forgotten classics: Cakes and Ale

from W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale (1930), probably subject of my first monthly Time Out column:

'I've been writing for thirty-five years now, and you can't think of how many geniuses I've seen acclaimed, enjoy their moment of glory and vanish into obscurity. I wonder what's happened to them. Are they dead, are they shut up in mad-houses, are they hidden in offices? I wonder if they furtively lend their books to the doctor and the maiden lady in some obscure village. I wonder if they are still great men in some Italian pension.'
'Oh, yes, they're the flash in the pans. I've known them.'
'You've even lectured about them.'