John Fowles

[lizwilliams]

An interesting writer. I read THE MAGUS when I was in my early twenties and I think it was just a bit too late. I admired his writing, but the book irritated me. It's a lot of people's favourite novel, I notice, but they all seem to be men so I wonder whether there's a gender difference in the enjoyment of Fowles' work. His books always seemed to me to have that rather smarmy, self-consciously nasty quality that's closer to a schoolboy mentality than anything else.

I appear to have been somewhat damning, perhaps more than I intended. I do think his death is a loss.

Comments

[camies.livejournal.com]

The Magus isn't one of my favourites either and I was male when I last looked ;). I agree that it is a long way up its own arse and in love with its own cleverness (if that isn't the same thing.) When I was teaching EFL in Greece there were always a few people about who'd come to Greece because they had read The Magus. If they'd also read The Collector, I'm surprised readers would be tricked into thinking that Nicholas in The Magus is supposed to be an admirable character.

[peake.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing about Fowles was that he did not ever write about admirable characters.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

>I agree that it is a long way up its own arse and in love with its own cleverness (if that isn't the same thing.) When I was teaching EFL in Greece there were always a few people about who'd come to Greece because they had read The Magus. If they'd also read The Collector, I'm surprised readers would be tricked into thinking that Nicholas in The Magus is supposed to be an admirable character.

This is why the very tedious THE BEACH always struck me as a wannabe Thai MAGUS.

A well known writer who shall remain nameless for now once remarked to me that TB was like something written by Enid Blyton, if Blyton had dropped some E and gone backpacking in Thailand. I once saw Alex Garland interviewed and he was clearly very uncomfortable when the interviewer asked him why the protagonist was such a tosser....Hmmm.

[peake.livejournal.com]

Curiously, the people who have so far responded to my own post about Fowles and said how much they liked The Magus are women ...

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm sure I don't have a water-tight case - more just an empirical observation (actually I remember a discussion with you about this issue).