Narrative in W. Somerset Maughm's "Mr. Know-All"

Writing a short story is tricky. It is a juggling act. In five to seven pages, the author has to develop the characters, set out the plot, throw in some setting for mood and atmosphere, perhaps work in a symbol, create a theme for a story—and work in a narrative voice that will convey all of these things. One writing instructor I studied under said it’s like riding on a horse, blowing a trumpet, and juggling all at the same time. How can a person do it? I can’t exactly say, but I can suggest that it is narrative voice that accomplishes this, and a look at narrative voice and how to use it may help writers pull off the complexities of producing a successful short story.

Last time, my blog talked about "Fat," by Raymond Carver. This time I would like to look about a story that is tied with "Fat" for my favorite. It is a story I read in a Reader’s Digest book of short stories (it was not condensed, though) when I was visiting relatives and was bored. I thought the story was amazing and saw from the beginning that narrative voice stood out as the most remarkable feature of a remarkable tale.

The story of which I speak is "Mr. Know-All" by W. Somerset Maugham. It is the tale of a British traveler who has to share a room on a ship with a loud, obnoxious, "know-it-all" type.  The narrative  character is a stereotypical Brit:  quiet, reserved, slightly snobby, very private; his berth-mate, whom he thinks is an American but who turns out to be a British colonial, is just the opposite of these things. The stage is set for a conflict. Two opposite personalities are trapped on a passenger ship for a couple of weeks. The narrator’s antipathy is apparent from the onset. Here is the opening of the story:

I was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew him. The war had just finished and the passenger traffic in the ocean-going liners was heavy. Accommodation was very hard to get and you had to put up with whatever the agents chose to offer you. You could not hope for a cabin to yourself and I was thankful to be given one in which there were only two berths. But when I was told the name of my companion my heart sank. It suggested closed portholes and the night air rigidly excluded. It was bad enough to share a cabin for fourteen days with anyone (I was going from San Francisco to Yokohama), but I should have looked upon it with less dismay if my fellow passenger`s name had been Smith or Brown.

When I went on board I found Mr. Kelada`s luggage already below. I did not like the look of it; there were too many labels on the suit-cases, and the wardrobe trunk was too big. He had unpacked his toilet things, and I observed that he was a patron of the excellent Monsieur Coty; for I saw on the washing-stand his scent, his hair-wash, and his brilliantine. Mr. Kelada`s brushes, ebony with his monogram in gold, would have been all the better for a scrub. I did not at all like Mr. Kelada.

This long quotation is a brilliant set-up. Maugham punctuates the opening with negative phrases:  dislike, put up with, bad enough, did not like the look of it, did not at all like. He also indicates the snobbery of the narrator. He judges Kelada on his name. He sneers at the fact that he uses toiletries bought from the shelf (Coty products). He thinks his brush and comb look dirty. Maugham uses narrative voice to set up the conflict and let the reader know what a character is like. He is snobby. He is judgmental.

The story progresses. Mr. Kelada is a loud-mouth and a know-it-all. He talks incessantly. He thinks he can discourse on any subject whatsoever. You can’t avoid him. He dominates all conversations. People detest him and insult him by calling him "Mr. Know-All." He takes this title as a compliment.

During the course of the tale, the narrator encounters a lovely woman and her husband. He comments on how delicate and beautiful the woman is and also notes her modesty. Modesty, he says, shines her person and manner. And she is wearing a string of pearls. Kelada, we find out, is a pearl merchant and comments on how good the necklace looks because it is real. Mrs. Ramsey demurs and her husband says the pearls are culture (fake) pearls. An argument ensues. Kelada looks at the pearls through his jeweler’s glass, smiles, and is about to declare, on his authority as a gem merchant, that they are real.

Then he sees Mrs. Ramsey staring at him, wide-eyed, helpless, her fact so white the narrator says she looks as if she might faint. Realization strikes Kelada and he, the flaming egotist, says he was wrong. The pearls are not real. Everyone taunts and teases him for this. Mrs. Ramsey retires to her room with a headache.

  

                                                                                                        

from a film adaptation of "Mr. Know-All"

What we realize in the story is that Kelada is not Mr. Know-All; the narrator is. He thinks he knows everything but learns that Kelada is knowledgeable when he needs to be. Mrs. Ramsey is not modest—she has a boyfriend who has bought her a real pearl necklace. And the unnamed narrator is not such a good judge of character as he thinks he is. He changes. At the end of the story he asks the chastened Kelada (whose loud-mouth boasting almost ruined Mrs. Ramsey) if the pearls were real. He simply replies, "'If I had a pretty little wife I should not let her stay a year in New York while I went to Kobe.'" The narrator says, "At that moment, I did not entirely dislike Mr. Kelada." His English reserve provides some minor humor but he has learned his lesson, as has Kelada.

