I was only mildly interested until about halfway through, at which point one twist followed another, one more bizarre than the next, and the story slowly but surely morphed from a mystery into a sort of convoluted psychosexual thriller. I would have sacrificed all the rest of my days to have this one afternoon endless, endlessly repeated, a closed circle, instead of what it was: A brief and tiny step that could never be retraced.” “I knew I would never have another adventure like this. Conchis (I suppose that’s a pun on “conscious”) is a fascinating individual, and they develop a sort of odd friendship, but it soon becomes apparent that Nicholas has stumbled into the domaine of a master trickster who gradually draws him into ever more elaborate and intense psychological games and eccentric masques, to the point where both Nicholas and the reader can no longer determine what’s real and what’s artifice. Plagued by loneliness and disillusionment, he begins wandering around the island, and eventually stumbles upon the estate of a wealthy recluse. Party based on his experiences on the Greek island of Spetses, where he taught English for two years, it tells the story of Nicholas Urfe, an Oxford graduate in his mid-twenties who flees Britain and a relationship by accepting a teaching post on a small and fairly remote Greek island. Its meaning is whatever reaction it provokes in the reader, and so far as I am concerned there is no given ‘right’ reaction.”įowles began writing it in the 50’s, under the title of The Godgame (which I prefer), worked on it for twelve years before publication, and continued revising it for almost as many afterwards. “Novels, even much more lucidly conceived and controlled ones than this, are not like crossword puzzles, with one unique set of correct answers behind the clues (…) If The Magus has any ‘real significance’, it is no more than that of the Rorschach test in psychology.
I adored Fowles’ The Collector, and decided that a trip to Greece presented the perfect opportunity to tackle this postmodern, metafictional tome of a novel set on a made-up Greek island… but I don’t really know what to make of it-which I feel is less a failing on my part, and more precisely what the author intended, as per the introduction to the revised edition I read: The Magus is bewilderingly, frustratingly seductive.
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