Marsha, thanks for this sidetrack! "The Razor's Edge" has been one of my all time favorite books for many years now. I would certainly say it changed my life/thinking in many ways. I recommend it often - in fact I used to keep a few spare paperback copies of it around just to hand out when the occasion arose. Have you finished it yet?
Interestingly enough, I recommended it once to a person who was to become a close friend (in large part because of this story) whom I had just met one night at about 3 am in a bar in New Orleans. He is a talented young man; a writer, musician very witty and very well read - a student of philosophy who would never admit to it - and he'd never heard of "The Razor's Edge", It's funny how many people haven't heard of it actually - considering how brilliant it is. I kept insisting that he absolutely must read it. He was joking about refusing to read any book that was written pre-World War II because of how completely irrelevant it was to his experience (note that I said he was 'joking' about this - it was a pleasant argument for the sake of arguing), but he did tell me later that he would have probably either forgotten about it OR just categorized it in his mind as one of those "I'll get around to it one day" kind of books except that as he was lying in bed the next day, nursing a hangover, he was listening to "This American Life" on NPR - and the first segment was about sperm donors. The story started out talking about how some sperm donors can include written letters to be given to any of their future offspring someday and in the very first letter that was read - the donor was apparently an architect (who wished to remain anonymous - even to any future children) who wrote: '- if you don't ever read any other book in your life - read "The Razor's Edge" by Somerset Maugham'. My friend says then he knew that he absolutely had to go out and get the book - 2 completely unrelated references to it in a 12 hour time period. Of course he then agreed - the book is that good - life changing. It also gave me a kind of 'carte blanche' in the book recommendation department with him. Nice coincidence. Synchronicity/serendipity. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.18/1255 - Release Date: 2/1/2008 9:59 AM Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
