Sunday, April 17, 2011
Journal 9
LIT 4303 Dr. Lillios ________________________________________________________________________ John Fowles’s The Magus Reading Assignment: Read the book by Tuesday, April 19 Schedule: Thursday, April 14: Introduction to Fowles and Lyme Regis, his green world, themes, concept of the magus, the existential hero, Greece as a setting Monday, April 18: Submit Fowles journal entry to http://www.postww2lit.blogspot.com (see below) by midnight. Be sure to sign your entry. Tuesday, April 19: The nature and significance of play, the god game Journal 9 Assignment: Read “Why I Rewrote The Magus” by John Fowles. Write about a page or 200-250 words on Fowles’s world view in the novel. Why did he write (and re-write) the novel? How was he affected by the Greek landscape? What reaction does he hope to elicit from the reader who reads his
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I find that The Magus is a perfect response to the Greek landscape in which Fowles was surrounded by during his stay in Spetsai. The landscape manifests itself physically throughout the story through a variety of illustrious descriptions, however the landscape also significantly impacted the primary thematic concept behind the novel. The feelings evoked by Fowles’ stay in Greece is mirrored in the novel’s protagonist, Nicholas. In “Why I Rewrote The Magus,” Fowles reveals that “Away from its inhabited corner Spetsai was truly haunted, though by subtler- and more beautiful- ghosts that those I had created. Its pine forest silences were uncanny, unlike those I have experienced anywhere else; like an eternally blank page waiting for a note or word.” This sentence alone evokes the uncanny atmosphere that is felt throughout The Magus; the bizarre but beautiful environment which seems to “make things happen.” Fowles’ personal experience is then an important aspect of the novel, as it is reflected throughout it. It appears that the concept of gaining experience is a paramount theme for Fowles, and that is perhaps why he wrote and re-wrote the novel. To demonstrate the significance achieved through experience and to demonstrate the necessity to constantly evaluate your identity against your learned experiences. Similarly, I find that Fowles desired his audience to grasp this fact, if anything, from the reading of The Magus. The author himself declares that “If The Magus has any ‘real significance,’ it is no more than that of the Rorschach test in psychology. Its meaning is whatever reaction it provokes in the reader, and so far as I am concerned there is no given ‘right’ reaction.” The experience of reading the novel is as individual as the person reading it.
ReplyDelete-Taissa Rebroff
In all the novels we have read so far, there is a concept call “spiritual space.” Greece is not only an area of philosophy, but it is also an area of spiritual space. Sexuality is spiritual in the magus – both in the honorable and dark sense. Fowles attempts to appeal to Great Expectations which is autobiographical. For example, he was the Grecian rivers who act akin to the mists of Britain. It is both a romantic in the sense of moonlight, but eerie in the sense of mystery. For example: “The river narrowed a little and the point took the force of what current there was. Even on a night as calm as that there was a murmur over the shallow stones. Henrik was standing at the very tip of the shingle spit, in a foot of water. He was facing out the north-east, to where the river widened. The moonlight covered it in a grey satin sheet” (Fowles 313). The moonlight was romantic in the sense of Grecian sexuality. However, the mist is symbolic of death, an allusion to the destroyer in the Exodus. Furthermore, it is necessary to take into consideration that Fowles would have looked at the landscape in the spiritual space methodology due to the eerie attempt to give the characters an environment where the gods would have been – a retooling of their passion. Every time landscape is used, the character attempts to justify – if not non-sequitur – the notions of his passion – his sexual passion. Thus, the protagonist seems to resemble Zeus through the landscape, looking for his next sexual meeting – a meeting of completion or a meeting of disaster. The mist entails the latter; it is a meeting of death – the symbolic destroyer alluding to the Exodus.
