THE WRITING OF LOSS IN JOHN FOWLES ' DANIEL MARTIN'

"In some profound way, beyond all his reasons and his experience, he was no more than an egoist - he had what I had always detected, and loathed, in Conservative philosophy... the belief that the fortunate must at all costs be allowed to retain their good fortune"
― John Fowles, Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin is a novel by John Fowles, and it was first published in 1977. It can be taken as a Bildungsroman, following the life of the eponymous protagonist. Furthermore, the novel uses both first and third person voices, whilst employing a variety of literary techniques such as multiple narratives and flashback, hence, it is a very complex lecture.

John Robert Fowles was an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartreand Albert Camus, among others. He enjoys a justifiably high standing as both a novelist of outstanding imaginative power, and as a highly self-conscious 'postmodernist' author who fully registers the artifice inherent in the act of writing, the fictiveness of fiction itself.

After leaving Oxford University, Fowles taught English at a school on the Greek island of Spetses, a sojourn that inspired The Magus, an instant best-seller that was directly in tune with 1960s "hippy" anarchism and experimental philosophy. This was followed by The French Lieutenant's Woman, a Victorian-era romance with a postmodern twist that was set in Lyme Regis, Dorset, where Fowles lived for much of his life. Later fictional works include The Ebony Tower, Daniel Martin, Mantissa, and A Maggot.

Fowles' dialogue, particularly the perennial verbal warfare between the sexes, is always incisive. Never more so than in Daniel Martin, a book overshadowed by its grand predecessors but having attractive qualities of its own. Daniel Martin has elements that are tempting to read as semi-autobiographical, a rural West Country childhood during the Second World War, Oxford student friendships and love affairs, career involvement with the film industry. What it also has is some marvellous travel writing on Egypt and Syria, as its scriptwriter scouts locations for a movie and takes up again with his former lover; and a good deal of now very dated political debates from the 1970s.

In Daniel Martin, Fowles builds his story around a British dramatist who leaves theater behind for the more lucrative Hollywood screenwriting trade.He is embarrassed at his sell-out, and keeps promising himself that he will return to more serious writing-another play or perhaps even a novel. But he always signs on for one more movie. We encounter Daniel Martin in full mid-life crisis. His marriage has ended in an acrimonious divorce. His daughter treats him with cautious skepticism, and he can't help but wonder how many of her own problems are the result of his absence from her life. Martin's career has brought him a respectable income and a degree of fame, but not the kind he covets. He scorns the superficialities of Southern California, where his scriptwriting craft has brought him, and to numb the pain he falls into a casual affair with a young British actress, another disaffected visitor to the Dream Coast.

Furthermore, an expected phone call from England puts a halt to this life of calculated decadence. Thus, Martin learns that his former brother-in-law is on his deathbed, and insists on seeing Daniel before dies. Anthony, an Oxford professor of philosophy, was a close friend during their college days, but they haven't spoken in years-due mostly to Martin who, shortly after his divorce, lampooned his former in-laws in a play that barely disguised the real individuals behind the characters on stage. Adding to their tangled personal history, Daniel had a brief affair with Anthony's wife, his ex's sister Jane. Martin tries to extricate himself from a deathbed encounter with his former friend, but finds it impossible to refuse a dying man's request. He returns to England, with trepidation-not without reason, given the charged setting he is about to enter.

Martin now must navigate through a psychological minefield. Which is the most fearsome party among those he must encounter? The dying classmate he libeled on the stage? The classmate's wife, with whom he once had an intense if short-lived sexual liaison? Martin's embittered ex- wife, full of jibes and complaints? Their cagy and calculating daughter, out to prove that she can also pursue dysfunctional affairs? The ex-wife's super-wealthy new husband? The daughter's old-enough-to-be-her-father lover, who is cheating on his own spouse? Wherever Martin turns, he has problems on his hand and too little to offer to remedy them. Another writer might have turned this into a dining room farce, full of dark comedy and rapier-like insults. But Fowles reaches for something deeper. He probes his characters' weaknesses with the callous impunity of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. He is determined that they should keep no secrets from us, the curious readers. But the characters in his books still retain their mystery, no matter how much we probe.

