I Read Books: The Magician

W Somerset Maugham met notorious occultist Aleister Crowley in Paris, and then wrote this unflattering book of a magician that bewitches a woman and has a disastrous marriage with her. So far, so roman a clef.

Oliver Haddo, the titular character, starts of as an amusing ass, ordering his dinner out of order and insulting the other diners in the restaurant. His so-called powers look like trickery and manipulation, but in the end Maugham makes a choice – fraud or true alchemist – and that pushes the conclusion down into a genre-appropriate conclusion.

Anyway, there’s a few entertaining scenes, some deep dives into occult knowledge, and a few good tricks. Of particular note is that rumours follow Haddo that his wife is still a virgin, kept that way because of the magical quality. It’s kind of weird that this is something people are gossipping about?

Crowley wrote a review in Vanity Fair under the pen name Oliver Haddo, in which he accused Maugham of plagiarism. Several decades later Maugham came back and wrote a new and amusing foreword (which is also a passage in his autobiography Fragments of Autobiography) about his relationship with Crowley, in which he claims he never read the review, which seems very dubious.

Anyway the book is about half Maugham being a dick about Crowley, who to be fair was a big dick, and half some period nonsense about Paris, London, the occult and scandal.

Read This: For an amusing gothic period story
Don’t Read This: W Somerset Maugham called his own prose “lush and turgid” and if that turns you off, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.