For Readers Literary Names D. Fowles

John FOWLES

John Fowles "Eliduc":
While studying French literature at Oxford, I read everything indiscriminately, and more from ignorance than from a great mind. I had a very distant idea of \u200b\u200bmy real tastes, for I took on faith the myth, widespread at that time, that only teachers had the right to personal preferences. I would not recommend this approach to current students ...

Internet resources

John Fowles

Welcome to John Fowles - The Web Site, a site for those who appreciate the writing of one of the 20th century’s greatest authors. This is the only comprehensive web site on John Fowles, and as such we strive to make it as interesting and useful as possible. These pages are updated frequently so be sure to bookmark and come back often.

John Fowles

This site is an attempt to collect information about the life and work of the English writer John Fowles, scattered across the Runet.

Russian Literature Network: John Robert Fowles

Biography and personality

Online Encyclopedia Around the World
Fowles, John Robert (1926-2005) - English writer, whose popularity and canonical place in English literature has not been questioned for several decades.

John Fowles - BBC Channel (October 1977)
Interview. Translation and introductory article by A. Babicheva
John Fowles: There is a certain relationship between the reader and the writer. But she disappeared into visual art. The camera is akin to fascism: it seems to say that you are allowed to see only one specific image. It destroys the freedom of imagination, which is endowed with words, verbal signs. That is why I am sure that the novel may die, but the prose, the verbal sign, will never die, the poetry will never die.

John Fowles. Biographical sketch
The basis of this essay is a free translation of an article by Peter Guttridge and several other sources, as well as a collection of essays "Wormholes".

Francisco Casavella. Died John Fowles, English writer who chose freedom
He is the one who, through the described history, considers all aspects of truth in the best way known to him, realizing at the same time that he lives in a certain era, and he himself needs to hold his breath, not to let the flames burst out of himself that can turn everything into everyday life and ashes.

Savanna. John Fowles

Fowles John Robert, biography and biography

Anastasia Babicheva. John Fowles
Fowles is called one of the most prominent representatives of literary postmodernism. And, indeed, the writer with amazing accuracy and exhaustive completeness captured the face of his time - its ambiguity: his illness and, at the same time, his recovery, his freedom and boundaries, his life and dying, his play.

People: John Fowles
Fowles' first published novel, The Collector (1963), brought him success and eliminated the need to earn a living as a teacher.

John Fowles was distinguished by an incredible breadth of hobbies - he was an ornithologist, naturalist, traveler, gardener, musician, film fan, scribe, collecting rarities. He himself called the combination of his so different incarnations "the John Fowles club".

Fowles John. God Games
The program "Wide format" on the TV channel "Culture" with a story about the life and work of John Fowles.

Vladislav Estraikh. John Fowles

John Robert Fowles. Quotes

The best aphorisms, quotes and sayings of Fowles John Robert
At nineteen years old, a person does not agree to just do things. It is important for him to justify them all the time. (Quote from the novel "The Magus")

Artworks

Novels, novellas, stories

• "Magus"
  I was born in 1927 - the only son of poor Englishmen, who until his death could not escape the shadow of an ugly dwarf, Queen Victoria, bizarrely prostrating into the future. Graduated from high school, hung out in the army for two years, went to Oxford; it was then that I began to realize that it was not at all what I would like to be.
• "The French Lieutenant's Woman" ["The French Lieutenant's Mistress"]
  The east wind is more obnoxious than any other on Lyme Bay (Lyme Bay is the deepest cut in the lower leg that England stretched out to the southwest), and a curious person could immediately make several well-founded assumptions about a couple who, on one chilly windy morning in at the end of March 1867, she went for a walk on the pier of Lyme Regis, a small but ancient town that gave its name to the bay.
• "Collector"
  When she came home from a private school on vacation, I could see her almost every day: their house was across the street, right opposite the wing of the City Hall where I worked. She now and then rushed somewhere, alone or with her sister, or even with some young people. This was not to my taste at all.
• "The Prince and the Magician"
  There was once a prince in the world who believed in everything but three things in which he did not believe. He didn't believe in princesses, he didn't believe in islands, and he didn't believe in God.
• "Worm"
  The last day of the distant April. A line of horsemen is advancing through the wilderness in the southwest of England. Spring has not yet reached this gloomy hill, the sky is covered with a gloomy gloom, and the companions breathe with an oppressive melancholy, understandable to anyone who traveled during this gloomy season. The peat bog through which the path runs is bristling with dead heather stalks.