Many memorable scenes in this novel capture this discrepancy between what is said, and what remains beyond words, in our most intimate encounters. Martin's meeting with his dying classmate is one such interlude, and the give-and-take between the ailing philosopher and the man who smeared his reputation provides a classic example of precisely those kinds of turbocharged intersections of destiny that were Fowles' specialty. But this scene serves in turn to set up other equally dangerous meetings with other involved parties, most notably between Martin and Anthony's wife Jane, the passionate lover of his student days who is now abereaved widow.

This 700-page tome is a most unlikely suspense novel. Its two main characters, both overcerebral Oxbridge graduates in their mid-40s, are thoroughly disillusioned with society on both sides of the Atlantic. Jane, whose husband Anthony has just died of cancer, has previously been a Catholic but has lapsed and is now a Marxist, though more theoretical than active. Dan, who early on lapsed from writing plays to Hollywood scriptwriting, engages in seemingly continuous deep, complex introspection, such as these thoughts on his profession:

So how is this a suspense novel? It is the story of Dan's struggle toward a goal, and I found myself genuinely wondering whether he would make it. His goal can be defined in various ways, but it is basically the search for an authentic self that he can happily live with, an attitude toward life that he feels is healthy and satisfying. In Dan's words, this is a a journey to wholeness, a key that he mentions many times in different ways, for instance, "full consciousness of both essence and phenomenon.

It is steering a middle course between extreme ideologies, such as Catholicism and Marxism, which middle course Dan/Fowles calls "humanism".
In the process of striving toward this goal, Dan has to overcome his past, particularly the emotional repression that he learned from his father and that he believes is also part of his inheritance as an Englishman. At the same time, he realizes his love for Jane and that they were wrong not to marry each other years ago. So the second part of his striving to overcome the past, inexplicably bound up with the first, is to attempt to help Jane break out of the prison of despair and self-doubt that she has been living in with Anthony for many years. I realized the level of suspense that Fowles built up around these twin pursuits during the first scene in which Dan opens up and unreservedly expresses to Jane how strongly he feels toward her.

A second such scene carries only a slightly less powerful sense of release. Both of these scenes occur in the last tenth of the book. Fowles' excruciatingly slow depiction of Dan's and Jane's transformations only makes them more credible and convincing when they do occur. And it is realistic that their self-changes take so long -- Dan is the king of rumination and Jane is the queen of passive-aggressive behavior.

In Daniel Martin, Fowles builds his story around a British dramatist who leaves theater behind for the more lucrative Hollywood screenwriting trade.He is embarrassed at his sell-out, and keeps promising himself that he will return to more serious writing-another play or perhaps even a novel. But he always signs on for one more movie. We encounter Daniel Martin in full mid-life crisis. His marriage has ended in an acrimonious divorce. His daughter treats him with cautious skepticism, and he can't help but wonder how many of her own problems are the result of his absence from her life. Martin's career has brought him a respectable income and a degree of fame, but not the kind he covets. He scorns the superficialities of Southern California, where his scriptwriting craft has brought him, and to numb the pain he falls into a casual affair with a young British actress, another disaffected visitor to the Dream Coast.

Furthermore, an expected phone call from England puts a halt to this life of calculated decadence. Thus, Martin learns that his former brother-in-law is on his deathbed, and insists on seeing Daniel before dies. Anthony, an Oxford professor of philosophy, was a close friend during their college days, but they haven't spoken in years-due mostly to Martin who, shortly after his divorce, lampooned his former in-laws in a play that barely disguised the real individuals behind the characters on stage. Adding to their tangled personal history, Daniel had a brief affair with Anthony's wife, his ex's sister Jane. Martin tries to extricate himself from a deathbed encounter with his former friend, but finds it impossible to refuse a dying man's request. He returns to England, with trepidation-not without reason, given the charged setting he is about to enter.

