From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

The Magus

John Fowles

Start date: August 1, 2022

Finish date: August 31, 2022

Discussion: Lesser Know Classics

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Lesser Know Classics

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Apr 20, 2023 Jeffrey rated it liked it

Shelves: modern-library-100

This book showed up on the American Library Classics list of best 100 books written in English after such and such a date. It feels like a weird book to be afforded the same kind of literary merit as Joyce and Faulkner and their ilk. The book is excellent and I felt engaged right from the start but it has a sort of salacious feel – like it’s Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut or something (which feels like a great comparison – we spend so much time wondering what the hell is going on as our narrator gets This book showed up on the American Library Classics list of best 100 books written in English after such and such a date. It feels like a weird book to be afforded the same kind of literary merit as Joyce and Faulkner and their ilk. The book is excellent and I felt engaged right from the start but it has a sort of salacious feel – like it’s Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut or something (which feels like a great comparison – we spend so much time wondering what the hell is going on as our narrator gets sucked into something bigger than him and is left confused but titillated throughout).

I’m not sure who to recommend this book to and, generally, I think it was a real winner but I’ll be honest: it’s a little bit of a weird one. Again, more Kubrick strange than Lynch strange. We spend the whole book wondering what’s really going on and we’ve got a narrator-protagonist who is trying to figure out the same, but the book isn’t exactly a mystery. The protagonist is along for the ride as much as we are – he stays involved in this strange game not because there’s some ultimate need (except maybe a carnal one) but because it’s too trippy not to stick it out. I think the reader is along for the same ride, so if the conclusion doesn’t fully deliver, so be it.

One thing I learned after reading and thought was fascinating (but you could certainly disagree) was that Fowles published a revised version of this 1966 original in 1977. I assumed I had the original 1966 text in front of me, but already 600 pages in I saw that I was looking at the revised version and I’m terribly curious about what he decided to change eleven years later. How substantive are the changes and stylistic? Do things become clearer or do we view things through a glass even more darkly? It seems to me such a rare practice to go back and change a published work – especially a decade later and a book that ultimately received such acclaim (I have no idea how revered the book was in its first eleven years). Did I even read the book that’s supposed to be great, or did I read something more like a director’s cut?

The last hundred pages felt the weakest – it’s got to be hard to decide how much to resolve when the strangeness and mystery are what makes it so interesting. Fowles seems to take something of a middle-road – leaving so many questions unanswered but still getting Nick to the kind of conclusion we anticipated. It’s hard to end a really good book. Tough call between three and four stars for me – if it had ended a little sooner or a little differently, I’d probably give it the bump up – just not sure it felt like it had a great significant payoff.
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