The story would not have succeeded so well without skillful narrative technique. In a mere six pages Maugham does the complicated juggling act and pulls it off magnificently. The key element in doing this is his brilliant manipulation of narrative.

We’ve looked at two first-person narrated stories. Can the same be done with third-person narration? Next time we will explore this in another of my favorite stories.

If you want to read "Mr. Know-All," the story is online here.

For your reading pleasure, and for some unique use of narrative text, read my novel, The Sorceress of the Northern Seas.

For more titles that make for good reading and great gifts, see my Writer's Page. You might like The Gallery, Strange Brew, or The Prophetess.

Narrative: Raymond Carver's "Fat"

Like the old saying about God, narration operates in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. I will be examining the narrative techniques in some of my favorite stories in the next couple of blogs I post.

One thing we need to get straight at first. I am not just picking out favorite stories and then examining how the narration operates in these stories. They are works that I have come to realize stand out, are memorable, and that distinguish themselves precisely because of narrative technique. So they merit our attention as examples.

Raymond Carver

 The first of these is Raymond Chandler’s “Fat,” a masterpiece of narrative script. It is told from the point of view of a waitress who one night waits on a man who is obese. She tells a story in which very little happens and the conflict is rather abstract. Yet the way she tells it makes the story one many consider to be among the handful of the best short stories ever written.

Carver uses multiple layers of reference to tell her story, which begins, I am sitting over coffee and cigarette at my friend Rita’s and I am telling her about it.  Here is what I tell her. The narration is first person, but we soon find out is layered. The main character is telling a friend something that has already happened, so the action is removed one step from the actuality of the story. The action has been reflected upon, pondered, and arranged in the narrator’s mind. Of course, the narrator is telling this to the reader as well, so add another layer of distance. We are getting it at two removes. It is not an immediate recitation of the story’s action, but a retelling of it at more than one remove.

This sets the stage for what happens to 

the main character in this tale. Plot:   

she waits upon an obese man who is well-spoken, well-dressed, and mannerly. Rita, he was big, the waitress says. She goes about her business and waits upon him, upsetting his water glass and reciting from the menu. When he orders, the man uses the pronoun “we” for himself, rather than “I.”

A friend once quipped, “The reason he does that is because he’s so big it’s like there’s two of him.” Well, maybe, but I think he does this to distance himself from himself. A king uses “we” to differentiate between his person and his office. The man in the story keeps distance between himself and the fat man that contains him.

Soon, though the thing that makes the story remarkable occurs. Some kind of bond develops between them, as in this dialogue:

            Believe me, he says, we don’t eat like this all the time, he says, And puffs. You’ll have to excuse us, he says.

            Don’t think a thing about it, please, I say. I like to see a man eat and enjoy himself, I say.

            I don’t know, he says. I guess that’s what you’d call it. And puffs. He arranges the napkin. Then he picks up his spoon.

The main character uses present tense dialogue tags (she is telling this story to Rita); Carver does not use quote marks so the two characters’ speech is not made specific to them. As the story goes, the waitress sympathizes and, it seems, identifies with him somehow. When she serves him dessert there is this exchange:

            Thank you, he says.

            You are very welcome, I say—and a feeling comes over me.

            Believe it or not, he says, we have not always eaten like this.

            Me, I eat and I eat and can’t gain, I say. I’d like to gain, I say.

            No, he says. If we had our choice, no. But there is no choice.

           

The fat man shares his plight and a little of his despair. The waitress by now is defending him from the mockery of the kitchen staff. As the story goes on, the strange bond strengthens between them. Then the man pays and leaves, and that is the end of the talking. But not the end of the narrative.

The waitress goes home. We see she does not have a good home situation. Her live-in, whom she works with, is self-centered and demanding. She seems passive and withdrawn. But the dialogue with the fat man has done something to her. She begins to imagine. During sex with her live-in boyfriend she envisions him very small and her as much larger than him.

She ends the story. Rita is disappointed:

            She [Rita] sits there waiting, her dainty fingers poking her hair.

            Waiting for what? I’d like to know.

            It is August.

            My life is going to change. I feel it.

This is how the story ends. But what does it mean? Some of my students think it may mean she is pregnant or thinks she is because earlier she imagines having a child who would turn out like the fat man in the story. But this doesn’t fit exactly. I’m not absolutely certain, but I get the idea that whatever happened between her and her unnamed guest has opened up new channels in her mind and new insights into the nature of people. Her life cannot remain the same and she will be liberated as time goes on.

This story could not have succeeded in this manner without the complex narrative. You will have to read the entire thing (it’s not long) to see how the narrative works, but from the bits and pieces above you get an idea. The narrative creates the story. It takes a small incident and turns into what a writing teacher of mine once said is the best story ever written.

More on narrative to come.

Check out my narrative experiments. Strange Brew. A book about love, music, magic, and the pre-civil rights South.  

 Check out my Writer's Website for a list of books for your reading pleasure and for great Christmas and holiday gifts.

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