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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
informative
mysterious
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Well, this book was a real let down for me. To be fair this falls on the heels of my re-read of The Magus so it stood very little chance of matching that weight. This at times felt nonsensical and a bit masturbatory. Like I was reading an author’s daydream writing sketches that he did for a warmup before writing something more interesting and put together. The short and choppy (and almost unfollowable) dialogue in most of the stories really irritated me after the absolutely enthralling dialogue in The Magus.
Anyway, it’s good if you really like Fowles and want to read everything he wrote. Bring an art history textbook. I think I’m good on reading about famous paintings and artists for the foreseeable future.
Anyway, it’s good if you really like Fowles and want to read everything he wrote. Bring an art history textbook. I think I’m good on reading about famous paintings and artists for the foreseeable future.
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I will never write in English again and Fowles just loves the idea of cheating
Şu ana kadar okuduğum fowles kitapları içinde en farklı olanı diyebilirim. İnsanın bilinçaltını yoklayan, yaptığı sembolik göndermelerle kararlarımızın altında yatan ferçeklerle yüzleşmemizi sağlayan bir yanı var.
Collection of five novellas from the genius that is Fowles. Stunningly brilliant, eloquent and profoundly intelligent. It is surely impossible not to learn from this man about both writing and life itself. This writer took literature towards a new frontier. Amazing.
In a 1971 interview about his brilliant first novel The Magus, John Fowles admitted that he was obsessed by “the basic idea of a secret world, whose penetration involved ordeal and whose final reward was self-knowledge.” This passage from Joseph Campbell’s groundbreaking 1949 study The Hero With a Thousand Faces could have been written with a Fowles protagonist in mind:
"Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals."
Fiction is a modern form of mythology, a remnant of a primordially ingrained storytelling instinct predating science and psychology. Digging under the surface of a character can turn up illuminating archetypal correspondences. There are dangers in applying structuralist archetypes to storytelling of course; as Hollywood continually demonstrates, over-relying on them can lead to a deadening formulaic approach. Writers would do well to heed Fowles’ own advice: “Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan—that is the rule.”
Read the rest of my review here: https://timweed.net/jungian-archetypes-in-fiction-john-fowles-the-ebony-tower/
"Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals."
Fiction is a modern form of mythology, a remnant of a primordially ingrained storytelling instinct predating science and psychology. Digging under the surface of a character can turn up illuminating archetypal correspondences. There are dangers in applying structuralist archetypes to storytelling of course; as Hollywood continually demonstrates, over-relying on them can lead to a deadening formulaic approach. Writers would do well to heed Fowles’ own advice: “Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan—that is the rule.”
Read the rest of my review here: https://timweed.net/jungian-archetypes-in-fiction-john-fowles-the-ebony-tower/
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes