Dubs Sunday: On commercial fiction.

[Norah] was separated from her husband and earned her living and her child's by writing penny novelettes. There were one or two publishers who made a specialty of that sort of thing, and she had as much work as she could do. It was ill-paid, she received fifteen pounds for a story of thirty thousand words; but she was satisfied.

"After all, it only costs the reader twopence," she said, "and they like the same thing over and over again. I just change the names and that's all. When I'm bored I think of the washing and the rent and clothes for baby, and I go on again."

--OF HUMAN BONDAGE. This isn't the first time these novelettes have come up in the book; Philip's tearoom love Mildred was also a big fan of what Maugham describes as "a regular supply of inexpensive fiction written to order by poor hacks for the consumption of the illiterate," and he later describes her as "having read too many novelettes" not to do something.

This week in Maugham being everywhere, Bookslut linked to a Daily Mail article questioning whether he was "the most debauched man of the 20th century." (Reached into the Acme Box of Big Claims for that one, they did.) The evidence includes teenage boys in Capri, an affair with a married woman while spying for the Crown and a penchant for towel-whipping -- oops, that last one was James Bond creator Ian Fleming, heh. I'm not convinced, nor do I think it's an important question, but it's funny to see him get the TMZ treatment.