Poetry

Articles about creativity

John Fowles. Wormholes
A collection of autocritical essays by John Fowles dedicated to his most famous novels.

John Fowles. Aristos
A collection of philosophical reflections, in which, in particular, Fowles explains the intention of the "Collector".

Andrey Krotkov. Mega Europe and Dirty English Means. John Fowles: 25 years in the maze of Russian convolutions
The Dorsetshire recluse, as the Western press called Fowles, entered the space of Russian literary perception in the role of a representative of the "young, unfamiliar tribe." He really was defiantly unfamiliar and unfamiliar - and this was initially interesting.

Galina Yuzefovich. Gifts of the "Magus"
A writer who has managed to generate at least one significant literary tendency, to bring to life at least one generation of interpreters, followers and plagiarists, is rightfully considered great. How, in this regard, should one classify John Fowles - a man who single-handedly grew not one, but several branches at once on the tree of modern prose?

Dmitry Bavilsky. In memory of John Fowles
Fowles is an outstanding professional, an intellectual in the truest sense of the word. Fowles managed to talk about the most complex and esoteric metaphysical matters not so simply (his plot labyrinths are dizzying), but accessible. It seems that it is with Fowles that the very modern English fiction begins, where the importance of topics and the grace of plot structures do not in any way affect the quality of presentation and commercial potential.

Victor Pelevin. John Fowles and the tragedy of Russian liberalism
John Fowles' novel "The Collector", which appeared recently in Russian, is called in a short preface "an erotic detective". In a sense, this is a deception of the reader - under the guise of cabbage soup, he is slipped into turtle soup.

Ekaterina Dies. European Civilizational Identity in the Novels of John Fowles

About the novel "Magus"
History of writing and excerpts from critical articles.

Mira Tskhovrebova. Islands, Wells, and Locked Rooms by John Fowles and Haruki Murakami (The Magus and The Clockwork Bird Chronicle)
"Any of us," says one of John Fowles's heroes, "is an island." “We are all waiting, locked in rooms where the phone will never ring,” his other hero states doomedly.

Gusarov Denis. John Fowles "Magus"

Chronotopes "Volkhva"

Victor Sonkin. Island to island
The Magus appeared on time. Just at the moment when I and my peers were about the same age as the main character. At twenty and thirty, his problems and torments would have seemed equally far-fetched. At twenty-five, they pretty closely coincided with what we experienced in our own, completely different life.

John Fowles "Magus". The problem of the game as a person's self-identification of the 20th century
In the 20th century in the West, and later in our country, the genre of the book - games - became very popular. Its meaning lies in the fact that the author offers the reader a finite set of options for the end of each chapter (they are usually short), and the reader himself chooses his future fate (the fate of the hero).

Anastasia Babicheva. The Fowles Code: The Fictional Story of a Genius
Critical article about the novel "The Worm".

I.V. Kabanova. D. Fowles' story "The Ebony Tower"
From the book: I.V. Kabanova "Foreign Literature", M .: Lyceum, 2002

A.B. Temirbolat. Continuity of artistic traditions of the 17th-18th centuries in D. Fowles' prose
The novel "The Mistress of the French Lieutenant" is about the novel.

John Robert Fowles was born in the small town of Lee-on-Sea, located about 40 miles from London in Essex (England). Lived March 31, 1926 - November 5, 2005 His father was an importer of tobacco products. The mother died when the boy was only 6 years old. From the ages of 13 to 18, John attended a boarding school designed to prepare boys for university. After a short study at the University of Edinburgh, Fowles began early military service, where he spent two years (1945-1946). The Second World War came to an end just at the time when the future writer began his training. It was then that he realized that he would never have gone into battle, military life is not for him. After studying for four years at Oxford, John Fowles became acquainted with the works of French existentialists, in particular, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1950, he began to consider his career as a writer seriously. He also taught English and lectured on English literature. In 1951, Fowles met Elizabeth Christie, his first lover and wife. From 1954 to 1963, the writer served as head of department at St. Godric's College in London. While in Greece, Fowles began writing poetry. But he does not attach all the works written from 1952 to 1960 to the publishing house, since he considers them unfinished. At the end of 1960, the writer completed his first project, The Collector, in just 4 weeks. After 2 years, he takes the work to the publisher and a year later the book became a bestseller. In his books, he described reflections on art, human nature. According to The Times, Faust has been named one of the 50 Greatest Writers since 1945. Since 1968, Fowles has lived on the coast of England and, thanks to his interest in the local history of the city, became the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum. After Elizabeth's death in 1990, Fowles married Sarah. The writer died in the hospital on November 5, 2005.