Martin now must navigate through a psychological minefield. Which is the most fearsome party among those he must encounter? The dying classmate he libeled on the stage? The classmate's wife, with whom he once had an intense if short-lived sexual liaison? Martin's embittered ex- wife, full of jibes and complaints? Their cagy and calculating daughter, out to prove that she can also pursue dysfunctional affairs? The ex-wife's super-wealthy new husband? The daughter's old-enough-to-be-her-father lover, who is cheating on his own spouse? Wherever Martin turns, he has problems on his hand and too little to offer to remedy them. Another writer might have turned this into a dining room farce, full of dark comedy and rapier-like insults. But Fowles reaches for something deeper. He probes his characters' weaknesses with the callous impunity of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. He is determined that they should keep no secrets from us, the curious readers. But the characters in his books still retain their mystery, no matter how much we probe.

Their every action is presented with crystal clarity, as if they were actors on the screen, but we still left to puzzle over that greatest of all mysteries: namely, what is really happening in another person's head. Other writers have also grappled with this matter-a subject which, in my opinion, may very well be the wellspring of fiction-but few with the determination or acumen of John Fowles. You would need to go to the final works of Henry James to find another novelist who navigated through this hidden terrain with such skill.

Many memorable scenes in this novel capture this discrepancy between what is said, and what remains beyond words, in our most intimate encounters. Martin's meeting with his dying classmate is one such interlude, and the give-and-take between the ailing philosopher and the man who smeared his reputation provides a classic example of precisely those kinds of turbocharged intersections of destiny that were Fowles' specialty. But this scene serves in turn to set up other equally dangerous meetings with other involved parties, most notably between Martin and Anthony's wife Jane, the passionate lover of his student days who is now abereaved widow.

This 700-page tome is a most unlikely suspense novel. Its two main characters, both overcerebral Oxbridge graduates in their mid-40s, are thoroughly disillusioned with society on both sides of the Atlantic. Jane, whose husband Anthony has just died of cancer, has previously been a Catholic but has lapsed and is now a Marxist, though more theoretical than active. Dan, who early on lapsed from writing plays to Hollywood scriptwriting, engages in seemingly continuous deep, complex introspection, such as these thoughts on his profession:

"Like all self-conscious writers Dan had always associated success in work with the breaking of established codes; or to be more precise, with keeping a balance between the expected, obeying his craft, and the unexpected, obeying the main social function of all art. Another of his grudges against his own particular metier was that it put so much more value on the craft than the code-breaking side; that even the smallest departure from the cinematic established and sanctified had to be so fiercely fought for."

So how is this a suspense novel? It is the story of Dan's struggle toward a goal, and I found myself genuinely wondering whether he would make it. His goal can be defined in various ways, but it is basically the search for an authentic self that he can happily live with, an attitude toward life that he feels is healthy and satisfying. In Dan's words, this is a a journey to wholeness, a key that he mentions many times in different ways, for instance, "full consciousness of both essence and phenomenon.

" By which, I would say, he means living consciously and fully in the present. Another possible expression is to give full rein to both thought and feeling, as expressed in what he reads into a Rembrandt self-protrait: "No true will without compassion; no true compassion without will."

It is steering a middle course between extreme ideologies, such as Catholicism and Marxism, which middle course Dan/Fowles calls "humanism".
In the process of striving toward this goal, Dan has to overcome his past, particularly the emotional repression that he learned from his father and that he believes is also part of his inheritance as an Englishman. At the same time, he realizes his love for Jane and that they were wrong not to marry each other years ago. So the second part of his striving to overcome the past, inexplicably bound up with the first, is to attempt to help Jane break out of the prison of despair and self-doubt that she has been living in with Anthony for many years. I realized the level of suspense that Fowles built up around these twin pursuits during the first scene in which Dan opens up and unreservedly expresses to Jane how strongly he feels toward her.

A second such scene carries only a slightly less powerful sense of release. Both of these scenes occur in the last tenth of the book. Fowles' excruciatingly slow depiction of Dan's and Jane's transformations only makes them more credible and convincing when they do occur. And it is realistic that their self-changes take so long -- Dan is the king of rumination and Jane is the queen of passive-aggressive behavior.

