John Fowles' intemperate frankness

The Journals: Volume 1. John Fowles. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]30.00. 600 pages. ISBN 0-224-06911-X.

These edited but unrevised transcriptions may count among the most capable of John Fowles's writings. Here is something more than raw material from which a successful literature was forged. The coherence of the narrative reveals a depth of response in harmony with a natural impulse to reflect, consider and confide. The voice is familiar from the beginning. Suddenly at Oxford in 1949 John Fowles, experienced beyond his years as a marine officer and scientific explorer, is determined on writing. He endures the next decade through emotional crises, a series of unfulfilling teaching posts, and a pile of rejected or abandoned manuscripts.

It is a familiar story of an obscure aspirant in search of fame. He serves a long apprenticeship which is unusually rewarding, for there is no pre-history of publication before the first success which was The Collector in 1963. Then he almost drowns in his success. After the routine of literary cocktails and a commission from Encounter, there is Hollywood and the Swinging Sixties. The books are adored by chic youth in search of ideas to give substance to the wealth and freedom of the age. John Fowles is a man of ideas, charmingly hermetic or winningly provocative. The Magus becomes a book everyone in search of something has to read as if it contained literal magic rather than the mystery of literature. The author is seen to disappear into mythic status.

Ancestral and childhood voices lure the man himself (who wishes to remain serious and sane) to somewhere in the remoter western reaches. The discovery of Lyme closes this first volume of the journals. The enchantingly beautiful coastal retreat will become famous by the author's pen, as if to divert attention from John Fowles to his literary creations. But the final entry is a sour one of lessons learned having heard the sirens sing.

Private thoughts made public reveal a waspish view of the world which readers may find surprising. The kindly wisdom of the bearded antiquarian and bibliophile is not the whole story. But the intemperate frankness here revealed is a necessary prelude to the singularly enriching clarity of perception.

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