John Robert Fowles

John Robert Fowles was born March 31, 1926 in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town located about 40 miles from London in the county of Essex, England. He recalls the English suburban culture of the 1930s as op­pressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of his childhood, Fowles says "I have tried to escape ever since."

Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university, from ages 13 to 18. After briefly attending the University of Edinburgh, Fowles began compulsory military service and within two years was promoted to lieutenant.

Fowles then spent four years at Oxford, where he discovered the writings of the French existentialists. In particular he admired Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, whose writings corresponded with his own ideas about conformity and the will of the individual. He received a degree in French in 1950 and began to consider a career as a writer.

Several teaching jobs followed: a year lecturing in English liter­ature at the University of Poitiers, France; two years teaching Eng­lish at Anargyrios College on the Greek island of Spetsai; and final­ly, between 1954 and 1963, teaching English at St. Godric's College in London, where he ultimately served as the department head.

The time spent in Greece was of great importance to Fowles. During his tenure on the island he began to write poetry and to overcome a long-time repression about writing. Between 1952 and 1960 he wrote several novels but offered none to a publisher, con­sidering them all incomplete in some way and too lengthy. In late 1960 Fowles completed the first draft of The Collector in just four weeks. He continued to revise it until the summer of 1962, when he submitted it to a publisher; it appeared in the spring of 1963 and was an immediate best-seller. The critical acclaim and commercial success of the book allowed Fowles to devote all of his time to writing.

The Aristos, a collection of philosophical thoughts and musings on art, human nature and other subjects, appeared the following year. Then in 1965, The Magus was published. Among the seven novels that Fowles has written. The Magus has perhaps generated the most enduring interest, becoming something of a cult novel, particularly in the U.S.

With parallels to Shakespeare's The Tempest and Homer's The Odyssey, The Magus is a traditional quest story made complex by the incorporation of dilemmas involving freedom, hazard and a va­riety of existential uncertainties. Fowles compared it to a detective story because of the way it teases the reader: "You mislead them ideally to load them into a greater truth... it's a trap which I hope will hook the reader,” he says.

The most commercially successful of Fowles’ novels, The French Lieutenant's Woman, appeared in 1969. It resembles a Victorian novel in structure and detail, while pushing the traditional boundaries of narrative in a very modern manner. Winner of several awards it is the book that today's casual readers seem to most associate with Fowles.

In the 1970s Fowles worked on a variety of literary projects, including a series of essays on nature, and in 1973 he published a collection of poetry, Poeme. He also worked on translations from French, including adaptations of Cinderella and the novella Ourika. His translation of Marie de France's 12^th century story Eliduc served as an inspiration for The Ebony Tower, a novella and four short stories that appeared in 1974.

Daniel Martin, a long and somewhat autobiographical novel spanning over 40 years in the life of a screenwriter, appeared in 1977 along with a revised version of The Magus. These were fol­lowed by Mantissa (1982), a fable about a novelist's struggle with his muse; and A Maggot (1985), an 18^th century mystery which combines science fiction and history.

In addition to The Aristos, Fowles has written a variety of non-fiction pieces including many essays, reviews. He has also written the text for several photographic compilations, including Shipwreck (1975), Islands (1978) and The Tree ( 1979).

Since 1968, Fowles has lived on the southern coast of England in the small harbour town of Lyme Regis (the setting for The French Lieutenant's Woman). His interest in the town's local history re­sulted in his appointment as curator of the Lyme Regis Museum in 1979, a position he filled for a decade.

A book of essays, Wormholes was published in May 1998, devot­ed to literature, conservation, natural history and a variety of other interests.

The Collector is 4he story of the abduction and imprisonment of Miranda Grey by Frederick Clegg, told first from his point of view, and then from hers by means of a diary she has kept, with a return in the last few pages to Clegg's narration of her illness and death.

