This is a curious novel by Somerset Maugham written and published in 1908. The lead character, or rather, the titular character is a literally largely than life man named Oscar Haddo, who is into parlor tricks, and other occultish type things. He’s based or at least figured on Alastair Crowley.
The plot involves Haddo being introduced into a polite society who is confused and bemused as whether they love him or hate him, or love him because they hate him. He’s oafish but quite alluring.
He quickly and secretly marries Margaret, once betrothed setting both the woman Haddo loves, Susie, and Margaret’s betrothed, Arthur up as a pair bent on bringing Haddo down.
The book is odd, like I said, because it’s hard at times to parse out how much we are meant to believe in terms of the supernatural and occultish.
The character himself reminds me of a few throughout literature. He’s got some parallels with the Judge from Blood Meridian but also with Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. More than anyone though, I found him to be a lot like the central figure from The Man Who Was Thursday, which makes sense as they were contemporary. This book is definitively of a time, and in that weird time between the late Victorian and early 20th century, before WWI put a lot of the angst about industrialization and modernity into a more clear, political shape, there was a lot of grasping for meaning. It’s part of the reason we get Arthur Conan Doyle believing in fairies and Yeats looking into Satanism. This book captures that angst in some interesting way.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Magician-Penguin-Classics-Somerset-Maugham/dp/0143104896/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=the+magician+w+somerset+maugham&qid=1558532409&s=gateway&sr=8-4)