Daniel Martin
by John Fowles
|
|
| published
| 2004
by Vintage
|
| first published
| 1977 |
| binding
| Paperback |
| isbn
|
009947834X
(isbn13: 9780099478348)
|
| pages
| 704 |
| date added
|
02-02-07
|
|
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
any john fowles fans
This 700-page tome is a most unlikely suspense novel. Its two main characters, both overcerebral Oxbridge graduates in their mid-40s, are thoroughly disillusioned with society on both sides of the Atlantic. Jane, whose husband Anthony has just died of cancer, has previously been a Catholic but has lapsed and is now a Marxist, though more theoretical than active. Dan, who early on lapsed from writing plays to Hollywood scriptwriting, engages in seemingly continuous deep, complex introspection, su...more
This 700-page tome is a most unlikely suspense novel. Its two main characters, both overcerebral Oxbridge graduates in their mid-40s, are thoroughly disillusioned with society on both sides of the Atlantic. Jane, whose husband Anthony has just died of cancer, has previously been a Catholic but has lapsed and is now a Marxist, though more theoretical than active. Dan, who early on lapsed from writing plays to Hollywood scriptwriting, engages in seemingly continuous deep, complex introspection, such as these thoughts on his profession:
“Like all self-conscious writers Dan had always associated success in work with the breaking of established codes; or to be more precise, with keeping a balance between the expected, obeying his craft, and the unexpected, obeying the main social function of all art. Another of his grudges against his own particular metier was that it put so much more value on the craft than the code-breaking side; that even the smallest departure from the cinematic established and sanctified had to be so fiercely fought for.”
If Jason Bourne ever had such thoughts, he hid them well. Moreover, Jane gives Dan a book of essays by the Marxist social and literary critic Gyorgy Lukacs, and Dan quotes whole paragraphs from these essays for us. And, although there are many sex scenes, they are strangely chaste and non-erotic, perhaps because they are all integral to the plot, depicting the course of Dan’s psychological development. James Bond would be bored.
So how is this a suspense novel? It is the story of Dan’s struggle toward a goal, and I found myself genuinely wondering whether he would make it. His goal can be defined in various ways, but it is basically the search for an authentic self that he can happily live with, an attitude toward life that he feels is healthy and satisfying. In Dan’s words, this is a a journey to wholeness, a key that he mentions many times in different ways, for instance, "full consciousness of both essence and phenomenon." By which, I would say, he means living consciously and fully in the present. Another possible expression is to give full rein to both thought and feeling, as expressed in what he reads into a Rembrandt self-protrait: “No true will without compassion; no true compassion without will.” It is steering a middle course between extreme ideologies, such as Catholicism and Marxism, which middle course Dan/Fowles calls “humanism”.
In the process of striving toward this goal, Dan has to overcome his past, particularly the emotional repression that he learned from his father and that he believes is also part of his inheritance as an Englishman. At the same time, he realizes his love for Jane and that they were wrong not to marry each other years ago. So the second part of his striving to overcome the past, inexplicably bound up with the first, is to attempt to help Jane break out of the prison of despair and self-doubt that she has been living in with Anthony for many years. I realized the level of suspense that Fowles built up around these twin pursuits during the first scene in which Dan opens up and unreservedly expresses to Jane how strongly he feels toward her. A second such scene carries only a slightly less powerful sense of release. Both of these scenes occur in the last tenth of the book. Fowles’ excruciatingly slow depiction of Dan’s and Jane’s transformations only makes them more credible and convincing when they do occur. And it is realistic that their self-changes take so long -- Dan is the king of rumination and Jane is the queen of passive-aggressive behavior.
What makes the reader keep going is not only the narrative drive -- as one critic has said of fiction, “We read to find out what happens next” -- but the fact that Fowles is such an excellent writer. He mixes in Dan’s self-absorption with such universal themes as freedom to change vs. predestination. Free will is called "this absurdly optimistic notion." An old German professor who works as a guide on the Nile cruise that Dan and Jane take says that the Germans trade freedom for order, while the English do the opposite. (He might not say that of today’s England, but in the pre-Thatcher ‘70s it probably still held some validity.) Dan compares England with the United States by noting that, although Americans mindlessly pursue freedom, they don’t realize that "the genetic injustice of life is just as great as the old European economic injustice."
Reinforcing this theme of freedom vs. determination, much of the book is couched in metaphors of artistic creation relating to theater, novels and films. At one point on the Nile trip, Dan, alone on an island, is transported out of his normal mental state into another type of perception, “as if he, and all around him, was an idea in someone else's mind, not his own." At another point he feels like "someone locked up inside an adamantly middle-class novel." Daily living is described as "to wear a mask and invent a character." As long as Dan has not broken and crawled out of the shell of emotional repression that both protects him and thwarts his psychological growth, he has a problem "distinguishing between his actual self and a hypthetical fictional projection of himself."
