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Seven Men

by Max Beerbohm, John Updike (Introduction)

3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 · rating details · 59 ratings · 6 reviews

In Seven Men the brilliant English caricaturist and critic Max Beerbohm turns his comic searchlight upon the fantastic fin-de-siècle world of the 1890s—the age of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and the young Yeats, as well of Beerbohm's own first success. In a series of luminous sketches, Beerbohm captures the likes of Enoch Soames, only begetter of the neglected poetic ma...more

Paperback, 232 pages

Published October 31st 2000 by NYRB Classics (first published January 1st 1919)

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Jun 05, 2011 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: well-i-think-its-funny, mentions-twilight, the-tragedy-of-chess

[Original review]

A couple of days ago, I reviewed Arthur M. Steven's The Blue Book of Charts to Winning Chess , one of the most dismally misguided chess books ever written. Unfortunately, the author had spent most of his life writing it. I'd only borrowed him as a hook on which to hang a Twilight-related parody (I really must stop doing this), and, overcome by rather tardy remorse, I thought I'd go to Google and find out what people had to say about his masterpiece. After a few minutes, I gave u...more

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Jun 14, 2010 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

Beerbohm, Max. SEVEN MEN. (v.d.; this edition 2000). ****. Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) is one of my favorite English satirists. His only novel, Zuleika Dobson, is a classic, and has been continuously in print since its first publication. This book is a collection of narrative tales, each about a man, or in one case, two men, that the author has imagined. If you count up the number of men in the title page, you’ll find that there are only six men listed. The seventh, of course, is Beerbohm himself....more Beerbohm, Max. SEVEN MEN. (v.d.; this edition 2000). ****. Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) is one of my favorite English satirists. His only novel, Zuleika Dobson, is a classic, and has been continuously in print since its first publication. This book is a collection of narrative tales, each about a man, or in one case, two men, that the author has imagined. If you count up the number of men in the title page, you’ll find that there are only six men listed. The seventh, of course, is Beerbohm himself. All the stories are set in the period 1890-1920, the age of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, and feature prose sketches of “interesting” made-up individuals. The five stories, then, comprise this collection. By far the best is “Enoch Soames.” Soames is a writer and poet that Beerbohm meets who has just published one book and is working on another. His first book was a total commercial failure; only three copies sold. He has arranged for his second book, “Fungoids,” to be published. Its reception is pretty much the same. Max manages to boost Soames’ spirits by telling him that fame doesn’t always come in an author’s lifetime. This cheers Soames up somewhat, but he finally realizes that posthumous fame is of little value to him unless he knows for sure that it will come. One night while both men are in a pub/restaurant, a dapper gentleman approaches their table and strikes up a conversation. Turns out that this new visitor is the Devil, and he makes a deal with Soames. He will sent Soames one-hundred years into the future so that he can check the catalog in the library of the British Museum to see if his books have become standards of the literary world. In exchange, of course, he will own Soames’ soul. The ending is quite different than you might expect. The other excellent story is “Savonarola Jones.” This one is about a playwright who is writing a play about Savonarola, hence his nickname. He hasn’t gotten very far when Beerbohm meets him, but the two follow the progress over the years. After about a nine-year interval, the two meet again and discuss progress on the work. Mr. Jones indicates that he is coming along nicely and has only the fifth act to complete. Through an accident of fate, Jones is killed shortly thereafter, and Beerbohm learns that he has been named his literary executor. Beerbohm doesn’t know quite what to do with the manuscript, so he publishes it at the end of the story, asking the reader to submit ideas for an appropriate ending. Jones’ play is only peripherally concerned with Savonarola. Instead, he tries to take in all of the Italian Renaissance and its players in a silly blank verse kind of way. You will be smiling as you read this four-fifth’s fragment of his drama. All of the stories are very good, it’s just that these two stand out. Recommended.(less)

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Sep 09, 2009 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars

