Scan barcode
A review by christopherc
The Magus by John Fowles
2.0
The writer John Fowles taught English for a year on a Greek island in the early 1950s, an experience he drew on for this vast novel that he published in the following decade. The protagonist and narrator Nicholas Urfe is a fairly recent English university graduate and a man adrift in life, whose rage at the world and critical self-examination is depicted in prose clearly influenced by Camus and company. After a love affair does not pan out, Nicholas decides to get away from England and he accepts a teaching position at an elite boarding school on the Aegean island of Phraxos. While there, he meets the mysterious and reclusive millionaire Maurice Conchis and regularly visits the latter’s summer estate on the other side of the island. Conchis turns out to have had a remarkable life which he tells Nicholas about in great depth. Yet as he does so, personages from Conchis’ ancient past seem to come to life and walk the landscape around them. Is this “masque” real or imaginary, and why does Conchis insist that the young Englishman take part in it? It turns out that the mad visions of this elderly millionaire relate very much to Nicholas’s own life.
I found this novel bloated, interminable. I’m not adverse to long novels (I was looking forward to, after reading The Magus, reading Proust again), but so much of this novel consists of effusive, excessive description that a savvy editor could have trimmed. Furthermore, the protagonist’s calm, composed response to the bizarre spectacle unfolding around him is hard to swallow, and the Jungian psychology that lies at the heart of the plot feels dated. I don’t regret reading through the end of the book, as Fowles does introduce some particularly memorable and sympathetic characters in the closing act of the novel, though I felt let down by his decision to simply let Conchis and the other dramatic foils to vanish instead of offering any neat resolution to the 600-page plot.
The Magus still holds some interest as a time capsule of mid-Twentieth Century Britain and Greece. Though the novel is set in 1953, Fowles took advantage of the end of literary censorship and looser mores in Britain in the Sixties, following the Lady Chatterley trial and the sexual revolution. The Magus includes several sex scenes and the relationship between young men and women is pretty free and easy. There is a curious feeling here of a clash of decades, or perhaps Fowles wished to point out that even the tightlaced 1950s had the same rebellious youth and free love, it was just covered up.
I found this novel bloated, interminable. I’m not adverse to long novels (I was looking forward to, after reading The Magus, reading Proust again), but so much of this novel consists of effusive, excessive description that a savvy editor could have trimmed. Furthermore, the protagonist’s calm, composed response to the bizarre spectacle unfolding around him is hard to swallow, and the Jungian psychology that lies at the heart of the plot feels dated. I don’t regret reading through the end of the book, as Fowles does introduce some particularly memorable and sympathetic characters in the closing act of the novel, though I felt let down by his decision to simply let Conchis and the other dramatic foils to vanish instead of offering any neat resolution to the 600-page plot.
The Magus still holds some interest as a time capsule of mid-Twentieth Century Britain and Greece. Though the novel is set in 1953, Fowles took advantage of the end of literary censorship and looser mores in Britain in the Sixties, following the Lady Chatterley trial and the sexual revolution. The Magus includes several sex scenes and the relationship between young men and women is pretty free and easy. There is a curious feeling here of a clash of decades, or perhaps Fowles wished to point out that even the tightlaced 1950s had the same rebellious youth and free love, it was just covered up.