9 John Fowles1

"Writing is the most difficult thing in the world and takes great courage."
(from The Magus, 1965)
"'I
must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.' 'There is no truth beyond magic,' said the king. "
Life story

Birthplace Essex, England
Education Edinburgh University and New College, Oxford, studying German and French, especially the existentialists.
At one point the protagonist compares differences between written word and films:
"Images
are inherently fascistic because they overstamp the truth, however dim and blurred, of the real past experience, as if, faced with ruins, we must turn architects, not archeologists. The word is the most imprecise of signs. Only a scienceobsessed age could fail to comprehend that this is its great virtue, not its defect.“ Daniel is engaged to Nell but he realizes that he loves his sister Jane.
"Being head boy was a weird experience," confessed he. "I suppose I used to beat on average three or four boys a day.... Very evil, I think. Terrible system."
John Fowles
(1926-2005)
English
novelist and essayist, master of layered story-telling, illusionism, and purposefully ambiguous endings.
JOHN FOWLES (1926-2005)
Adaptation
Jud
Kinberg and John Kohn, former television writers, purchased the screenrights of the book before its publication. William Wyler agreed to direct the picture. "I found I couldn't put the book down," he recalled.
DANIEL MARTIN (1977)
was
about an English screenwriter's search for himself in his past. But the work is also full of observations on aesthetics, philosophy, cultural history, the difference between Britain and the United States, archeology, myth. Fowles described Daniel Martin as "a very long novel about Englishness."
John
Fowles, who found the script "a pleasant surprise," doctored some dialogue. Wyler also followed Fowles's suggestion and eliminated all the background music in the kidnap sequence. The French composer Maurice Jarre scored the film.
The
narrative alternates between the viewpoints of the two protagonists, Freddie Clegg, is in his middle twenties, orphaned child, and a collector of butterflies. After winning a national football lottery, he uses his winnings to purchase a secluded Tudor mansion with a fortresslike cellar.
Other jobs Military service; taught English abroad (including in Greece, an experience which provided him with material for The Magus).
Fowles
was educated at Alleyn Court School and Bedford School. Later Fowles regretted that as a captain of prefects at Bedford School he allowed himself to exercise tyranny over the younger boys.

He kidnaps and imprisons a young woman, Miranda Grey, a lively art student. The strongwilled Miranda, whose name refers to Prosperos daughter in Shakespeare's play The Tempest, keeps a diary, records their conversations, and plans her escape, while Clegg wants to win her "respect." She gains small victories, calls Freddie "Caliban", and dies without her freedom. At the finale the collector plays with the idea of repeating his performance.
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used also elements The Tempest. It is a story about Nicholas Urfe, who escapes his latest love affair on the Greek island of Phraxos. There he meets the demonic millionaire Maurice Conchis, and falls in love with Lily, Conchis's dead fiancée or an actress portraying her. Conchis is the master of magic and hallucinations in the "Godgame", which leads gradually Urfe to deeper self-knowledge and re-birth. "All my life I had turned life into fiction, to hold reality away," Urfi says. Finally Urfe breaks free from Conchis's power.
Recommended works
The
Magus(1965) , The French Lieutenant's Woman(1969)
The Magus(1965)
impressive
and exasperating by turns, is his most ambitious novel ("I fell into almost every trap awaiting the tyro writer", Fowles admits).
works
As
a novelist Fowles made his debut with THE COLLECTOR (1963), a mixture of thriller and an analysis of class conflict. gained a huge success and since its publication Fowles devoted himself entirely to writing.
In the murder mystery A MAGGOT (1985)

Fowles returned to the layered structure of The Magus. A group of five people travels in Devon in 1736. After a night's lodging, they continue their journey - and disappear. An investigation starts, three members of the group are found, but their testimonies lead to a miracle and a disturbing vision of a contact with travelers from the future. Although Fowles's atheistic view is obvious, he also gives room for a religious interpretation of the mystical events.