Clegg's section begins with his recalling how he used to watch Miranda entering and leaving her house, across the street from the town hall in which he worked. He describes keeping an "observation diary" about her, whom he thinks of as "a rarity," and his mention of meetings of the "Bug Section” confirms that he is an amateur lepidopterist. On the first page, then, Clegg reveals himself to pos­sess the mind-set of a collector, one whose attitude leads him to regard Miranda as a beautiful butterfly, as an object from which he may derive pleasurable control, even if "collecting" her will deprive her of freedom and life.

Clegg goes on to describe events leading up to his abduction of her, from dreams about Miranda and memories of his stepparents or coworkers to his winning a "small fortune" in a football pool. When his family migrates to Australia and Clegg finds himself on his own, he begins to fantasize about how Miranda would like him if only she knew him. He buys a van and a house in the country with an enclosed room in its basement that he remodels to make securable and hideable. When he returns to London Clegg watches Miranda for 10 days. Then, as she is walking home alone from a movie, he captures her, using a rag soaked in chloroform, ties her up in his van, takes her to his house, and locks her in the basement room.

When she awakens, Clegg finds Miranda sharper than "normal people" like himself. She sees through some of his explanations, and recognizes him as the person whose picture was in the paper when he won the pool. Because he is somewhat confused by her unwilling­ness to be his "guest" and embarrassed by his inadvertent declara­tion of love, he agrees to let her go in one month. He attributes her resentment to the difference in their social background: "There was always class between us."

Clegg tries to please Miranda by providing for her immediate needs. He buys her a Mozart record and thinks, "She liked it and so me for buying it." He fails to understand human relations except in terms of things. About her appreciation for the music, he com­ments, "It sounded like all the rest to me but of course she was musical." There is indeed a vast difference between them, but he fails to recognize the nature of the difference because of the terms he thinks in. When he shows her his butterfly collection, Miranda tells him that he thinks like a scientist rather than an artist, some­one who classifies and names and then forgets about things. She sees a deadening tendency, too, in his photography, his use of cant, and his decoration of the house. As a student of art and a maker of drawings, her values contrast with his: Clegg can judge her work only in terms of its representationalism, or photographic realism. In despair at his insensitivity when he comments that all of her pictures are "nice," she says that his name should be Caliban, the subhuman creature in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Miranda uses several ploys in attempts to escape. She feigns appendicitis, but Clegg only pretends to leave, and sees her recover immediately. She tries to slip a message into the reassuring note that he says he will send to her parents, but he finds it. When he goes to London, she asks for a number of articles that will be difficult to find, so that she will have time to try to dig her way out with a nail she has found, but that effort also is futile.

When the first month has elapsed, Miranda dresses up for what she hopes will be their last dinner. She looks so beautiful that Clegg has difficulty responding except with cliches and confusion. When she refuses his present of diamonds and offer of marriage, he tells her that he will not release her after all. She tries to escape by kicking a log out of the fire, but he catches her and chloroforms her again, this time taking off her outer clothing while she is uncon­scious and photographing her in her underwear.

Increasingly desperate, Miranda tries to kill Clegg with an axe he has left out when he was escorting her to take a bath upstairs. She injures him, but he is able to prevent her from escaping. Finally, she tries to seduce him, but he is unable to respond, and leaves, feeling humiliated. He pretends that he will allow her to move upstairs, with the stipulation that she must allow him to take pornographic photo­graphs of her. She reluctantly cooperates, and he immediately devel­ops the pictures, preferring the ones with her face cut off.

Having caught a cold from Clegg, Miranda becomes seriously ill, but Clegg hesitates to bring a doctor to the house. He does get her some pills, but she becomes delirious, and the first section ends with Clegg's recollection: "I thought I was acting for the best and within my rights."

The second section is Miranda's diary, which rehearses the same events from her point of view, but includes much autobio­graphical reflection on her life before her abduction. She begins with her feelings over the first seven days, before she had paper to write on. She observes that she never knew before how much she wanted to live.

Miranda describes her thoughts about Clegg as she tries to un­derstand him. She describes her view of the house and ponders the unfairness of the whole situation. She frequently remembers things said by G. P., who gradually is revealed to be a middle-aged man who is a painter and mentor whom Miranda admires. She recreates a conversation with Clegg over, among other things, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She gets him to promise to send a con­tribution, but he only pretends to. She admits that he's now the only real person in her world.

