham describes cogently, all that made white "English"/Erstwhile Roman Empire colonialism obnoxiously hypocritical and dictatorial, and obviously, now, how deaf and dumb is the foundation of current "norms" clung to in Colonial outposts and the clubs still maintained, secular and religious, still blind to its own errors and faults , and protecting it with arrogant ignorance: it was and remains the pride in prejudice reified by colonial control merchants and social climbers, customarily found advertising their toxic social habits, to whit , drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and sly fornicating with someone or other of the subject "community" they seek to "lord it" over.