ReplyDeleteEric Brame
In his novel, The Magus, John Fowels takes a unique perspective of world view. He takes the reader on a humanistic journey attempting to find the keys to life. The novel is one of initiation. The Magus is attempts to introduce the protagonist into a larger world, and the game is his means of doing so. The aimless young professor is rudely awakened and exposed the mysteries of the world. His character Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis' psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. In Why I Re-Wrote The Magus he states, “I did intend Cochis… to exhibit a series of masks representing human notions of God, from the supernatural to the jargon ridden scientific, that is, a series of human illusions about something that does not exist in fact: absolute knowledge and absolute power.” Like other novels we have read, Fowels’ protagonist struggles to determine what is real and what isn’t. Against his will and knowledge he becomes a performer in the “godgame,” and realizes that the enactments are not about Conchis' life, but his own.
ReplyDeleteThe novel also addresses the ambiguity of reality. The “godgame” is a labyrinth of allusions, symbols, and parables, devoid of one absolute meaning. Once the reader thinks they have a mental construct that makes sense of events, a new facet is revealed that destroys the construct and plunges events back into confusion. The book ends indeterminately and by the end, it is apparent there will be no easy answers. John Fowles received many letters from readers wanting to know how the story ends but Fowles maintained that it's up to the reader to decide. In Why I Re-Wrote The Magus he states, “Its meaning is whatever reaction it provokes in the reader, and so far as I am concerned there is no given right reaction.”
Lauren Supersano
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly, The Magus took on the persona, the reflection of John Fowles’s own life. The author’s own search for life’s meaning, runs as an existential thread throughout the novel. Fowles’s personal journey for answers, for the ability to discern reality from illusion, and his quest for an understanding of religion and freedom all propel the narrative forward. In many respects, Fowles’s protagonist, Nicholas, longs for the spark of creative imagination with his poetry, just as Fowles does with his own writing. Fowles’s loss of direction in life resides in Nicholas’s loneliness. In his article, “Why I Rewrote The Magus, Fowles explains, “I had no coherent idea at all of where I was going in life as in this book” (Fowles 3). This sense of ambiguity in his writing caused great tension in Fowles, but this characteristic is one of The Magus’s endearing qualities that set it apart from other texts of its time. The haziness of Fowles’s intentions and labyrinth of mind-games allows the reader to be exposed to a new postmodern experience. While Fowles questioned his approach to the novel, he does, however, offer that “If I had a working device during the original writing, it was Alain-Fournier’s ‘I like the marvelous only inside the real’” (Fowles 4). This philosophical foundation resonates throughout the novel, such as Nicholas’s realization that the woman who plays Lily is multi-faceted and deeply complicated. Discussing quietly, Nicholas speaks with Lily, while naked mythical men and women scurry through the landscape with an erotic appeal. This part of the novel portrays that Lily’s reality is this world of pleasure and eroticism. The reader, along with Nicholas categorized her as a pure, old-fashioned woman, where her World War I attire starkly contrasts her glee at the naked adventures of others.
ReplyDeleteWrapped in his labyrinth of ideas, there is an undercurrent of adolescence that resides with Nicholas. For Fowles, he longed to “provide an experience beyond the literary” through his novel (Fowles 4). And while Fowles criticizes himself for such a naïve perspective of writing, it does strengthen the biographical connection between Nicholas and himself. Even though Fowles did not understand his idealistic approach to the novel, The Magus can be characterized as a transformed version of a “coming of age” text.
Fowles’s intentions for the reader are far from prescriptive and confining, which seems fitting considering his open-ended approach to reality, “coming of age,” sexuality, morality, freedom, and religion. He creates the analogy that meaning from the novel is like the ambiguity of the psychological test, Rorschach (Fowles 6). Fowles explains, “Its meaning is whatever reaction it provokes in the reader, and so far as I am concerned there is no given ‘right’ reaction” (Fowles 6). While he does not specify for the reader how he/she must connect to the text or find meaning, he does describe his foundational element of the story. Playing with the concepts of God and freedom, Fowles offers an opportunity to his readers to consider the continuum between God and freedom. He argues, “True freedom lies between [God] and [freedom], never in one alone, and therefore it can never be absolute freedom” (Fowles 6). The Magus undercuts extreme allegiances to religion, power, and authority, which allows it to make the poignant case that only in balance are we truly free.
