of human bondage

I can't remember the last time I read a book that left me with such an ache for more. I feel like I lost someone close, now that Philip Carey is no longer a part of my day-to-day, and I can't believe that my time with him is over. It fits, it's designed that way; this sense of loss, which turns to meaninglessness if you think too long on it, assaults Philip throughout the book, and Maugham's last hurrah seems to be to inject his pain into your heart. But I'll take it. For me, the reason this book was worth reading is the reason life is worth living: To see a life, like a pattern in a persian rug, and to be happier for having known it. Happier as defined by you and you alone.

I'm in slack-jawed awe of anyone who write a book for the purpose of following one life. Of Human Bondage is added to the ranks of David Copperfield and The Adventures of Augie March in this regard. To be able to take someone from basic infancy through to settled, top-of-the-hill adulthood, and to do that justice without a hint of tedium, wow! Maybe I tend to like this genre because the Davids and the Augies and the Philips go through everything I've known so far and then get just a little farther, and even though none of these endings are endings at all, there at least seems to be some sort of contentment reached that signifies the end of the struggling period I've found myself stewing in for the last five years. Or maybe it's just the best writers that are able to tackle these epic life works, so reading them necessarily means reading the best books you've read in a while.

I want more of this but I have to stumble into it. I didn't seek any of these out. OHB sat on my desk for four months before Ian's recommendation made me read the first chapter during lunch one day. Now I want more more more Maugham but I don't want Philip to fade into the background. Now I'm in book limbo where the first page of everything I pick up will be scrutinized against the memory of the last page I just read, and nothing could possibly measure up. Sure sure recommendations are welcome but if you say anything by Michael Pollan it's over yeah?