The Magus (novel)
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The Magus is the first novel by British author John Fowles, but actually the second to be published, following the success of The Collector (1963). Fowles started writing it in the 1950s, partly basing on his experiences as an English teacher on the Greek island of Spetses. He wrote and rewrote it for twelve years before its publication in 1965, and despite critical and commercial success, continued to rework it until its revised version, published in 1977. The Magus was a bestseller, partly because it tapped successfully into - and even arguably helped to promote - the 1960s popular interest in psychoanalysis and mystical philosophy. It has been recently featured on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, #71 and #93 on the Reader's and Critics' lists, respectively.
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[edit] Plot summary
The story concerns young and intelligent Oxford graduate Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London. The affair gets more serious than Nicholas can stand, so he leaves her to take a position as an English instructor at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas contemplates suicide, then takes to long solitary walks. On one of these walks he stumbles upon the wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during the war and apparently lives alone on his island estate.
Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis's psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke, but as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is not vanishes. Against his will and knowledge he becomes a performer in the godgame, and realizes that the enactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis's life, but his own.
The novel presents an extraordinary series of descriptions of both places and events, and paints an unusually vivid picture of the surroundings in which the action takes place.
[edit] Literary precedents
John Fowles has written an article about his experiences in the island of Spetses and their influence on the book [1], and he has also specifically acknowledged some literary works in his foreword to the revised version of The Magus. These include The Wanderer (Le Grand Meaulnes, 1913), by Alain-Fournier, for showing a secret hidden world to be explored, and Jefferies's Bevis (1882), for projecting a very different world. Fowles also refers in the revised edition of the novel to a Miss Havisham, a likely reference to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1861).
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
A film version was released in 1968, directed by Guy Green, and written by Fowles. It starred Michael Caine as Nicholas Urfe, Anthony Quinn as Maurice Conchis, Anna Karina as Alison, Candice Bergen as Lily/Julie, and Julian Glover as Anton, and was filmed in the island of Majorca. The adaptation, however, was a failure. Michael Caine himself has said that it was the worst film he had been involved in, because no one knew what it was all about. Woody Allen is quoted as saying that if he could live his life all over again, he'd do "everything exactly the same – with the exception of watching The Magus."[citation needed] The Magus was commercially released on DVD in the US on October 17, 2006 .
[edit] References
- Fowlesbooks.com Summary of The Magus and other novels by Fowles