Miranda associates Clegg's shortcomings with "the blindness, deadness, out-of-dateness, stodginess and, yes, sheer jealous malice of the great bulk of England," and she begins to lose hope. She gets Clegg to read The Catcher in the Rye, but he doesn't understand it. Miranda feels more alone and more desperate, and her reflections become more philosophical. She describes her reasons for thinking that seducing Clegg might change him, and does not regret the subsequent failed attempt, but she fears that he now can hope only to keep her prisoner.

Miranda begins to think of what she will do if she ever gets free, including revive her relationship with G. P. on any terms as a com­mitment to life. Miranda becomes sick with Clegg's cold, literally as well as metaphorically. As she becomes increasingly ill, her entries in the journal become short, declarative sentences and lamentations.

The third section is Clegg's, and picks up where his first left off. He tells of becoming worried over her symptoms and over her belief that she is dying. When he takes her temperature, Clegg realizes how ill Miranda is and decides to go for a doctor. As he sits in the waiting room, Clegg begins to feel insecure, and he goes to a drugstore in­stead, where the pharmacist refuses to help him. When he returns and finds Miranda worse, Clegg goes back to town in the middle of the night, to wake a doctor; this time an inquisitive policeman frightens him off. Miranda dies, and Clegg plans to commit suicide.

In the final section, less than three pages long, Clegg decides that he is not responsible for Miranda's death, that his mistake was kidnapping someone too far above him, socially. As the novel ends, Clegg is thinking about how he will have to do things somewhat differently when he abducts a more suitable girl that he has seen working in Woolworth's.

18. Maeve Binchy "All I ever wanted to do, is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with."

Binchy was born in the town of Dalkey, Ireland on May 28, 1940. She was educated, and lives in Ireland, a land well known for its great storytellers. Firmly grounded in the Irish storytelling tra­dition, Binchy has earned a great popularity for her many novels and collections of short stories. She proved herself to be an immensely talented and successful writer.

Binchy was introduced into the joys of storytelling at an early age. Her mother; Maureen, and father, William, a prominent Dub­lin barrister, encouraged Binchy and her three siblings to be avid readers as well as to share stories at dinner and, as her brother William admits, nobody loved telling stories more than Maeve. She grew up in the quiet seaside town of Dalkey, about 10 miles south of Dublin. She was educated at the University College in Dublin, where she studied history and French.

After graduating in I960, she taught Latin, French, and history in a Dublin grade school and traveled much during summer vaca­tions. She proved so popular a teacher that parents of her students pooled their money to send her on a trip to Israel. Her father was so impressed by the letters she wrote describing Israeli life that he typed them up and sent them to the Irish Independent newspaper, That's how Maeve returned home to find, quite to her surprise, that she was now a published writer.

She soon got a job on The Irish Times as the women's editor. In the early 70s, she shifted to feature reporting, and moved to London. Binchy decided to take a chance and move to London to be with the man she'd fallen in love, Gordon Snell, a BBC broadcaster, the author of children's book, and mystery novelist.

Maeve married Gordon in 1977, and in 1980 they bought a one-bedroom cottage back in Binchy's old hometown of Dalkey. By this time she had already published two collections of her newspaper work and one of short stories. She decided to try to sell her first novel, Light A Penny Candle to the publisher. Maeve and her hus­band still live in that same Dalkey cottage, where they share an office, writing side by side. "All I ever wanted to do," she says, “is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with." She has unquestionably succeeded with that goal. Light A Penny Candle was followed by such bestselling works as Circle of Friends, the novel about the friendship of two girls from different social classes which was made into a successful movie adaptation, and Tara Road, the story of an Irish woman and an American woman who swap houses for a summer, is an engaging look at a friendship cobbled together from the unexpected intimacy of trading spaces.

Binchy has many New York Times bestsellers to her name and is consistently named one of the most popular writers in readers' polls in England and Ireland.

