Look how not-arrogant I am!
The Great Man quotes himself.
He hasn’t though. Or maybe he has, in the sense that he was even worse before. I don’t know, I didn’t know of him before. But in the sense of actually becoming thoughtful and not arrogant? No. No, there he has failed utterly.
In fact, amusingly, the very act of tweeting this vain “Look how awesome I am” self-quotation demonstrates that failure. His habit of blocking anyone who disagrees with him no matter how politely just underlines it.
Updating to add because I forgot where it was before:
He really is a fabulous caricature. Dickens, mutatis mutandis, could have done great things with him, as he did with Podsnap. Not to mention Jane Austen, who anticipated him with Mrs Norris:- “I am a woman of few words and professions” in one of her long, boasting speeches.
Yeah, the whole “through my wokeness I have become merely slightly less awful than my fellow [white][cis] men” is not the stunning display of modesty that many people seem to think it is. It’s really a form of humblebrag.
It’s tricky, because you can’t always avoid it — arguably I’m doing it in this comment by implying that I do it less than others — but Maugham seems to take self-awareness to new lows.
I wouldn’t even call this one a humble brag – he straight up brags about how he’s moved a long way in grasping how much better he is than his tribe. And quoting himself saying so is meta and mega brag.
Pecksniff is another good parallel – that line about how he warms himself at the fire with such an air of benevolence you’d think he was warming someone else.
Found it.
‘Who is with him now,’ ruminated Mr Pecksniff, warming his back (as he had warmed his hands) as if it were a widow’s back, or an orphan’s back, or an enemy’s back, or a back that any less excellent man would have suffered to be cold. ‘Oh dear me, dear me!’
Wow, imagine my astonishment to see these comments right after I made a Dickens reference on another post? We often bring things back to literature, don’t we?
It’s possible that KB Player put Dickens in your mind with her comment up at the top. It’s Dickens day!