This story could have ended differently, but it ended exactly as the rules of our harsh reality dictate. At the beginning of the book, I felt pity and even sympathy for the Collector, regardless of who he was and what evil he did. It seemed to me that there was something human in him, alien to this evil essence. These conflicting emotions are the most important thing for me, because the heroes you start to perceive as living people are not only very scary, but also very cool. They come out of the book pages, live their life in your head, you continue to comprehend what happened and how. Perhaps someday I will dare to reread The Collector, but this requires some moral strength.

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What will happen if all our desires become reality?

The main character, Frederick Clegg, is a simple man, but not devoid of a sense of beauty. One of his shitty hobbies in life is collecting butterflies. However, in the world of people, he has projected an interesting exhibit - Miranda Gray.
Frederick considers her special and has been watching her for several years, no, not with the intention of killing or kidnapping, just looking, admiring. He knows that he has no chance, so he doesn't even try to get to know her, because she is "above" him, studies art, and what he understands about it.
But, of course, things change. At one point he wins a huge amount of money and realizes that now the list of his possibilities is expanding.
In the book, Frederick is compared to Caliban - a dark, rude, ignorant character who personifies the wild forces of nature.
Miranda, on the other hand, is the mind, part of the civilized world.
Yes, Frederick understands what is beautiful. But he does not know how to evaluate beauty in any other way, except how to grab onto it, squeeze it in his hand, not realizing that thereby kills her. He believes that he can just take what he liked and does not see anything wrong with it, because he wants to love, care and nothing else.
This is the case with the butterflies, which he pricks into his collection, this is the case with Miranda, whom he abducts.
The peculiarity of the book is the subtly described psychology and motivation of both the "maniac" and the "victim", because the narration is conducted in turn, first from the person of one, then from the person of the other, and you can fully see the world through the eyes of each of the heroes.

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A book stunning in its depth. The Collector reveals the idea of \u200b\u200ba conflict between liberals and conservatives, lovers of life and its haters. This manifests itself not only in the plot or dialogues, but also in the syllable itself. I confess, at the beginning it seemed to me that the book was nothing special, but this is all due to the fact that at the beginning of "The Collector" the narration is conducted from the perspective of an uneducated philistine hero. Accordingly, his thoughts are: boring and empty.
But from the very first phrase that the main character utters, it becomes clear that John Fowles can write interestingly for himself. There would only be an interesting character.
To some extent, this is a love story. Love is so non-standard that for the manifestation of one of them, you can get a serious time, and for the manifestation of the second - public censure.
The main character, bright, proud and liberal to the tip of her fingers, adores art and life, while her captor, it would seem, does not really care about anything, much less about anyone. He's apathetic, he's a psychopath. It's really interesting to watch their constant debates about politics, art and life. Not knowing what will happen next, knowing only that nothing good.
The Collector is one of those rare books that get people out of bed / couch / chair and start living.
Advise, advise and advise again.

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This is one of the most mysterious books I've read. A cocktail of mythology, love, secrets, mysteries and unanswered questions. Nicholas Erfe is a typical youth. Instead of appreciating his love, he is afraid of it, and runs away from responsibility from London to hot Greece.
And in Greece - as if on purpose - there is one interesting person - Conchis, he will teach our hero wisdom. The book is very ambiguous. When you suddenly naively think that you have understood everything, and everything is obvious to you - know, on the next page you will understand that the author has fooled you! And so it goes on forever. As soon as faith in the hero appears, everything changes.
I think the only drawback of the book is that there are no answers to the questions. And one has only to close the book .... and it is impossible to calm down! I would like to understand what really happened there.

