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Title: Mantissa by John Fowles ISBN: 0-316-29027-0 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 04 August, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.17 (6 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Don't bother!
Comment: Many books have been labelled "verbal masturbation", but this is the real thing. John Fowles indulges his sexual and literary fantasies, entering them from every angle he can manage until he expends himself. What results is not "one man's interaction with his muse" as one review called it, but unreadable and pretentious and not remotely sexy subporn... that wouldn't have been publicised - or noticed - if they hadn't come from someone as well known as Fowles.
Some of the parts, such as his encounter with a black nurse, and a guitar wielding dominatrix muse read like something out of a bored private schoolboy's diary.
It's a pity, because John Fowles was once a great writer... but this book and "Daniel Martin" do him a great disservice.
Mercifully short, and that's it's one bonus.
Rating: 4
Summary: Amusing, So To Speak
Comment: Mantissa is a short, light romp through the writer's mind. There's no heavy subtext to mull over. There's no ponderous character development to follow. There's just Miles Green in his hospital room, which becomes other things, and Erato, the woman who is his muse. A few other characters lurk in orbit around the room, but the whole story takes place literally in the brain of Miles.
Most of the book is dialogue between Miles and Erato as he alternately romances and berates his muse, the essence of his creativity, and is repaid in kind. It's an animated metaphor for the process of writing, and many times the characters seem to know they are merely characters in a book. It begins in a hospital where Miles has just recovered, having lost his memory through some accident, but that scenario quickly ends as Erato takes on numerous personalities and attitudes in her interaction with Miles.
This is probably best for those familiar with John Fowles's other works. Mantissa is clever, it's funny, it's self-aware, and it's not going to shake the literary world. It's just a quick afternoon read that gives you a peek into the mind of a writer.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fans of Fowles's serious work be warned,
Comment: With Mantissa you will not be embarking on any high-minded journeys along difficult paths to higher truths as you would with The Magus, The Collector, and A Maggot. Keeping that in mind, there is much to enjoy in Mantissa, which sketches several dialogues between Miles Green, an author and Erato, his muse, all of which take place in Green's fertile and erotically charged imagination. As always with Fowles, and especially here, leave any puritanical notions you might have about sex and Freudian analysis at the door. That said, this short piece works on a number of levels and provides humor and insight into struggles intrinsic to the creative process, the clash of the sexes, and what Fowles seems to regard as the strong sado-masochistic tendencies inherent in all relations between men and women. The satire of modern academics and neoclassicists is very funny if you can struggle through the lingo.
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Title: Ebony Tower, The by John Fowles ISBN: 0316287458 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 04 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.99 |
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Title: The Magus by John Fowles ISBN: 0440351626 Publisher: Dell Publishing Pub. Date: 01 April, 1985 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Literature or Life by Jorge Semprun, Linda Coverdale ISBN: 0140266240 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: A Maggot by John Fowles ISBN: 0316290491 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 14 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.99 |
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Title: The Collector by John Fowles ISBN: 0316290238 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 04 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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