Customer Reviews

Mantissa

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Mantissa is a short, light romp through the writer's mind. There's no heavy subtext to mull over. There's no ponderous character development to follow. There's just Miles Green in his hospital room, which becomes other things, and Erato, the woman who is his muse. A few other characters lurk in orbit around the room, but the whole story takes place literally in the brain of Miles.

Most of the book is dialogue between Miles and Erato as he alternately romances and berates his muse, the essence of his creativity, and is repaid in kind. It's an animated metaphor for the process of writing, and many times the characters seem to know they are merely characters in a book. It begins in a hospital where Miles has just recovered, having lost his memory through some accident, but that scenario quickly ends as Erato takes on numerous personalities and attitudes in her interaction with Miles.

This is probably best for those familiar with John Fowles's other works. Mantissa is clever, it's funny, it's self-aware, and it's not going to shake the literary world. It's just a quick afternoon read that gives you a peek into the mind of a writer.

John Fowles minus his usual novelistic costuming relaxes, writes brilliantly, reveals craft secrets, pokes gentle, if firm, fun at both himself & the business of literature, adores/insults his muse & is properly inspired/kicked for his trouble. MANTISSA is sweetly funny, roughly true, a deft tale of the endless left/right (or male/female or rational/intuitive) mind combat which is the natural environment of creation, the brainswamp from which much of our best writing emerges. Complete with a terribly nice pun on the names of a writer & a shrink, adequate eros (every bit of it strictly imaginary), & some charming intermusine backbiting, in the end. Astounding! Hilarious! The Nubile Prize for Metafiction!

Fun from beginning to end, John Fowles explores the never-smooth relationship between the author and his muse. Miles Green verbally and physically jousts for 200+ pages with his muse, Erato, as well as Dr. A. Delfie and the voluptuous Nurse Cory. If this doesn't excite you, I don't know what will. Extra fillips of pleasure for those who detest various sorts of modern criticism. It's a wonder John Fowles' Twaynes English Author Series Volume hasn't been recalled. He does not spare the rod. A warm, funny, smart book.

John Fowles is undoubtably one of the great writers of the 20th century. No-one with any love for literature should fail to read "The French Lieutenant's Woman", "The Collector" and especially "The Magus". Unfortunately he ran out of inspiration after "Daniel Martin" and this effort is simply unreadable. I made several attempts at reading it, but I couldn't get past page 60. Other Fowles enthusiasts I know share this view.

"Mantissa", is a meta-fictional curiosity that makes for an interesting read. I enjoyed the symbolic room which brought the reader into the fictional writer's brain. There he conversed, warred and made love with his fictional female character in ping pong fashion. One minute he had the upper hand, the next moment she did; back and forth it proceeded until, in the end, they both fell helplessly into each other's arms. Her character changed repeatedly, from a Goth boi to a demur, sensitive young girl. In the end, it could be said that the fictional male writer was at war with his inner male and female self. For the most part it was a fun, if not neurotic read. However, the author, John Fowles, carried his concept to an extreme; he pushed it a few chapters too far with excruciating redundancy. Thus, by the last chapter, I had lost all interest and had no desire to finish the book. A few chapters less, rounded out, in Fowles own fashion, would have made for wonderful novel, beginning to end.

John Fowles can be spectacular, but Mantissa is like being trapped in a streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent. As the author dashes his brains on the subject of inspiration and proves that he is aware of Calvino and other challenges to his own metafictional control, he shows that he has not yet managed to digest, to control, to settle, the matter. Unfortunately, in the process, he betrays, over and again, the disequilibrium of conceiving of sex as other or self, of projecting onto the beloved the desires of the master. We go around, but we never move. We debate, but we do not learn. I are vexed, but we do not get exercise, I fear. I have loved Fowles's novels, but this is a crashing disappointment and a bit embarrassing.

Many books have been labelled "verbal masturbation", but this is the real thing. John Fowles indulges his sexual and literary fantasies, entering them from every angle he can manage until he expends himself. What results is not "one man's interaction with his muse" as one review called it, but unreadable and pretentious and not remotely sexy subporn... that wouldn't have been publicised - or noticed - if they hadn't come from someone as well known as Fowles.

Some of the parts, such as his encounter with a black nurse, and a guitar wielding dominatrix muse read like something out of a bored private schoolboy's diary.

It's a pity, because John Fowles was once a great writer... but this book and "Daniel Martin" do him a great disservice.

Mercifully short, and that's it's one bonus.