In John Fowles’s novel, Daniel Martin (Triad Grafton, 1978), there is a wonderfully revealing passage as far as humourless politicians are concerned – the type that justifiably comprises the butt of comedians’ jokes. Dan and Jane (an old friend and one-time lover who accompanies him on a work-related trip to Egypt) are at a dinner-party […]
John Fowles
Posted inEnvironment, General, Media
Literature, art, space, and the secret of life
It never ceases to amaze me that the arts – foremost among them literature, sculpture, architecture, music, painting and cinema – are able to capture in their respective medium(s) virtually everything that makes life worth living; in a phrase, the ‘secret of life’. My recent re-reading of all my favourite John Fowles novels is what […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
John Fowles’ beguiling literary art
Undoubtedly one of the great exponents of the novel in English, recently deceased John Fowles, wrote novels that, in addition to gripping narratives, integrated many insights and elements from disciplines such as natural science and psychoanalysis, sometimes in such a manner that these elements functioned as drivers for narrative action. A case in point is […]
Posted inEquality, General
The power of dissent
At certain times in history, sometimes protracted events have occurred that demonstrated the power of dissent – that (as far as we know) uniquely human capacity to express strong disagreement with some or other aspect of the political, social or cultural status quo, whether this is done peacefully or, in some cases, violently, in a […]
Posted inGeneral
Lacan and Fowles on human knowledge
When I first read John Fowles’ wonderful counter-Bildung novel, The Magus, years ago, I had not read Jacques Lacan. When I finally did try to make sense of Lacan, after reading Freud, something Lacan says made me think back to The Magus. In The Other side of Psychoanalysis (2007: 23), Lacan makes this observation: “The […]