What is it about English wit that is so very unique even when its practitioners are so individual? One thinks of such figures as Ronald Firbank, for example. And Max Beerbohm is clearly another. In this book, a collection of five vignettes or sketches published in 1919, his exquisite, perceptive, and dry satire is brought to focus on individuals so cleanly and clearly that they become for the reader utterly unforgettable, virtual character types or, were one looking at Beerbohm’s actually drawin...more What is it about English wit that is so very unique even when its practitioners are so individual? One thinks of such figures as Ronald Firbank, for example. And Max Beerbohm is clearly another. In this book, a collection of five vignettes or sketches published in 1919, his exquisite, perceptive, and dry satire is brought to focus on individuals so cleanly and clearly that they become for the reader utterly unforgettable, virtual character types or, were one looking at Beerbohm’s actually drawings, caricatures. Beerbohm has a lightness of touch not easily captured, a satirical way of looking at individuals and society that is so entertaining that it cannot be characterized as cruel, so incisive as to delay the reader’s recognition that Beerbohm may be holding a mirror to each of us. His turns of phrase can be so adroit and so devastating as to delight the reader even as he skewers the characters he creates.

In the first vignette, “Enoch Soames,” for example, Beerbohm begins, “When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by Mr. Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for SOAMES, ENOCH. I had feared he would not be there. He was not there. But everyone else was.” And later, “He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin vague beard - or rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat.” “How can I write about Enoch Soames without making him ridiculous? Or rather, how am I to hush up the horrid fact that he was ridiculous?” This chapter then goes on to detail Soames’ selling his soul to the devil in order to spend five hours one hundred years hence in the British Library so that he can see all that had been written about him. He finds, in fact, no note of his having existed at all.

Beerbohm next writes about “Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton.” [Are these real people or fictional?:] Again, his carefully crafted flippancy, his verbal deftness, his scintillating irony, rapier-like, dissects both his characters and the society within which they live, ie us the readers. This is writing, writing at its cleverest, pure barbed charm. And this vignette is incomparable, the story of two flash-in-the-pan novelists who loath and compete with one another, introducing a biting critique of British aristocracy as well as a delightful extended portrayal of a ghost and a guilty conscience.

“James Pethel” is a rather more somber but sensitively written and psychologically penetrating study of a daredevil, Beerbohm writing with his usual flair but somehow a bit more poignant, more pensive.

In “A.V. Laider” we are privy to the author’s ruminations about a fellow hotel guest whom he has not met but about whom he draws conclusions and constructs fantasies, not unlike what each of us is prone to do about strangers with whom we are thrown much in contact. The tale becomes a marvelously written description of circular falsehood-confession-falsehood…, winding in upon itself to an enigmatic conclusion.

The final work, “’Savanarola’ Brown,” is outrageously funny, the brilliant capstone to the entire book, the story of a would-be dramatist who dies before writing Act V of his masterpiece, Beerbohm being forced to try to complete it by virtue of his being Brown’s literary executor. The setup to the play is clever, the play itself is absurd, a pastiche of style and quotations from literature ancient and modern, and the entire conceit brilliant, quintessential Beerbohm.

This collection of vignettes is well worth reading. If one adds up the characters, by the way, there are only six, Beerbohm himself being the seventh.
(less)

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Jan 12, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

3 1/2 stars

Interesting short stories, very well written. I often find short stories to be a little odd and unsatisfying. I read this because of a reference to Oscar Wilde and others in that era. I really enjoyed "The Importance of Being Earnest" (the play and the movie were both good). So I thought I would give this a chance. I'm glad I did. These stories were a bit odd, but they were also satisfying, some more than others.

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Sep 23, 2012 David rated it 2 of 5 stars

So-so. I enjoyed the conceit of each of the three stories in it, but man can I not stand early 1900s english writing.

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May 30, 2008 Rufussenex rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Enoch Soames" is such a 5, as is "A.V. Laider". "'Savonarola' Brown" is uneven but great at its best times. The remaining portraits, though good, left me more satisfied than floored.

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About Max Beerbohm

Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist.

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