阅读约翰·福尔斯 John Fowles在小说之家的作品!!! | |||
约翰·福尔斯他的《收藏家》抨击了猎取和收集生物标本的行径，认为这些收藏家们破坏了美。
福尔斯孩提时就酷爱大自然，喜欢离群索居独自游嬉。这一习惯保持到他成年之后。二战时他应征入伍，在皇家海军陆战队服役两年，任中尉。在此期间他被送往爱丁堡大学进修，进修期满时正巧二战结束，因此他并未领略战争的惊心动魄。战后福尔斯进入牛津大学学习法国和德语文学，对法国语言文学的研究对他后来的文学创作有深远的影响。
福尔斯很崇敬法国的存在主义作家艾伯特·加缪和让-保尔·萨特。他就读于牛津大学时， 谈论存在主义已经成为哲学界和文学界的时尚，这两位法国作家也在欧洲大陆有许多追随者。
获得牛津的文学士学位后，福尔斯动身前往法国，后来又去希腊的一所中学教英语。希腊的自然风光和异国情调使福尔斯着迷，并驱使他从事文学创作。在希腊的斯佩德西岛上度过的这两年对他后来的生活和创作都有启蒙和决定性的作用，他的《师》就是这一影响的产物。
福尔斯是一位业余博物学家，崇尚博爱和个人自由。他醉心于英国、法国、希腊的自然景色和文化。博爱和追求个人自由的思想使他强烈地憎恨老板、领袖、统治者和组织者，对用绝对权力控制别人的人和事他都深恶痛绝，并因此而创作了《收藏家》的故事。在《法国中尉的女人》中，他则刻画了神秘、对自由的向往等思想行为。
福尔斯是当代英国文坛的一个勇于创新的作家，二战后，欧美文坛新潮迭起，而英国文坛则反其道而行之。一股复古的、崇尚十八、十九世纪英国作家的作品的潮流在四、五十年代涌起。这是在批判后现代主义之后，向另外一个极端的倾斜。多数评论家对此颇多非议，认为这种风气保守、狭隘，缺乏新意。
福尔斯是六十年代英国作家逐渐摆脱传统的束缚的突出一例。有的评论家称他为“后现代主义作家”，他的小说是“后现代小说”。后现代主义的一个特点在《法国中尉的女人》中有明确的表现：它明确地告诉读者：小说纯属虚构，只是一种文字游戏或幻象，邀请读者步入这个虚构世界。而《法国中尉的女人》用十分贴切的维多利亚时代的语言、对话、文体再现了这一时代，复制了这一时代的小说。在此同时，他也公开声明，这部小说是抄袭，是说谎。
作为一个存在主义者，福尔斯在他的作品中宣扬人在一个荒诞、丑恶、冷酷的现实世界中为获取存在和自由而陷入的焦急不安、彷徨和痛苦。他对自由和独立的追求在作品中表现得极其鲜明。《收藏家》中的米兰达因失去自由而死去，《法国中尉的女人》中，萨拉为了保持自由和独立而拒绝了查尔斯的求婚。同时，该书中的神秘色彩十分浓重，萨拉的不可测的神秘贯穿了整本书，而作者创作《法国中尉的女人》的缘由是：他曾经看见一个女人孤零零地站在空荡荡的码头尽头，眺望着大海。这个形象浮在他的心头，拂之不去。这个形象是神秘的，又带着浪漫，这是一个维多利亚式的女人，她站得远远的背对着作者，因此福尔斯觉得她是一个被英国维多利亚社会所遗弃的人，一个维多利亚时代的谴责者。此时，福尔斯正在创作另一部小说，而这个女人的形象不断地袭上作者的心头，他终于不得不放下手头的工作，开始《法国中尉的女人》的创作。
福尔斯的作品是二战后的英国小说中异军突起的杰作，他使得当时对英国小说的保守和虚伪性颇多微词的评论家们刮目相向。
Birth and family
Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, the son of Gladys May Richards and Robert John Fowles. Robert Fowles came from a family of middle-class merchants of London. Robert's father Reginald was a partner of the firm Allen & Wright, a tobacco importer. Robert's mother died when he was 6 years old. At age 26, after receiving legal training, Robert enlisted in the Honourable Artillery Company and spent three years in the trenches of Flanders during World War I leaving him with memories that he had for the rest of his life. Robert's brother Jack died in the war, leaving a widow and three children. During 1920, the year Robert was demobilized, his father Reginald died. Robert became responsible for five young half-siblings and the children of his brother, and though he had hoped to practice law, the obligation of raising an extended family forced him into the family trade of tobacco importing.
Gladys Richards belonged to an Essex family originally from London as well. The Richards family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea during 1918, as Spanish Flu swept through Europe, for Essex was said to have a healthy climate. Robert met Gladys Richards at a tennis club in Westcliff-on-Sea during 1924. Though she was ten years younger, and he in bad health from the war, they were married a year later on 18 June 1925. Nine months and two weeks later Gladys gave birth to John Robert Fowles.
