as an influence on Coward, Lawrence, Kingsley Amis, Graham Greene, Christopher Isherwood, V. S. Naipaul and George Orwell. His urbane spy, Ashenden, influenced the stories of Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Georges Simenon and John le Carré. In The Summing Up (1938), Maugham wrote of his non-dramatic work, "I have no illusions about my literary position. There are but two important critics in my own country who have troubled to take me seriously and when clever young men write essays about contemporary fiction they never think of considering me. I do not resent it. It is very natural". Some biographers have doubted Maugham's claim to be unresentful at being overlooked or dismissed by literary critics, but there is little doubt that he was right about it. L. A. G. Strong acknowledged his craftsmanship, but described his writing as having an effect like "that of music expertly played in an expensive restaurant at dinner". Virginia Woolf was friendly though a little patronising; Lytton Strachey disparaged one of his books as "Class II, Division I". Lee Wilson Dodd wrote, "Mr Maugham knows how to plan a story and carry it through. Competence is the word. His style is without a trace of imaginative beauty." In a 2016 survey Don Adams remarks, "The gist of the criticism of Maugham's fiction, that it lacks psychological and emotional profundity, is remarkably consistent throughout the decades." The "two important critics" Maugham referred to were probably Desmond MacCarthy and Raymond Mortimer; the former particularly praised the short stories, tracing their roots in French naturalism, and the latter reviewed Maugham's books carefully and on the whole favourably in the New Statesman. A rising critic of a younger generation, Cyril Connolly, praised Maugham for his lucidity and called him "the last of the great professional writers", but Connolly's contemporary Edmund Wilson insisted that Maugham was second-rate and "disappointing". Even an admirer such as Evelyn Waugh felt that Maugham's disciplined writing with its "brilliant technical dexterity" was not without disadvantages: Maugham himself, although he never used the terms "second rate" or "mediocre" about his work, was modest about his status. He said that lacking any great powers of imagination he wrote about what he saw, and that although he could see more than most people could, "the greatest writers can see through a brick wall – my vision is not so penetrating". Marking Maugham's eightieth birthday The New York Times commented