| November 8th, 2005 04:32 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
John Fowles, 79, novelist
WORKS INCLUDE `THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN,' `THE MAGUS'
By Elaine Woo
Los Angeles Times
Mercurynews.com Nov 8, 2005
John Fowles, the cerebral British novelist whose restless exploration of literary form and thematic fascination with free will brought him immense critical and commercial affirmation in works such as ``The French Lieutenant's Woman'' and ``The Magus,'' died Saturday at his home in the southwest English town of Lyme Regis, Dorset. He was 79.
His publisher, Random House, told The Associated Press on Monday that Mr. Fowles died of an undisclosed illness. He had been in poor health since a stroke in 1988 and had heart problems.
A reclusive man who said his novels often originated in a recurring image or a dream, Mr. Fowles rejected what he once called the ``cage labeled `novelist,' '' preferring to stretch the borders of literary convention in each work.
He did this most famously in ``French Lieutenant's Woman,'' the haunting Victorian love story, published in 1969 and made into an Oscar-nominated movie, that Mr. Fowles supplied with two endings.
But innovation was an early hallmark of his work. His first novel, ``The Collector,'' published in 1963, offers two versions of a ghastly event -- the kidnapping and imprisonment of an upper-class art student by a lower-class clerk -- one told by Fred Clegg, the kidnapper, and the other by Miranda, his 20-year-old captive. ``The Magus,'' a 1966 novel about a rich man who imposes a series of strange fantasies or ``godgames'' on a young English schoolmaster, ends ambiguously, leaving the reader to grapple with the book's meaning. Both novels also were made into films.
The bestselling author was more celebrated in America than in England, which may explain why he often described himself as living in exile in his own country. Once his books sold well enough for him to quit his teaching job, he bought an 18th-century house in Lyme Regis and had ``very little social contact with anybody'' except his wife and muse, Elizabeth.
Novelists, he told Margaret Reynolds and Jonathan Noakes in their critical study ``John Fowles, The Essential Guide,'' ``have to live in some sort of exile. I also believe that . . . they have to keep in touch with their native culture, linguistically, psychologically, and in many other ways. If it sounds paradoxical, it feels paradoxical. I've opted out of the one country I mustn't leave. ''
An only child for the first 15 years of his life, Mr. Fowles was reared in middle-class comfort in the London suburb of Leigh-on Sea in a family without literary or cultural interests.
When his sister, Hazel, was born, Mr. Fowles had a nervous breakdown and had to leave school for a semester. ``I suppose there was a sense of being cut off when my sister was born,'' he told the South China Post a few years ago. ``I wasn't jealous, absolutely not. I just thought she was a rather pretty, oppressive little thing.''
He served two years in the British Royal Marines, but World War II ended before he experienced combat. After leaving the military, he entered Oxford University where he studied French and German. He called this period, when he delved into the existential writings of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, ``heaven in an intellectual sense.''
His wife of 33 years, Elizabeth, died one week after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1990. He is survived by his second wife, Sarah.
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| November 8th, 2005 10:21 PM |
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| Zack |
RIP, Mr. Fowles. Way more than the writer of Meryl Streep movies, but one of the greatest authors in English in our time. The Magus, the Collector, TFLW - all classics that get inside your head and shuffle stuff around. |
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