The Magus. John Fowles.

The Magus
John Fowles
New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1965.

Why read it? For a while, in the early 1970s, this novel became a cult classic. Many high school and college students were reading it. No one could figure it out. The scenes read like the wind. You couldn't stop reading them. But put them together and what did they all mean? It took several readings, but I finally figured it out. "Magus" means magician. The Magus created a series of scenes and populated them with real people. All of these scenes had lessons for the protagonist. However, in the end, they were just scenes, like the scenes assembled by a novelist, but they were just that: scenes created and manipulated by the Magus. And they all added up to nothing. It was as if they had never existed. That's my interpretation. What's yours?

Below is a review of The Magus that I wrote several years ago. It attempts to explain in some detail my interpretation.

Hard to summarize the plot of this novel. I think essentially "Conchis" ("Conscious?") was trying to show a bored, insensitive, yet hypersensitive young man who played roles in life that when everybody is role-playing, we lose our sense of reality. The Magus creates mysterious situations involving Nicholas Urfe ("fury"?). Urfe is thereby energized by seeking the solution to the mystery, solving his boredom. But he's in a maze. He does not understand what is going on around him and to him, except that he is being manipulated by others, especially Conchis, but also by two women. He doesn't know if people are simply playing roles that Conchis has assigned to them or if they are really what they seem, and he is knocked off balance as a result. He feels as if he is losing contact with reality.

The other thing that Conchis is trying to show Urfe is that he has to be aware that women are not simply sex objects, but people who are closer to what we mean by God than men.

We all act as if we are being watched by God Almighty 24 hours a day. Urfe feels that he is being watched by Conchis. But the "godgame" ends with Urfe's realization that nobody is watching, nobody cares, and like the existentialists, he alone must shape his view of reality. There is no "plan,"as Conchis discovered when fighting in WWI. [And which Tolstoy clearly portrays in War and Peace and Ralph Ellison shows in Invisible Man.]

The language and ideas in this novel are sometimes so trite, that it's hard to believe the author wrote them with a straight face: "There are things that words cannot explain." "There's only one of everyone." Sounds like Yogi.

On the other hand, some of his quotes are quite thought-provoking. His description of war is especially noteworthy as is his vivid evocation of personal interrelationships and conversations, not unlike the insights of Henry James into the personal relationships and conversations of his characters. Also, like Henry James, his lead character Conchis is similar to Dr. Sloper in Washington Square and Ralph in The Portrait of a Lady, someone who likes to observe people in situations, even setting the situations in motion, to see how they handle them and conclude them. James, however, does not go as far as Conchis who acutally creates real-life settings that then involve the protagonist, Urfe.

"Now I saw Conchis as a sort of novelist sans novel, creating with people, not words..." is Conchis's, (the Magus's) role in this novel.