Fowles also keeps us engaged by deploying his bag of postmodernist tricks. At one point Dan thinks that maybe his way of reclaiming his life is to write a novel showing the aspects of life that can’t be successfully filmed. From then on we encounter an entertaining ambiguity about whether we are reading Fowles’ novel or Dan’s. For instance, the narration flips between the third and first persons. It’s jarring and gets our attention. It seems arbitrary, but I think it marks places where the Dan of the present does not understand what’s going on (“I”) and the Dan of the future, who is writing the novel, does (“Dan”).
Fowles is also an excellent stylist and an accomplished storyteller. He leavens his postmodern approach by inventing incidents that are interesting in their own right, as he demonstrated in his most popular novel, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (in this he is a forerunner of A.S Byatt and Haruki Murakami, while his focus on character development and humanism foreshadow Ian McEwan.) He is not afraid to let a scene or a conversation unfold completely and realistically in a leisurely manner, seemingly in real time. Fowles is also excellent at depicting surroundings, both natural and humanmade, and using them both to underline the mood of a scene and to further the course of the narrative. He is particularly keen on birds, with the ravens seen in England, New Mexico and on the Nile cruise being the totemic creatures of this book. His opening chapter is a classic in pastoral. And the contrast in landscape and weather between the the cruise on the lush Nile and an immediately following side trip to a Crusader castle in a desolate region of Syria masterfully highlights the dramatic shift in emotional tone in the evolving relationship between Dan and Jane.
“Daniel Martin” probably could have been cut a lot and still have been an excellent novel, but I’d hate to be the one to select the places where the cuts should be made. Of the four books by Fowles’ that I’ve read -- “The Magus”, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, “A Maggott” and “Daniel Martin” -- I would say my favorite is “A Maggott”. It has the same theatricality, sense of shifting identities, postmodern mode of storytelling, amazing incidents, feeling of suspense and philosophical heft that “Daniel Martin” has, but it is shorter and more . . . weird. On the other hand, “Daniel Martin” is more grounded in the psychological challenges of our time and thus seems more . . . solid.
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Read in November, 2007
i don't know why i keep reading books about self-obsessed middle-aged men. it's not that i have nothing in common with these characters (lord knows i have my share of self-obsession, why else would i be typing out a review that i'm pretty sure no one will every read). it's that they seem to take their self-obsession as a badge of honor--it makes them interesting or worth-while. i'm actually conflating daniel martin and john fowles, but the novel invites that sort of confusion, so i don't care...more
i don't know why i keep reading books about self-obsessed middle-aged men. it's not that i have nothing in common with these characters (lord knows i have my share of self-obsession, why else would i be typing out a review that i'm pretty sure no one will every read). it's that they seem to take their self-obsession as a badge of honor--it makes them interesting or worth-while. i'm actually conflating daniel martin and john fowles, but the novel invites that sort of confusion, so i don't care. all i know is that i finished reading this book with the feeling that if i ever actually met john fowles, i would dislike him intensly.
formally, this book is less "tricky" than the french lieutenant's woman. you could say it's more subtle, but since i like that other book so much more, i'm not willing to say that. it's more that daniel martin is interested in the connection between author and character in a different way than flw. that book highlighted the novel-ness of the novel--the unreality of the characters and yet their tendency to claim a reality strong enough to elude the direction and penetration of author and reader alike. this one is, as i mentioned before, interested in what happens when the author "writes from life". i actually don't know anything about john fowles, and i could be completely wrong here, but it's hard not to see daniel martin as a stand-in for him. the hints in the text (daniel martin plans to write a novel about himself, we are led to believe that the novel is that novel) make the relationship between writer and written a bit of a rabbit-hole. if i liked the book more, i might examine it more closely.
finally, there was one little narrative tick that annoyed me about this book. people are always giving higly significant little glances, dressing in a way that somehow sends a message, or speaking sentences that manage to contain paragraphs of meaning. one of the characters will cough, and that will mean, at least to daniel, "i approve of what you're doing, but i feel that i must show my disapproval because of the company we find ourselves in and because i don't think this course of action is particularly beneficial for your psyche. however, i want you to read my approval coded into this disapproval, so that you will understand that i understand that we are beyond such petty machinations. also, i'd really like tuna tartare for dinner." maybe it's just me, but when i cough it doesn't mean anything more profound that "jeez, i could use a lozenge."...less
recommends it for:
slouching writers
It's got one of the densest and most beautiful openings I've ever read, so beautiful that I thought what came after was a joke. It isn't; it's just the rest of the book. Which isn't bad. I thought it went on about 200 pages too long, and the neverending adolescence of the characters wore on me, but I read till I was queasy anyway. I felt miserable and adolescent for weeks afterwards. I'd say the opening's worth it.
One of the most satisfying books I've read (this was about 12 years ago) in terms of just sinking into a world created by the author. And, superficially, it's a completely ordinary story of a man's life. Fowles is a master.
Kara
marked it as to-read
03/17/08
bookshelves:
to-read
book data (includes all editions)
avg rating
(all editions):
3.74 (99 ratings)
avg rating
(this edition): 3.73
(90 ratings)
number of reviews: 4
other editions
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Daniel Martin (Paperback)
isbn: 0316290394
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Daniel Martin (Hardcover)
isbn: 0316289590
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Daniel Martin (Picador Books)
isbn: 033030884X
