John Fowles: hermit, homophobe, master

John Fowles Part I

John Fowles was born in 1926 and died in 2005.

Some of his books have been successfully filmed, like The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) in 1981 with Karel Reisz as director. The script was by Harold Pinter, the master of silences and implications. Starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. His novels are self-reflexive (metafictional) and in England he is considered one of the best post-war writers, according to The Times of 2008.

A hermit with a posthumous scandal around homophobic and anti-Semitic statements, the way writers' scandals get exposed nowadays.

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In Leigh-on-Sea in Essex where he was born, the small houses all looked the same and utterly depressed him. This was the beginning of his intense resentment against humanity. He likewise took a strong stance against the English's gift “for duplicitous politeness", according to Peter Conradi in his study of Fowles (Methuen, 1982:22-23). Conradi is also the author of the biography on Iris Murdoch (1986) and the word “Murdochian" has become commonplace when a small group of people behaves strangely.

The King's Speech in 2010 (which he wrote with speech therapist Mark Logue) explores Prince Albert's speech problems.

Fowles was headboy at school (Bedford School) and later critical of the violence he was a part of. He had to beat up three, four boys a day. Later he studied at Oxford with French and German as his majors.

II

The prison-house of language (from the book by Fredric Jamieson on modern linguistic theory) became The prison-house of plot.

The Magus (1965), his first novel, was updated in 1977. It appeared after The Collector (1963).

The original title was The Godgame, based on his experiences on the Greek island of Spetses. The game between Nicholas and a rich man, one Maurice Conchis.

Nicholas is an Oxford student who wants to be a poet. He meets Kelly, an Australian woman, and leaves for the Greek island of Praxos where he becomes an English teacher at the Lord Byron School. However, he experiences loneliness, contemplates suicide and in this state of ennui he meets a wealthy man, Conchis, who intimates that he was a Nazi collaborator during World War 2. A game, Godgame, comes into play and Nicholas is drawn into this frenzied, manipulative game with allusions to De Sade and parodies of Greek myths. A kind of chess game, then.

Myths activate timelessness

A magus is a fortune teller and ancient Persian wisdom is thus embedded in the text. Also, one of the wise men in the Bible was a sage.

The 1950s are the time frame of the novel. But the myths and archetypes activate timelessness.

The Magus was filmed in 1968 by Guy Green. Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, Candice Bergen and Anna Karina starred in it. It was shot down by the critics at the time and Peter Sellers, when asked if he would like to change anything about his life, remarked: “I would do everything exactly the same, but I wouldn't see The Magus."

Nicholas also has Seven Types of Ambiguity under his arm, that study by William Empson from 1930 which used to be a Bible in British universities.

In every book, Fowles teaches us, there is the underlying myth of how the author wants to see himself. Likewise, he claims, the author is every character described in a novel.

Daniel Martin is a Bildungsroman that appeared in 1977. It runs for more than 700 pages.

The main character is a playwright and screenwriter in Hollywood. He returns to England to visit a dying friend. We read about his youth, the days at Oxford, and a lost love. Anthony, the dying friend, requests that he take care of his wife, Jane; whom Daniel used to be in love with. A family drama, then. He got married to her sister, Nell, with whom he had a daughter, Caro. On a trip to Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, he and Jane fall in love with each other again.

So, also a travel story.

The happy ending is probably criticism of a kind, of a Hollywood that often shies away from complex endings? British critics roasted the novel, while Christopher Lehmann-Haupt grasped the essence of the book in The New York Times: “Un-Inventing the Novel”, on 13 September 1977.

III

“He’s not human; he is an empty space disguised as a human.” (234)

In The Collector (1963), the problematics of the Princesse Lointaine (the Princess Faraway) is examined. The so-called ideal or unattainable woman,  referring to the drama by Edmond Rostand (1868–1918).

My copy was purchased for R2,80 in 1979 and is full of notes and annotations in the margin.

The main character's father dies in 1937, when he is two years old. He is raised by Aunt Annie and Uncle Dick after his father's death in a drunk driving incident.

His cousin Mabel is the one who leaks the family secrets and his abandonment by his mother is charged with innuendo. Uncle Dick dies when the main character, Fred, is 15 years old. Then, as a young child (as escapism), he starts collecting butterflies. The main character is a clerk who wins prize money and buys a house in Sussex.

After this, he begins collecting women. Miranda Grey, an art student, is the first victim. As the reader, you see how he plans everything and excludes the outside world. There are allusions to The Tempest and Goya. Miranda and Prospero, the magician; closed off from the outside world, but in this novel, it becomes more ominous.

Shocking revelations

The perspective of the male focaliser is interspersed with shocking revelations in the letters of the prisoner, a woman. Her ambivalent feelings about the man who controls her and has forced her to have sex with him. She tries to flee and uses sex as a weapon. However, she falls ill and dies. When he reads in her diary that she had never loved him, he wants to commit suicide.

He buries her in the garden. And starts thinking about the next victim.

The reference to Romeo and Juliet at the end of the novel becomes something sinister.

Shocking and evil. Christopher Wilder, a serial killer, had the book in his possession when he was caught by police in 1984.

It is a complex text that draws you in as a reader. Good books are rarely politically correct. Stephen King refers to this book in his 1987 novel, Misery.

If this novel were to be published today, people would object. But it's well-written and explores the dark depths of the psyche.

(To be continued)

♦ VWB ♦

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