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The Author. William Somerset Maugham (pronounced "mawm"), 56, playwright, novelist, essayist, studied to be a doctor, knows how to articulate a skeleton, but prefers to do his dissecting in books. Of medium size and corpulence, with heavy, mustached face, he lives in Cap Ferrat, France, travels widely, stutters, has effeminate men friends. Though he has written some popular books and plays, his cynicism has kept the great public from crowning him a favorite. Says he cynically: "I have never called myself cynical. . . . I've always thought myself truthful." Author Maugham has written: The Trembling oj a Leaf, Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Six pence; The Gentleman in the Parlour (TIME, May 5); (plays): East of Suez, The Circle, The Letter.
Happiness Without Tears
THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS—Ber-trand Russell—Liveright ($3).
The books of Bertrand Russell are a modern substitute for the Bible. One of the high priests of our day (a scientist, a No. i mathematician), his writing "is not addressed to highbrows, or to those who regard a practical problem merely as something to be talked about." Few deny the high morality of his lucid logic, which makes even his rational counsels of perfection sound like simplest common sense, but few could put these counsels of perfection into practice. At least his simplifications should be an antidote to confusion.
Few will quarrel with his thesis: that unhappiness is widespread through civili-zation—"very largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics, mistaken habits of life . . . matters which lie within the power of the individual." Confesses Russell: "I was not born happy. ... In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life. . . . This is due partly . . . to having discovered what were the things that I most desired . . . partly ... to having successfully dismissed certain objects of desire. . . . But very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself."
The happiest men today, says Russell, are the scientists. "Many of the most eminent of them are emotionally simple, and obtain from their work a satisfaction so profound that they can derive pleasure from eating, and even marrying." Russell thinks happiness is not a gift received but a conquest to be won. If you want to be happy you must work for it, acquire zest, congenial work, impersonal interests, freedom from worry, resignation. "The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile."