John Fowles novels are critically acclaimed bestsellers

Hutoxi Randeria

John Fowles: The Journals, Volume II
Edited by Charles Drazin Jonathan Cape

John Fowles (1926-1995) holds an enviable position in British literature. His novels are critically acclaimed bestsellers — a mean feat for any writer. His most well known novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, is taught on most modern literature courses in universities in India and abroad. Three of his novels, The Collector, The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and one of his short stories, “The Ebony Tower”, have been made into very successful films. Edited by Charles Drazin, both the volumes of John Fowles’s journals have been rightly hailed as masterpieces in their own right. The second journal is vintage Fowles. The language, the imagery, the ideas and the man himself are spread out as a rich buffet, leaving us replete at the end of a rather intimate journey into a writer’s mind and inner world.

Drazin divides the second volume of Fowles’s journals into two parts. The first part covers entries from January 1966 to September 1977, and the second from September 1980 to March 1990. These breaks in a way are natural. Fowles himself, due to some inexplicable reason, had stopped writing in his journal between 1977 and 1980. He resumes in 1990 with a single statement, “I have written nothing here between that date above and this. I don’t know why, these last few weeks, I feel inclined to start again.”

The period between 1966 and 1977 is a prolific period for Fowles. His journal traces the conception and delivery of two of his best novels and their film adaptations. The most interesting sections in this part are his comments on The French Lieutenant’s Woman, his disagreement with another literary giant, Saul Bellow, on the winner of the Booker prize when both of them were on the jury in 1971, his observations about some of the top British actors and their acting talents, and on the personal front, his battle with his wife Elizabeth’s chronic depression.

The second part of the journal reveals more of the man than the writer. It is more honest, and it would appear that the writer Fowles and the man Fowles have finally come to some sort of an understanding between themselves. In this part, Fowles talks about his growing disillusionment with fame and wealth, and his disenchantment with the literary scene of his times. He talks disparagingly of his friends and colleagues, and bemoans the lack of intelligent conversation. His increasing frustration with his wife’s complaints about their reclusive lifestyle in rural England, and his preoccupation with his creative urges are all compellingly haunting in their narration.

The second part ends with the death of Fowles’s wife after her battle with cancer. The last few entries in the journal are deeply tender as he comes to terms with the impending death of his wife of 30 odd years. Their marriage was not an easy one. Eliz, as he called his wife, was a woman who constantly complained about everything. As Fowles puts it in one of his entries, “…stormy days with Eliz — in contrast with the actual weather. She hates the silence, the space, the emptiness — all the things I love, alas!” And yet, even when marriages around them were falling apart and spouses were committing suicides in desperation, Fowles stayed committed to his wife. In fact, as some commentators have pointed out, all his women characters have some of Eliz in them. Therefore, it is only natural that the most poignant writing in the journal is the entry on the death of his wife. There is no melodrama, nor a deliberate angling for sympathy; there is only a man who grieves the death of the person he loved most in the world. He writes, “My poor Eliz there, dead. I make a strange noise, half sob, half growl of rage. What did she say? ‘This isn’t real, this isn’t real, it’s not happening to me’. All is changed.”

For a student of literature, this journal is an invaluable source of information not only about how his novels were conceived and written, but also about Fowles’s literary beliefs. Existentialism and the Jungian theory of Anima — the two philosophies that permeate his novels — are also found in his journal entries. Fowles always believed that a man should be in touch with his feminine side in order to be true to himself. And whenever he come across an individual, he judges him/her on the basis of whether that person is in touch with his/her feminine component, anima, more than the masculine component, animus.

All those who feel that the diary does not belong in the high echelons of the literary canon need only to read Drazin’s excellently argued introduction to change their minds. All in all a highly readable book, it rightfully takes its place alongside other acclaimed diaries such as those of Franz Kafka and Anais Nin.