Early life and education
New College, Oxford, where Fowles attended university.
Fowles spent his childhood attended by his mother and by his cousin Peggy Fowles, 18 years old at the time of his birth, who was his nursemaid and close companion for ten years. Fowles attended Alleyn Court Preparatory School. The work of Richard Jefferies and his character Bevis were Fowles's favorite books as a child. He was an only child until he was 16 years old.
During 1939, Fowles won a position at Bedford School, a two-hour train journey north of his home. His time at Bedford coincided with the Second World War. Fowles was a student at Bedford until 1944. He became Head Boy and was also an athletic standout: a member of the rugby-football third team, the Fives first team and captain of the cricket team, for which he was bowler.
After leaving Bedford School during 1944, Fowles enrolled in a Naval Short Course at Edinburgh University. Fowles was prepared to receive a commission in the Royal Marines. He completed his training on 8 May 1945 — VE Day. Fowles was assigned instead to Okehampton Camp in the countryside near Devon for two years.
During 1947, after completing his military service, Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he studied both French and German, although he stopped studying German and concentrated on French for his BA. Fowles was undergoing a political transformation. Upon leaving the marines he wrote, "I ... began to hate what I was becoming in life—- a British Establishment young hopeful. I decided instead to become a sort of anarchist."
It was also at Oxford that Fowles first considered life as a writer, particularly after reading existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Though Fowles did not identify as an existentialist, their writing, like Fowles', was motivated from a feeling that the world was wrong.
Teaching career
Fowles spent his early adult life as a teacher. His first year after Oxford was spent at the University of Poitiers. At the end of the year, he received two offers: one from the French department at Winchester, the other "from a ratty school in Greece," Fowles said, "Of course, I went against all the dictates of common sense and took the Greek job."
During 1951, Fowles became an English master at the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School of Spetses on the Peloponnesian island of Spetsai, a critical part of Fowles's life, as the island would be where he met his future wife Elizabeth Christy, née Whitton, (d. 1990) wife of fellow teacher Roy Christy, and would later serve as the setting of his novel The Magus. Fowles was happy in Greece, especially outside of the school. He wrote poems that he later published, and became close to his fellow exiles. But during 1953 Fowles and the other masters at the school were all dismissed for trying to institute reforms, and Fowles returned to England.
On the island of Spetsai, Fowles had grown fond of Elizabeth Christy, who was married to one of the other teachers. Christy's marriage was already ending because of the relationship with Fowles, and though they returned to England at the same time, they were no longer in each other's company. It was during this period that Fowles began drafting The Magus. His separation from Elizabeth did not last long. On 2 April 1954 they were married and Fowles became stepfather to Elizabeth's daughter from her first marriage, Anna. After his marriage, Fowles taught English as a foreign language to students from other countries for nearly ten years at St. Godric's College, an all-girls in Hampstead, London.
Literary career
During late 1960, though he had already drafted The Magus, Fowles began working on The Collector. He finished his first draft in a month, but spent more than a year making revisions before showing it to his agent. Michael S. Howard, the publisher at Jonathan Cape was enthusiastic about the manuscript. The book was published during 1963 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. The success of his novel meant that Fowles was able to stop teaching and devote himself full-time to a literary career. The Collector was also optioned and became a film in 1965.
Against the counsel of his publisher, Fowles insisted that his second book published be The Aristos, a non-fiction collection of philosophy. Afterward, he set about collating all the drafts he had written of what would become his most studied work, The Magus (1965), based in part on his experiences in Greece.
During 1965 Fowles left London, moving to a farm, Underhill, in Dorset, where the isolated farm house became the model for "The Dairy" in the book Fowles was then writing, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The farm was too remote, "total solitude gets a bit monotonous," Fowles remarked, and during 1968 he and his wife moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he lived in Belmont House, also used as a setting for parts of The French Lieutenant's Woman. In the same year, he adapted The Magus for cinema.
The film version of The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful; when Woody Allen was asked whether he'd make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he jokingly replied he'd do "everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus." The French Lieutenant's Woman was made into a film during 1981 with a screenplay by the British playwright Harold Pinter (subsequently a Nobel laureate in Literature) and was nominated for an Oscar.
Fowles lived the rest of his life in Lyme Regis. His works The Ebony Tower (1974), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1981), and A Maggot (1985) were all written from Belmont House. Fowles became a member of the Lyme Regis community, serving as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum from 1979–1988, retiring from the museum after having a mild stroke. Fowles was involved occasionally in politics in Lyme Regis, and occasionally wrote letters to the editor advocating preservation. Despite this involvement, Fowles was generally considered reclusive. In 1998, he 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."
Fowles, with his second wife Sarah by his side, died in Axminster Hospital, 5 miles from Lyme Regis on 5 November 2005.
Major works
Many critics now consider his work on the cusp between modernism and postmodernism.