Kerri Libra
John Fowles’ need to rewrite The Magus is reflective of the novel itself. Nicholas Urfe is constantly forced to reevaluate and examine each decision he has made. In his article, Why I Rewrote The Magus, Fowles claims that “its meaning is whatever reaction it provokes in the reader,” which conforms to the reader response theory. He also states that The Magus is reflection of his young mind; but as an artist, like all artists, he is obligated to expose even his most “private past.” Fowles includes that his book was also a reflection of his beliefs about the absence of “absolute knowledge and absolute power.” While Fowles states that his ideas about God, or rather his belief in the absence of God, is what he intended Conchis to explore he still remained open-minded to interpretations of his work. As an artist, Fowles need to re-write the text was a result of his “doubt [in] perfect[ion]—believing that there is always a way to improve. The Magus ends with Nicholas learning to understand why and how he makes each decision. Through this understanding, I believe Fowles is showing that his protagonist does not have all the answers (so-to-speak) and, yet, he is willing to constantly look for answers in an attempt to strengthen his mind.
ReplyDeleteSomething I found quite interesting in "Why I Rewrote the Magus" is that Fowles seems completely uninterested in answering readers' questions about his work. I'm a creative writing major, and this may be because I have an inflated ego, but I like talking about my work. I suppose since Fowles was a pretty accomplished guy he, he wasn't terribly interested in explaining himself all the time. I like how he says that the meaning of "The Magus" is "whatever reaction it provokes in the reader, and so far as I am concerned there is no given 'right' reaction." I see this as a common answer from a lot of authors.
ReplyDeleteFowles views his work as dead once it is published. Once he gives his novels away, they don't really belong to him anymore. The public has taken the book, read it, and shot out their own meanings. He can say it's about one thing, and a reader can say it's about another. I can relate to him, because I feel like everything I write is terrible, but people have always seemed to enjoy at least part of something I wrote. I feel that many writers will never actually be happy with something they wrote. Fowles says he saw things he hated on the very first page, and that'll drive a writer nuts. Personally, if it's good enough t be published, I think you should just leave it be. If you go to rewrite something, I feel as if you'll go back again and again.
-Elliot Northlake
Going off of what Elliot is saying I also agree that it’s really interesting that Fowles doesn’t answer many questions about his work or why he writes or his reasoning behind the things he writes. I’m generally used to writers who enjoy talking about their work, and their reasons behind writing their work, so it threw me off a bit that Fowles is very hush hush about why he does the things he does. This mystery was more of an indicator of why he writes than I think anything he could inform his readers, so possibly his silence is actually being used to portray this.
ReplyDeleteOnce he publishes a novel, he sees it as being something that no longer belongs to him, almost as if it doesn’t exist at all. It is now something that belongs to the public, where they can scrutinize it and give their own opinions, some good, some bad. I believe that many writers go through this. You feel like once the public can see something you’ve written, they can praise it or tear it apart. Writers are their own worst critiques, and many of them will never like an entire novel or story that they write. I’m sure Hemingway didn’t like his first draft of To Have and Have Not and I bet he rewrote it at least once. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe some writers just have more certainty in their words, so they take more of a chance and only create one draft, full of it’s things to praise and the things that aren’t so good.
-Lauren Slygh
Fowles possessed the need to rewrite The Magus in order to alter the "articulation" of the novel; to truly show how his protagonist is going through a period of reflection, much like the author himself. Fowles's world view is very humanistic, as he and his character, Nicholas, attempt to find their own meanings about life as they go through it. He states that this novel is open to the reader's interpretation; that it will be a different experience for each individual who reads it.