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Obsession

Favorite book at Fowles and all over the world! Sometimes it is even pleasing that many do not like her, more will get, as they say, what is generally available is not always attractive, even when it comes to literature, and in this case there is no need to argue. This is now a classic.
The book is divided into a narrative on behalf of the collector - Klagg and the girl he kidnapped - Miranda in the form of her secret diaries.
Which, if you deign to read, if you wanted to, would not really understand because of the philosophical heap. Experiences about the already distant and no longer so important, longing for unrequited love for the artist, her senior by twenty years, fabrications about the "primitive" behavior and speech errors in her abductor. Seriously?
To tell the truth, the heroine stubbornly turned me away from herself. No, I felt sorry for her, by that time the sediment had gathered into a decent handful of eroding sand from the inside, and I nevertheless penetrated to one side of her nature, but she reasoned rather superficially for a person thirsting for freedom. In other words, if I wanted to, I got out. Or fate played a cruel joke on her.
Regarding "caliban", as she called our collector, the opinion about him was also ambivalent, but I felt sorry for him than the innocent hostage of his sick love.
And is it love?
Frankly, no. This is falling in love, adoration, adoration of beauty, temporary infatuation (which turned out to be true), whatever, but it was not his "love" that ruined the girl, but rather an obsession with owning something beautiful, alive, tangible and not pinned on a pin.
Around the middle, you can understand that there will be victims - he, she, or both of them, but when you are a captive, you need to be more cunning, and not rush into battle, being pacified by sleeping pills. But let's give it credit, the plot is really cruel, and such an ending broke not a single sensitive heart.
The worst thing is to be held hostage by a person who does not recognize the very fact of violence, like a child who wants to play with a toy that does not belong to him.
A simple clerk raised by an aunt and an art student, what a destructive tandem can be when people are of different poles, and the one who is head and shoulders above will always look down on the other? This is Miranda's very first mistake.
Is Clagg a maniac? Rather an energetic vampire, it is also his slightly sadistic passion for photography ... the desire to possess and the frigidity of sexual thinking was perplexing. The man did not want love, but the recognition of himself as a part of something important, in a life that does not belong to him.
A man who puts pressure on you psychologically and considers you a pet will not give you happiness. In a word, he dear to a medical institution or to the island of unfulfilled dreams, and to her to the next world, because after such a life of the heroine would have seemed to me with difficulty.
You will not find a thriller or tense moments on the pages, but the obvious essence of things and the natural development of events: the first doubts, contempt, indifference, humility - will not make you ponder the ending for a long time.
But then you will discover the power of fabricated feelings and the threat of a crushing obsession with the last remnants of common sense. This is a story about human madness, not about love, to which, like the latter, loneliness pushes us all.

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I read the book of John Fowles "The Magus" last summer, I must say that before that time I started reading it two or three times and threw it somewhere to the tenth page. But then the stars turned out well, and I overcame this work (which I am secretly very proud of).
In the end, it turned out that the novel is excellent. I liked the style of the storytelling and the many questions that the author left unanswered.
What this book is difficult to explain, it is worth reading it yourself. My opinion, a book about a crazy puppeteer and his puppets, about how someone with megalomania, played with God.
The characters are well written. I liked Nicholas until he got involved in the "game" without knowing the rules (too presumptuous). He could turn around and leave, but no one was holding him. He began to suspect quite early that they were playing with him, and decided to play his game - and, as expected, lost! He was chewed and spat out, no, I understand that in the end he "found himself", but ... this is a madhouse!
What if the previous teacher hadn't warned Nicholas to “don't go to the waiting room”? Would Nicholas be interested in the villa and Conchis? Would you be trapped? Would you take part in a staged show? Maybe not ...

I wondered what meaning did the author put in the title? Magus is a "sorcerer", "magician", "wizard" or Fowles sorcerer is a "witch doctor" and the main character was simply treated in such a non-trivial way? It seemed to me that in this case, the definition of "medicine man" is more appropriate, because Nicholas was involved in a staged show, very similar to psychological training. The owner of Burani managed not only to look into the soul of Nicholas, but also to spit there! And if Konchis is a wizard, then definitely evil ...

I think Nicholas needed a psychological shake-up, and he got it. During his stay at the villa, when communicating with Conchis, most of Nicholas's actions were dictated by the idea of \u200b\u200b"by contradiction." He did the exact opposite of what he thought Conchis expected of him - and no wonder Nicholas ended up becoming paranoid! In this novel, everyone seems to be lying.
Conches' idea of \u200b\u200bdrawing a parallel with ancient Greek heroes, I do not understand, it seems that the image of Orpheus is not at all suitable here. Love in this story is secondary and "finding love" is not the goal. We can assume that the goal is a change in character, attitudes. You can see how Nicholas broke down - changed, but the problem is that these changes are not an internal need. These changes are the impact of an external factor. The question is: why? it remains so open ...

