"I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again," said Philip. "That's only a laborious form of idleness."
"But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?"
"I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine."
"Why d'you read then?"
"Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for ME, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one's like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is there."
Philip was not satisfied with his metaphor, but he did not know how else to explain a thing which he felt and yet was not clear about.
...
Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he had a constant interest in ideas, which made him an entertaining companion. They meant nothing to him really, since they never had any effect on him; but he treated them as he might have pieces of china in an auction-room, handling them with pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing them in his mind; and then, putting them back into their case, thought of them no more.
--OF HUMAN BONDAGE. This week I learned the term Künstlerroman, which is a bildungsroman specifically dealing with an artist's coming of age. But if OF HUMAN BONDAGE is a Künstlerroman, what of the sections of the book where Philip is not engaged in art at all? How much of your fictional artist's story has to be devoted to art before it becomes more than just a coming-of-age tale? Joyce's A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST... is definitely a Künstlerroman, but early in the novel it may as well have been called A PORTRAIT OF THE YOUNG MAN WHO THOUGHT ABOUT BECOMING A PRIEST, and despite being one-eighth German, I do not know the term for that. Anyway, I assume all will be revealed on the Maugham when I finish it.
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