ReplyDeleteFowles's time spent in Greece influenced his work in the sense that it gave him fodder for his characters and the setting; however, he admits that it is not anything close to autobiographical considering he would probably make the tale more comical. In the article "Why I rewrote The Magus", Fowles portrays the Greek island of Spetsai as being mysterious, captivating, and somewhat dreary (and yet beautiful for evoking that sort of powerful emotion).
In “Why I Rewrote The Magus,” Fowles speaks of sort of an adolescent desire that drove him to write the novel. He also goes to mention that most fan letters he has received are from people who would like to undergo Nicholas’s Greek experience. I can understand this desire, and I’m convinced most hold it, though some might bury it deep inside. To escape from the gray real world (in Nicholas’s case, the very gray London), discover the desolate beauty of Greece, and become involved in an exhilarating, mind-bending, erotic experience which tortures one’s soul but at the same time takes them to a whole new realm of spiritual experience and understanding of existence. Such scenario is tempting, and I’m sure that Fowles (though he does not desire to have his personal life directly tied to the novel, and I respect that wish very much) might have thought of such complete escape when he taught at his own Greek island away from his own London. From the article, I got the idea that he wrote the novel with such driven desire to get this fantasy out of his head that he neglected the language. Perhaps he felt that the novel had a human value, but not quite a literary one. But that is what I appreciated about the novel the most – it was a beautifully, sharply written work I’ve connected with more than most of the classics I have read in my English major life. It expresses this human desire to be taken out of reality, to have our world broken apart and be given some sort of above-understanding (godgame, if you will) so aptly and compellingly that I had a hard time putting it down. And that, in my opinion, is what drove Fowles to slave over this novel for such a long time, never giving up, and finally releasing it (and re-releasing it) as his masterpiece. He was able to tap into this imagination, this escapist fantasy on such a significant level that he might have just defined the alienation and longing of the post-war world Western mind. Is that a big statement? I’ll read the book again and see if I feel the same way afterwards.
ReplyDeleteI think it is really interesting what Elliot brought up, as well as what Eric was saying about the landscape. There is indeed an innate sensuality, though eerie, very beautiful, romantic and ppowerful. I feel as though Greece's landscape allowed for the development of that aroma in the story because Greece is one of those few places with the power t evoke such a thing. It was haunted but there is this rich history/cultural that has shaped and molded so much of every other culture (at least western) and so be employing the Greek landscape, he was able to portray all that he did.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Elliot's comment, there really is a Roland Barthes-esque feel to how he reacts to his work: The Author is Dead. I also notice that when working on a piece (I can't even imagine for one as lengthy as The Magus), you become so caught up in trying to get it told and done and published that once you do et it published and then have some time to step away and come back to it in print, it feels foreign to you and you are automatically able to critique and asses the piece as if it were not your own. I think there will always be things we can find needs improvment but re-writing a piece like this, I felt was wild! I have a hard time coming back to small piecews, I think if I was going to attack a task as huge as re-writing soething like The Magus I would be suffering from intense anxiety. However, he allows the reader to take what they wish from the piece and understands that to each's own perspective, they will interperet the piece a different way because of the separation that comes with publishing a work.