The heroes are not perfect, but this makes them more authentic and human. They have definitely changed. Changes can be seen, not only in the fact that they now "see love", but also in the fact that thoughts of suicide have ceased to visit them. Nicholas and Alison are both young, determined, and have not yet learned to forgive. At first he was delighted with freedom, but after a while he realized that the girl occupies an important place in his life.
An interesting work, one of those that catch.
The design of the book in the Intellectual Bestseller series is good. The format is convenient, the font is readable, the pages are quite dense. The picture on the cover is nice.

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John Fowles, UK 03/31/1926-05.11.2005 John Fowles was born on March 31, 1926 in Lee-on-Sea (Essex) near London. In 1939, his parents sent him to a privileged private school in Bedford, where the future writer became interested in French and German literature, showed himself to be a capable student and a good athlete. After serving two years in the Marine Corps, he continued his education at Oxford University, where in 1950 he received a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in French literature. After university, he teaches English language and literature, first in France at the University of Poitiers (1951), then at a private school on the island of Spetsai in Greece (1951-1952), then until 1964 at London colleges. In the 50s he wrote poetry and worked on the novel "The Magus". The first published novel by Fowles "The Collector" (The Collector, 1963), brought him success and relieved him of the need to earn a living as a teacher. Until the end of the 1960s, two more novels were published, large in volume and daring in design - The Magus (The Magus, 1965; revised version 1977) and The French Lieutenant's Woman, 1969), as well as two editions of the book Aristos, the subtitle of which - "Self-Portrait in Ideas" - gives an idea of \u200b\u200bthe content of this work, and its significance for understanding the early stage of Fowles' work. In The Collector, The Magus and Aristos The author's attention is focused on the problem of human freedom (its nature, limits and the sense of responsibility associated with it), as well as on the fundamental relationship between love, self-knowledge and freedom of choice.In fact, these problems determine the theme of all of Fowles's works. His heroes and heroines are non-conformists, striving to at least somehow realize themselves within the framework of a conformist society. The book "The French Lieutenant's Woman", awarded a prestigious literary prize, is considered by many critics to be the best work of Fowles. an mental and historical novel that takes readers into a thoroughly recreated Victorian world, but never for a moment allows them to forget that they are modern people and are separated from what is happening by a huge historical distance. The book "Worm" (A Maggot, 1986) describes the eighteenth century in the same detail as in "The French Lieutenant's Woman" - the nineteenth century. In the interval between the publications of these remarkable historical and experimental novels, two more samples of Fowles' original prose were published - the gigantic epic Daniel Martin (1977) and the somewhat unexpected miniature story Mantissa (1982) - a fantasy on the theme confrontation between the creator and his muse. Fowles did not limit himself to a large literary form - he excellently translated from French, wrote screenplays, literary critical articles. Topics such as home canning, feminism, croquet play, which at first glance did not deserve the attention of a famous writer and a man, fell into his sphere of interest.At the same time, he was a very reserved person and lived in seclusion in his house on the seashore in Lyme Regis. ... In 1988, Fowles suffered a stroke and was widowed two years later. In his last interview, given in 2003, John Fowles complained of increased and annoying attention to him. A writer, more or less famous, living in solitude, will always be haunted by readers. They want to see him, talk to him. And they do not realize that it often gets on the nerves. In the last years of his life, Fowles was seriously ill. On November 5, 2005, at the age of 80, the writer died.

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In the legacy of the modern classic John Fowles - perhaps the greatest British writer of the 20th century - The Doll has a special place. In fact, this is his creative testament. In his last major work, the author of the world famous bestsellers "The Collector", "The Magus", "The French Lieutenant's Mistress", "Daniel Martin" and "The Ebony Tower" put all the accumulated intellectual and spiritual baggage, all the skill perfected over decades.

The novel is published in a new translation. Moreover, it is for the first time published in Russian in full: fragments of the chronicle section of the London monthly Gentlemen Magazine have been translated and woven into the novel fabric, which not only add up to a picturesque panorama of the era, but also contain a clue to a possible solution to what is happening.

And what is happening in the novel is utterly mysterious. Who was "Mr. Bartholomew" and what purpose did he pursue on a May day in 1736 in a remote corner of West England? Where did he disappear and who were his companions really? Landscapes of old England, a detective plot with elements of mysticism, ingenious intrigues and mysterious incidents serve Fowles as an excellent background for a deep psychological study, in which he reveals the themes so characteristic of his work: the relativity of knowledge and truth, the boundaries of human freedom, the historical roots of modern ... ...