“No-one in my family had any literary interests or skills at all,”
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John Robert Fowles was an English novelist, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
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culture · English novelist (1926–2005) · writer · novelist · teacher · screenwriter · essayist · also John Fowles, John Robert Fowles, Fowles
Born 31 March 1926 · Died 5 November 2005 · Q214660
32 published statements · 0 followers
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“No-one in my family had any literary interests or skills at all,”
The Guardian: The French Lieutenant’s Woman: John Fowles's meta games are unexpectedly fun
The Guardian: The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles is our Reading group book for November
The Guardian: An interview with John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman – archive, 5 December 1970
The Guardian: John Fowles's The Tree is a humble revolt against 'usefulness'
The Guardian: From John Fowles with love: how the author’s first true romance and lost poem came to light
The Guardian: John Fowles's revealing correspondence with editor up for auction
Elena van Lieshout presented a series of 120 love letters and postcards for auction at Sotheby's
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Fowles was named by The Times as one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945
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Died 2005-11-05.
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“The desire to hold and the desire to enjoy are mutually destructive. (ang.)”
“Mężczyźni mówią, że to Ewa kusi ich do burdelu, lecz Adam ją tam trzyma.”
“Life (…) is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the city’s iron heart, endured. And out again, upon the unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea. (ang.)”
“Jakie to proste – kierować się w życiu jedynie ironią i sentymentalizmem, przestrzegać ściśle konwenansów. To, co mogłoby być, staje się tylko przedmiotem chłodnej, ironicznej obserwacji, podobnie jak to, co jeszcze być może. Innymi słowy, człowiek musi się poddać, człowiek musi się nauczyć być tym, kim jest.”
“There are only two races on this planet — the intelligent and the stupid.”
“Albo pozostaniesz w niewoli tego, co w twoich czasach zwie się obowiązkiem, honorem, godnością osobistą, a wówczas nic złego cię nie spotka. Albo też będziesz wolny, a wówczas ukrzyżują cię.”
“Mowa jest jak jedwabna mora – tak wiele zależy od kąta, pod jakim się na nią patrzy.”
Fowles married his second wife, Sarah Smith
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Was quoted in the New York Times Book Review as saying, "Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation
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The correspondence started in 1990, when Fowles was aged 65.
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His first wife Elizabeth died of cancer, only a week after she was diagnosed
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With a screenplay by the noted British playwright (and later Nobel laureate) Harold Pinter, and starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons
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Wrote a highly appreciative introduction to G
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Awarded WH Smith Literary Award for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1970).
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And his wife moved to Belmont, in Lyme Regis (Belmont was formerly owned by Eleanor Coade), which Fowles used as a setting for parts of The French Lieutenant's Woman
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Fowles left London, moving to Underhill, a farm on the fringes of Lyme Regis, Dorset
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And when the paperback rights were sold in the spring of that year, it was "probably the highest price that had hitherto been paid for a first novel," according to Howard
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“Of course, I went against all the dictates of common sense and took the Greek job.”
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Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the Peloponnesian island of Spetses (also known as Spetsai)
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Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he studied both French and German, although he stopped studying German and concentrated on French for his BA
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Won a place at Bedford School, where he remained a pupil until 1944
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Born 1926-03-31.
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