John Fowles

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John Fowles is dead. I really got into his books after reading the french lieutenant's woman for A-level, and hungrily devoured 'the magus', 'the ebony tower' and others, but I haven't read any for years, which is a shame. What's your favourite, or if you didn't like them, why?

― Vicky (Vicky), Monday, 7 November 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

He always seemed a bit dead. I like "The Magus" an awful lot and expect to bother finishing "Daniel Martin" w/in 20 years

― Schwip Schwap (schwip schwap), Monday, 7 November 2005 15:32 (twenty years ago)

RIP - french lts woman is great in all the alternates and asides tho i didnt care about the plot so much (never saw the movie - will a revived pinter eulogize him now?), magus seemed misogynist and dull, barth-like pomo in mantissa is great sketch comedy and probly my favorite thing he ever did (even with dated 80s cyndi lauper stuff!! great cover on the paperback too), checked 'a maggot' out from the library years ago and suffered thru 30 cutesy pages of old timey stuff but never finished, seemed like i was missing something, and i remember this hilarious lit crit hater piece on his collected journals a while back in tls or ny review of books or something that i just loved, basically dissing him as a sulky pseud with that perpetual college student mentality, really funny stuff

― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 15:35 (twenty years ago)

I read The Magus obsessively in about two days and thought it was brilliant. Then I re-read it a couple of years later and didn't think much of it - the first time round your just desperate to find out what's going on, the second time round {spoiler!} you know that you're not really going to find out, and at times you feel that he was just making it up as he went along. There are two versions of the book - I read the revised one. Apparently the {another spoiler!} scene just before he leaves the island was changed so that he actually has sex with her, and the ending was changed to make it 'clearer'. I still found the ending really frustrating - were they going to get back to together or not? In the end I had to get someone to translate the Latin for me.

I also read The Collector, and didn't really like it. Too claustrophobic, too grim, and the woman who's being kept prisoner isn't really that likeable either.

― Teh HoBB (the pirate king), Monday, 7 November 2005 15:36 (twenty years ago)

just found it, in lrb actually - It's difficult to pick out the funniest bit in a book that is entirely lacking in humour, but 'apart from language, I am French' is pretty hard to beat.

― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 15:37 (twenty years ago)

RIP :-( 'A Maggot' is one of my favorite novels.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 7 November 2005 15:41 (twenty years ago)

is it really worth it to get to the sci fi stuff?? it was like an unfunny mason & dixon (so, gore vidal then)

― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 15:43 (twenty years ago)

At a tutorial at Oxford he notes of a fellow student: 'He comes almost exactly in the "little man" category of insignificance.'

YOU WASTE

― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 15:47 (twenty years ago)

x-post

i thought it was quite entertiaining, actually. i liked the mystery/ambiguity of it, and the religion stuff. like an x-files episode with quakers!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 7 November 2005 15:50 (twenty years ago)

One of those writers I keep meaning to read beyond snippets. Based on those, he strikes me as a figure on the (artificial) boundaries, one of those souls who quite happily thankfully regards 'genre' as poison. Credit to him.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 7 November 2005 16:16 (twenty years ago)

ned we dont care that you like tolkien

― _, Monday, 7 November 2005 16:29 (twenty years ago)

that's weird... just started to re-read the magus over the weekend. : ( RIP

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:10 (twenty years ago)

His first book, The Collector is incredibly gripping and has a powerful emotional charge. It's not in any way difficult or particularly post-modern like his later stuff is (or maybe is, I haven't read any.) I highly recommend it.

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Monday, 7 November 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)

the collector is pretty awesome. I read about 80% of the Magus and didn't finish, for some reason my enthusiasm with it just died. I've had A Maggot laying around for years, it looks like it should be good but I can't get the energy to read it. Mantissa I had, didn't read, just sold a few weeks ago.

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 7 November 2005 18:52 (twenty years ago)

Reading that hilarious, well-worth-the-time London Review of Books essay linked to above I think I may have read and understood The Collector, erm, slightly differently to how Fowles intended but I still recommend it to everyone.

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Monday, 7 November 2005 18:59 (twenty years ago)

his journals sound like they're screamingly hilarious

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 7 November 2005 19:13 (twenty years ago)

bitchy screeds = fun!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 7 November 2005 23:16 (twenty years ago)

eleven months pass...

he was not very good at scrabble.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 3 November 2006 23:52 (nineteen years ago)

his latest published journal got a really great review somewhere recently. but it sounded like more bitchy awful snotty bullshit

― kyle (akmonday), Saturday, 4 November 2006 00:35 (nineteen years ago)

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