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THE JOURNALS

Name: THE JOURNALS
Author: John Fowles
ISBN: 1-4000-4431-6

VOLUME ONE: 1949-1965

by John Fowles & edited by Charles Drazin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2005

But Fowles is preeminently, of course, one of the most accomplished English novelists of the last half-century, and this...

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The master British novelist records, in shapely prose, the struggles involved in attaining his craft, as well as the usual coming-of-age worries.

Fowles (Wormholes, 1998, etc.), the author of such lapidary novels as Daniel Martin and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, seems never to have considered an ordinary life, whatever that might be. “I cannot imagine working in a routine post,” he wrote in his mid-20s. As a young man living in the rural West Country during WWII, he learned poaching from a well-intended Home Guard commander; still earlier, he had the mouth of the Thames for his playground, which brought him the knowledge and, in a sense, the outlook of a Victorian naturalist. Torn between science and literature, Fowles quite sensibly chose to do a French degree at “Oxford the imperturbable,” though he decided while in the “silly little city” of Poitiers that he didn’t really want to go to lectures, really didn’t want to read the required texts; he really wanted to write himself: “I have the blend—the sensual flesh and the oversensitive mind,” he confided in his journal. “Some artistic good is bound to come of it.” Steeped in Kafka and Camus, Fowles wandered around Europe while collecting material and aperçus for The Magus, which took him nearly 13 years to finish. While teaching at private schools and colleges, Fowles records, he read nearly everything and let no detail go unnoticed, as when he ponders the startling people he would meet in the Greek backcountry: “A Persian-German has psychological (and ornithological) possibilities; will repay watching.” He also collected just about everything it was possible to collect, which he dismissed by observing that as long as it didn’t become obsessive or ruinous, anything was permitted. Small wonder that Fowles later characterized himself as being made up of various selves, one a poet, one a traveler, one a naturalist, one a movie buff, etc.

But Fowles is preeminently, of course, one of the most accomplished English novelists of the last half-century, and this glimpse into his education and work is a pleasure.

Pub Date: May 5, 2005

ISBN: 1-4000-4431-6

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
WORMHOLES
by John Fowles

- BOOK REVIEW
A MAGGOT
by John Fowles

- BOOK REVIEW
MANTISSA
by John Fowles

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)