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Daniel Martin (2004)

Daniel Martin (2004)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Rating
3.78 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
009947834X (ISBN13: 9780099478348)
Language
English
Publisher
vintage classics

About book Daniel Martin (2004)

John Fowles is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and now--having read Daniel Martin--I almost regret not saving it for my last read of his. It was written nearer the middle of his career, but still manages to provide the most wonderful feeling of autobiographical summation, like an epic epilogue reflection on life lived. Being that the life in question is that of a narcissistic playwright turned jaded Hollywood screenwriter too much obsessed with the nostalgia of his youth and the yearning lingering loves of his past, I was almost guaranteed to relate, though I of course lack Dan's age and perspective. Perhaps I can read this again when I'm 50 and see it in a new light. This is that kind of a book.I don't quite understand the criticisms Fowles endures for Daniel Martin in particular (which informed on my desire to pick it up); it's a dense thing to be sure, but absolutely rich with lovingly written, complicated characters and the kind of narrative structure that brings out the subtleties of its own telling in ways that illuminate the shrewd dexterity of Fowles' abilities as a novel-writer. I especially loved the subtle shifts between narrative forms, which could have come off as pretentious metafiction, but instead expand on the idea of Dan as a creator of narratives and observer of his own life.Is Daniel Martin too much John Fowles: self-absorbed misogynist anhedonic intellectual? Honestly, I've never gotten this from Fowles, and if anything Daniel Martin stands for me as a testament against all that. It's a deeply Romantic apologia for all that misconception, a warmly emotional treatise on how to live (and love) together as people. Fowles could be a crotchety bastard, but about halfway through the book I stopped associating him with his protagonist. Daniel Martin stands on his own.

I found this to be the most satisfying work of Fowles's that I've read (can't include The Collector yet). It has the ambiguous and shifting point-of-view, self-reference, and metafictional structure you'd expect. Some reviewers have called it "self-absorbed" and "navel-gazing;" I found it the most outward-looking of anything I've read of Fowles's, although there is much "self-disillusionment." But navel-gazing implies narcissism and even solipsism, which Fowles rejects ("A perfect world would have no room for writers...[Dan's} unconscious seemed to believe that a perfect world would have room for no one else"). In the end, Dan's decision is "choosing and learning to feel," and his final insight is that there is "no true compassion without will, no true will without compassion."The novel's structure reinforces this humanist theme. It spoils nothing to suggest considering the symmetry between incidents near the beginning and the end: in the first, a character finds unexpected death in the midst of life, and rejects life; in the second, the same character finds unexpected life in the midst of death, and rejects death.Characters are all finely and deeply realized but allowed to speak for themselves most of the time. Occasionally we see exposition-in-disguise (puppetry), but it's a minor problem. It's worth it to get acquainted with Gramsci and Lukacs.There are many other delights here, among them a repudiation of The French Lieutenant's Woman's ending; also insights from 1976 on postwar British culture and politics that could have been written about the US nearly 40 years later.As of now, this work is with War and Peace, Anna Karenina, USA, To The Lighthouse, and a handful of others at the top of my personal list.

Do You like book Daniel Martin (2004)?

I had a graduate professor who challenged our group to find a contemporary literary novel with a truly believable 'happy ending.' Fowles' Daniel Martin does just that, but it takes over 600 pages to develop it -- and 'happy ending' doesn't mean a necessarily 'happy journey.' Fowles set out to show that sometimes in life, things do turn out well -- but it takes a lot of hard work, will, and luck. His experiements with changing tenses and point of view make for an interesting read. Adult reading, not for adolescents.
—Craig

It took me a while to get into this one-- granted, my standards were high, with Fowles being an all-time favorite, and the difficulty of a book with unannounced polyphonic voices. But once I actually got the hang of Daniel Martin, I found it impossible to put down. Great stuff in here, aesthetics and globetrotting and ideology mixed with stories about really shit teenage romances and your lousy job, with just the right balance of self-deprecation and dignity, snark and heart. Still probably not in the lofty category I place The Magus in, but a damn sight better than most things I've been reading lately.
—Andrew

*Spoiler alert*There are some aspects of this book that are really good and very well written. But there is something fundamentally wrong (for me) when the slippery, dishonest (sometimes) narrator and chief protagonist never gets his comeuppance. Quite the contrary: all the women he has manipulated and cheated seem to forgive him! Mr Fowles seems to want to have his cake and eat it in a way that I find objectionable.Furthermore, the plot seems to peter out after a protracted period of meandering around Egypt for no apparent reason. I kept wanting to find out who killed the corpse in the reeds... Yes,I know it's deeply symbolic and something to do with the family called Reed, but actually, this would have been a better book if it had been a real dead body and not just a prop for some bit of philosophising.The best parts of this book are set in Devon and describe the childhood of the eponymous Daniel Martin.The worst parts are where Mr Fowles is trying to interest me in the spoilt Oxbridge types who go on to be the middle class intelligentsia. Really, who cares about the angst of a bunch of media types who think they are very erudite because they've had a bash at reading Lukács? PS Caro - if you're shagging one of your dad's ex university mates, you really, really don't have to share this with your whole family. Who does that?And Daniel- screwing a woman whose husband committed suicide a fortnight ago? Who does that? Creepy.
—Kathy

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