What makes the reader keep going is not only the narrative drive, but the fact that Fowles is such an excellent writer. He mixes in Dan's self-absorption with such universal themes as freedom to change vs. predestination. Free will is called "this absurdly optimistic notion." An old German professor who works as a guide on the Nile cruise that Dan and Jane take says that the Germans trade freedom for order, while the English do the opposite. Dan compares England with the United States by noting that, although Americans mindlessly pursue freedom, they don't realize that "the genetic injustice of life is just as great as the old European economic injustice." Reinforcing this theme of freedom vs. determination, much of the book is couched in metaphors of artistic creation relating to theater, novels and films. At one point on the Nile trip, Dan, alone on an island, is transported out of his normal mental state into another type of perception, "as if he, and all around him, was an idea in someone else's mind, not his own." At another point he feels like "someone locked up inside an adamantly middle-class novel."

Daily living is described as "to wear a mask and invent a character." As long as Dan has not broken and crawled out of the shell of emotional repression that both protects him and thwarts his psychological growth, he has a problem "distinguishing between his actual self and a hypthetical fictional projection of himself." Fowles also keeps us engaged by deploying his bag of postmodernist tricks. At one point Dan thinks that maybe his way of reclaiming his life is to write a novel showing the aspects of life that can't be successfully filmed. From then on we encounter an entertaining ambiguity about whether we are reading Fowles' novel or Dan's. For instance, the narration flips between the third and first persons. It's jarring and gets our attention. It seems arbitrary, but I think it marks places where the Dan of the present does not understand what's going on ("I") and the Dan of the future, who is writing the novel, does.

Fowles is also an excellent stylist and an accomplished storyteller. He leavens his postmodern approach by inventing incidents that are interesting in their own right, as he demonstrated in his most popular novel, "The French Lieutenant's Woman". He is not afraid to let a scene or a conversation unfold completely and realistically in a leisurely manner, seemingly in real time. Fowles is also excellent at depicting surroundings, both natural and humanmade, and using them both to underline the mood of a scene and to further the course of the narrative. He is particularly keen on birds, with the ravens seen in England, New Mexico and on the Nile cruise being the totemic creatures of this book. His opening chapter is a classic in pastoral. And the contrast in landscape and weather between the the cruise on the lush Nile and an immediately following side trip to a Crusader castle in a desolate region of Syria masterfully highlights the dramatic shift in emotional tone in the evolving relationship between Dan and Jane.

"Daniel Martin" probably could have been cut a lot and still have been an excellent novel, but I would hate to be the one to select the places where the cuts should be made. Of the four books by Fowles' that I've read, "The Magus", "The French Lieutenant's Woman", "A Maggott" and "Daniel Martin", I would say my favorite is "A Maggott". It has the same theatricality, sense of shifting identities, postmodern mode of storytelling, amazing incidents, feeling of suspense and philosophical heft that "Daniel Martin" has, but it is shorter and more weird. On the other hand, "Daniel Martin" is more grounded in the psychological challenges of our time and thus seems more solid.

All in all, from my perspective, it is not Fowles' finest by a long way, but reading this novel merely emphasises that Fowles at his least interesting is still superior writer to a million other authors at their best. Daniel Martin, concerned for the most part with tangled romantic relationships, human fallibility and themes of national identity, is probably the closest rendition of the author himself.

The novel is as intellectual as one would expect from Fowles, but in many ways it is much simpler than his other works and lacks the literary fireworks more typically associated with him. Some might say it is a maturer novel, but I feel that in writing rather too closely to the reality of the author's self the novel is hampered to some degree. The forensic and unremitting self-psychoanalysis of Daniel and his romances becomes surprisingly tiresome and almost illegible in a way; but the book shines in other respects such at its sumptuous rendition of place and time.

Thus, for me, Daniel Martin was somewhat disappointing for a Fowles novel and yet also a thoroughly rewarding reading experience next to most other fiction I've read over the years.