--Sydni Gonzalez
Fowles re-wrote The Magus he says because of guilt. The guilt comes from expressing about human nature a certain erratic characterization and erotic portrayal that he possibly finds confusing and beguiling to the reader. What Fowles did not intend to do, was to have readers ask for deliberation of the characters and setting within the novel. Readers of the work should interpret the piece as it is received with no additional help from the author deciphering endless meanings and clues that enhance the text. Whatever the reader perceives from an initial reading of The Magus is his or her individual and correct interpretation. And there may be many. Fowles writes, “both technique and that bizarre face of the imagination that seems to be more like a failure to remember the already existent than what it really is – a failure to evoke the nonexistent – kept me miserably aground”. Fowles did not expect the reader to be burdened the philosophical, labyrinthine story lines within The Magus and possibly felt that clarification, while needed could affect future reception of the novel as a whole piece of literature akin to its forebears which he mentions. The Greek landscape then is the constant within the novel, new and dynamic, yet old and classic. What I expected as a novel peppered indiscriminately with classical mythological allusions was a novel deeply bearing the philosophical transformations of the mind instead. Other than proclaiming to have no idea for the meaning of his manuscript, I feel that Fowles must have been inspired by the Greek landscape as it became the literal foundation for his novel and its characters and quite possibly a philosophical base driven by culture and history based on physical surroundings. And maybe with a book like The Magus, a work of fiction created by freedom has roots in two places and never in a singular location.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Ragoonanan
The reason for the rewriting of Fowles' The Magus is twofold. Firstly, Fowles felt that certain "erotic" elements needed to be added as well as a new ending; one that was less ambiguous. The second reason was due to stylistic experimentation as well as what he constitutes as a certain "freedom" garnered to artists on their work. It is possible that these changes evoke a truer sense of Greece, echoing a certain exactitude to the local by placing it higher on the sphere of sexual desire and philosophy. It is clear throughout the novel, that Fowles has a distinct connectedness to the nature of Greece, paying close attention to the detail of its historical and cultural characteristics. Certain aspects appear, specifically, with the specific flower types and the relationship between humans and environment. I think for his readers, his hope is to make them aware of the beauty of nature and, with almost Wordsworth-esque charm, lends his characters and settings to ways in which to experience this closeness.
ReplyDeleteFowles wrote _The Magus_ to explore the whirling world of Nicolas Urfe. He re-wrote it because, like all authors could agree, he was unhappy with the original work. This is something I find most troubling and understanding. Fowles had a false start and then set the work a side, started and finished other works as he looked at rebooting _The Magus_. Rushing it off before truly getting his work to the point he wanted. He says something, I agree with wholly, “Most novelist feel a death as soon as a text is in print.”
ReplyDeleteFowles was affected by the Greek landscape, so completely that there is a consumption of it as a multi-scape in _The Magus_, more that simply the look of the land but also the sense of the space. The reaction he hopes to elicit from the reader who reads his work is that there is an undoubtedly sense of freedom from the mundane, that the magic of this story is getting through the labyrinths of tales and spiraling mindscape of Nicolas Urfe.
Ian.
In an interview with Daniel Halpern in 1971 titled, “A sort of Exile in Lyme Regis,” Fowles states, “In a way the book was a metaphor of my own personal experience of Greece. An allegory, if you like. At least that’s how it started” (Vipond 15). Obsessed by self-knowledge, “personal, social, political, and artistic freedom are central to his world view” and to his writing (Vipond x).
ReplyDeleteFowles, being the “Everyman,” sought self-discovery in his writing, as he tells Aaron Latham in “John Fowles on Islands and . . . Hidden Valleys.” “Every book I write is an attempt to discover who I am” (Vipond 47). As the island imagery both attracted and inspired Fowles, the Greek landscape in the novel waffles between barren and beautiful as the protagonist, Urfe also if not “at least that of a partial Everyman of (Fowles) own class and background” who like Fowles often had “no coherent idea at all of where (he) was going, in life as in the book.”
He further tells Latham that “The basic scheme was the old man in the book showed the young man all the various masks that human beings put on the face of God. From superstition right up to psychiatry. But there’s a basic fault in The Magus: if you’re creating myth you shouldn’t do it in realistic language. I’ve just rewritten it. I knew I could write it better now” (Vipond 48). This is confirmed in “Why I rewrote the Magus.” A combination of “guilt” over the “bungles” and errors found, coupled with the odd critical reception and a feeling of having not quite manifested it properly plus time, distance and experience gave his cause to rewrite it.
That he chose to rewrite to essentially clarify meaning is interesting, given Fowles believed collaboration between writer and reader is necessary for making meaning and therefore the reaction he hoped to elicit from each reader is widespread, that “there is no “unique set of correct answers behind the clues” which is the core of reader response theory.
Cassie Turner