Author John Fowles, 79, died at home this weekend, after a lengthy illness.

November 7, 2005 9:12 AM

Author John Fowles, 79, died at home this weekend, after a lengthy illness. "I know I have a reputation as a cantankerous man of letters and I don't try and play it down" - John Fowles in 2003. One of the contemporary greats, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Collector, The Magus... there seems like there should be more articles on this, but alas.
posted by eatdonuts (19 comments total)

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posted by Manhasset at 9:16 AM on November 7, 2005

I remember both The Magus and The Collector scaring the hell out of me when first reading them. He was a real original thinking.
posted by eatdonuts at 9:19 AM on November 7, 2005

More about Fowles here.
posted by senor biggles at 9:24 AM on November 7, 2005

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posted by slogger at 9:37 AM on November 7, 2005

I really enjoyed The Magus. FYI, this somehwat scathing review of his memoirs last year makes for interesting reading.
posted by Heminator at 9:41 AM on November 7, 2005

Yikes! I'd forgotten how scathing that review was I didn't mean to dump on Fowles legacy at this time. I enjoyed his books...
posted by Heminator at 9:43 AM on November 7, 2005

Reading the Magus was something of a mystical experience for me at the time. The subject matter resonated so fiercely with what I was going through as a young man that I had trouble differentiating between the story and my own life.
I read most of John Fowles other novels too and enjoyed them in more conventional ways. His use of language and cultural references was extraordinary.
Bravo!
posted by duncan42 at 9:46 AM on November 7, 2005

The man was a great novelist and every scrap of his fiction in an utter pleasure to read. His style collapsed when applied to the non-fiction or essay form. And as a speaker (if Martin Amis is to be believed) he was a blowhard.
But a natural-born novelist if ever there was one. The Magus, French Lieutenant's Woman -- must-reads for all literate people.
posted by Faze at 10:14 AM on November 7, 2005

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posted by valis at 10:42 AM on November 7, 2005

Wow. I'm reading The French Lieutenant's Woman for class right now. How bizarre to have an author die while you're reading his work. FWIW, Mr. Fowles, I think your novel is pretty Goddamned amazing. Here's a quotation from it I wrote down right before I went to sleep last night:
"Genesis is a great lie; but it is also a great poem; and a six-thousand-year-old womb is much warmer than one that stretches for two-thousand million."
RIP.
posted by damnthesehumanhands at 10:45 AM on November 7, 2005

So long as we're discussing the literary reputation of Fowles, I would just like to say that reading 'The Magus' was one of the worst reading experiences I've ever had. I felt cheated by its promise of actually getting to some interesting mystical events/ideas when actually it was just some guy playing tricks. In the end it was just dreadfully dull. Perhaps someone could explain to me what made this a good book?
posted by leibniz at 11:18 AM on November 7, 2005

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posted by btwillig at 11:22 AM on November 7, 2005

His non-fiction work The Tree is a truly great book.
posted by quercus at 11:24 AM on November 7, 2005

The Magus and The Collector, at least, are remarkable, provocative fiction. I would not rank Fowles among great authors, though.

Aside: I read The Magus in the original edition, then lost my copy, and when I went to replace it only a revised edition was available. I resented that. The record companies do the same thing with remixes of favorite albums (not to mention George Lucas and Star Wars).
posted by jam_pony at 11:29 AM on November 7, 2005

Heminator: Don't apologize, that was indeed good reading. And I don't think it's fair to blame the review for being "scathing"; how can you not scathe material like this?

Hanging out with Frederic Raphael and Wolf Mankowitz at a literary festival, he writes: 'They like to feel rootless, of course, because Jews want always to be pitied.' Nathaniel Tarn, a poet, is described as 'a European cocktail Jew'. Viewing a house he's considering buying he meets the owners, a couple who are looking after the children of visiting African students: he describes the babies in their care as 'fat black pickaninnies . . . like noble animals'. On a bus he sees 'strange Lithuanian or Slav men' who are 'ominously, coarsely brutal'. At a tutorial at Oxford he notes of a fellow student: 'He comes almost exactly in the "little man" category of insignificance.' There is page after page after page of this sort of nonsense, but he seems to think it's all right to publish it, because 'no one truly sensitive can hurt another human being.'

If he doesn't hate you, Fowles probably wants to have sex with you; though as anyone who has read The Collector will know, these two things are intimately connected in the author's mind. In the Journals he spends a lot of time writing about how much he despises his girlfriends. Of one: 'I see her growing old quickly, fat, with the Jewish, Mediterranean strain coming out in her . . . no aristocratic traits. And aesthetically I need a little aristocracy, a little carriage, fine-bred beauty.'

posted by languagehat at 1:03 PM on November 7, 2005

As languagehat reminds us, even the most miniscule expression of ethnic insensitivity trumps the most outstanding accomplishments, abilities, good deeds, otherwise sterling personal record of any non-minority who who happens to make it. Fowles was an asshole in many respects. But most great artists are. If we can all tolerate the fact that Gabriel Garcia Marquez (for instance) buddies up with mass-murderer-homophobe-fascist Fidel Castro, that Herman Melville probably hit his wife, that Chuck Berry is (you've all read the Spy article...), that Frank Sinatra may have set up mob hits, that Jim Brown threw his wife out the window, that Picasso drove mistresses to suicide, that John Lennon criminally beat the crap out of a seaman in Hamburg, that Arthur C. Clark may have been involved in hanky panky in Sri Lanka with the Michael Jackson demographic, that (every rap star) (does) (what every rap star) (does) -- surely we can forgive John Fowles for making ethnic remarks in a note-jotting sort of context, however ill-judged it was to publish it. His breath probably stank, too.
But really, The French Lieutenant's Woman is good.
posted by Faze at 2:43 PM on November 7, 2005

Fowles was an asshole in many respects. But most great artists are.

Absolutely, and I've made that point so many times I bore even myself. (Hey, I'm an Ezra Pound fan, you won't catch me equating the prejudices and the work.) I certainly didn't mean to denigrate Fowles' writing, which at its best is superb; I just wanted to share the gossip.
posted by languagehat at 2:56 PM on November 7, 2005

I have to also chime in on The Magus. Absolutely blew my 20-year-old mind. Saw it as kind of a precursor to David Fincher's The Game. Great book.

Oh, and

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posted by zardoz at 3:12 AM on November 8, 2005

Hated "The Magus" (where was the postscript where Nicholas Urfe returned to the island fully kitted out with a vast array of weaponry and laid waste to the people who fucked him around? What? I missed the point? Oh, sorry..)

Loved "A Maggot". A wonderful, deeply confusing recreation of 18th Century England.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:22 AM on November 8, 2005