It’s many people’s favorite book. Bill Murray likes it so much he produced and starred in a remake of it in 1984. Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney had already starred in the Twentieth Century Fox version (1946). PZ and his friends made a monster-movie version of it in 1965.
It’s The Razor’s Edge!
It’s Somerset Maugham’s 1944 novel about spiritual pilgrimage. The Razor’s Edge tells the story of ‘Larry Darrell’, whose life falls apart early, at age 19, giving him the precious opportunity, in youth, to engage the meaning of life. It takes him years and years, and the journey takes him from Lake Forest to Paris to the land of Van Gogh’s “Potato Eaters” to the Himalayas, then back, via southern France.
Yet he finds “What I’m Looking For”.
The Razor’s Edge is a tour de force, “a mon avis”, in simply every way you can imagine. There is also a character named “Elliott Templeton”, who converts from Episcopalianism to Roman Catholicism; and also finds what he is looking for.
The two main female characters find what they’re looking for, too, and it’s not exactly nice. Everyone in this incomparable book, in fact, finds what she or he is looking for.
But the key to it is Larry Darrell.
Nothing human is perfect, including The Razor’s Edge. But it comes close.
P.S. Who’s ‘Ruysbroek’?
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2 responses to “PZ’s Podcast: The Razor’s Edge”
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Providentially, this has been in the news in the Beaufort, (where I live), as Maugham wrote ‘The Razor’s Edge’ here.
Thrilled to listen to this podcast in the very near future!