In addition to her books, Binchy is also a playwright whose works have been staged at The Peacock Theatre of Dublin, and was the author of a hugely popular monthly column called "Maeve's Week," which appeared in The Irish Times for 32 years. A kind of combined gossip, humor, and advice column, it achieved cult status in Ireland and abroad.

Scarlet Feather, published in March 2001, was both a critical and a commercial success going on to earn the number 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list when published in paperback a year later by New American Library. It was followed by her new book, Quentins.

The Circle of Friends. It's a story about young people, their friendship, love, fortunes and misfortunes, loyalty and betrayal, their gains and losses.

Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, young women, grew up, insepa­rable, together in an Irish village of Knockglen. Benny - the only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents... Eve - the orphaned offspring of a convent handyman and a rebellious blue-blood, abandoned by her mother's wealthy family after her mother died in childbirth and her father fell over the cliff into the quarry. And Eve was raised by nuns. Eve and Benny knew the sins and secrets behind every villager's lace curtains except their own. Ben­ny ruined the plans of both her father who, hoped that she would continue his business one day, and of Sean Walsh who cherished the dream to marry into the business, when Benny announced about her decision to enter a college. The lasting friendship of Eve and Benny continues when they go to study at University College in Dublin. They find their relationship tested by the new friendships, romanc­es and opportunities that develop at the university where Benny and Eve meet beautiful Nan Mahon, who tries to hide her poor background and drunken father, and Jack Foley, a doctor's hand­some son. First-year college students Benny and Eve are thrilled by the excitement of university life in Dublin. Jack Foley falls in love with beautiful Benny. Provincial Knockglen and fast-paced Dublin become intertwined as the girls try to exist in both worlds. Be­friended by Nan, a beautiful classmate with secret ambitions, they are widening their circle of friends that provides them with a happy sense of belonging and introduces them to a world of carefree activ­ity, mounting waves of loyalty and deceit and intrigues, successes and disappointments.

But heartbreak and betrayal soon brings.the worlds of Knockglen and Dublin into explosive collision. Jack betrays Benny and begins dating with Nan Mohan when Benny had not "taken off her clothes and lain down beside him, loved him generously and warm­ly, responded to him." The light-hearted existence is brought to an abrupt halt when Nan's selfish, callous plans backfire. She has a goal in her life - to leave her family by marrying a blueblood. And she has found a victim - Simon who is in search of a bride, a girl from a wealthy family. Nan gets pregnant, but when Simon learns that Nan is from the north side of Dublin, a poor district, that her father is not a wealthy builder, he refuses to marry her. And Nan tricks Jack Foley saying that he is father of her future child. She brought first Simon and then Jack to Knockglen and slept with them secretly in Eve’s bed. She victimizes Benny and creates within Eve an obsessive desire to avenge. When all their circle of friends gathers for a party in Eve's house (Jack and Nan also came al­though they had not been expected and were not welcomed warmly) Eve and Nan have a talk. Long-hidden lies emerge to test the mean­ing of love and strength of ties held within the fragile gold bands of a "circle of friends." Eve takes a knife and threatens to kill Nan.

" Nan wasn't near enough to reach the handle of the door to the sitting room. She backed away, bur Eve was still moving toward her, eyes flashing and the knife in her hand.

"Eve, stop!" she cried, moving as fast as she could out of range. She lurched against the bathroom door so hard that the glass broke.

Nan fell, sliding down on the ground, and the broken glass ripped her arm. Blood spurted everywhere, even on her face."

She is taken to the hospital where she receives several blood transfusions. Her life is saved but she miscarried.

Jack Foley tries to win Benny's heart again but Benny replies firmly "No, Jack, thank you." "Benny didn't want to wonder and watch over Jack for the rest of her life. If she went out with him now, it would be so easy. They would be back to where they had been before."

When they had a barbeque party in Dublin Jack appeared again. "Benny smiled the big, warm smile that had made him fall in love with her. Her welcome was real. She looked lovely in the light of the flames, and she did what no one else had done. She pointed him to where the drink was, where the long sticks lay for cooking the food. He opened a beer and moved slightly toward her."

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