And I’ve got lots of quotes to go over below, all of which will underscore why I love this book so much and why I plan to read it again and again. I found a copy in an old bookstore (in Phoenix, if I remember correctly), put it in the gigantic pile of books I plan to read, and finally got around to it now. Someday, I suppose, I’m sure to find out.

I also don’t have any idea what the book’s title refers to. The final scene with Strickland’s abandoned wife and children has potential, although I must admit the stinging barb at the end escapes me. The few paragraphs that follows this are a bit of an anticlimax, but probably necessary to tidy up a few loose ends. The real ending of the book should have been with the image of the pictures Strickland painted on the walls of his Tahitian home, pictures painted while going blind from leprosy, pictures that were beautiful and obscene, pictures that revealed an understanding of the workings of the universe man was never meant to know, and pictures Strickland would surround himself with after going blind and study in the dark center of his mind’s eye, seeing more than anyone had ever seen before. Now, I’ll have to keep The Moon and Sixpence on that mental list as well. I looked for My Antonia recently but couldn’t find it. Look in old bookstores for copies of audiobooks I want to read again. That’s something I think I will need to do. The writing is pure and vivid, and I would have surely captured numerous quotes had I read it instead of listened to it. Their conflict over Stroeve’s wife Blanche is extremely interesting when viewed in this context, to say nothing about Blanche’s motivations for choosing Strickland (art) over Stroeve (love). In contrast, the character of Stroeve is the archetype of love, and he conducts himself in the way all must who wish to put love above all else. His relations with others show the depths to which one must truly stoop in order to create something of enduring truth and meaning. I viewed the character of Charles Strickland, the mild mannered stockbroker who rejected everything in life for a single-minded pursuit of his art, as the archetype of what art is and what the artist must do to achieve it.

It is about art in every sense of the word. Based on the life of Paul Gauguin-or so all the reviews tell me-it is about so much more. Here’s what I wrote about it on September 13, 2004, after hearing it for the first time as an audiobook I checked out from the library:Īnother audiobook from the library and another winner.

Somerset maugham the moon and sixpence