I obviously have not read this work again for over decade but the residue of its power in my mind and memory is undiminished. A brilliant delving into the nature of emotional (self-)deception and duplicity, and the potential illusoriness of the 'day world' when pitted against the machinations of the inner life: the fiction of the world is possibly only the sum of all inner lives but that greater and more objective than any of these solipsisms perhaps are the demands and the pull of the seeming abstractions, love and friendship. ( )

How hard it is to rate this book. I read it when I was 19. I desperately wanted to like it, to understand it, to succumb to it, to be initiated into something or other. Perhaps I succeeded, at least at times. I read it in the bathtub, in the park, on the bus, so I must have been carrying it around with me whereever I went. To show off, in some way? I knew the book was better than the movie. What I couldn't figure out was whether it was actually any good as a book. I still don't know. There's been a revised version, issued in the late '70's. I wonder. Life is short, but maybe not too short. ( )

The Magus is the first novel written by an obviously talented writer. If that sounds a bit like damning with faint praise, that's because it is. Every once in a while, you encounter a work that seems as if it should make for great art. There's obviously talent and intelligence on the artist's side, and the work itself does not appear to lack for ambition. Yet what comes out seems to lack a certain vitality, to seem impressive more for its ambition than its actual achievements.

The Magus is the story of a callow Englishman who is teaching on a small Greek island, where he is drawn into some strange psychological games by one of the inhabitants of the island. Nicholas Urfe is our protagonist, an emotionally stunted womanizer getting over an affair with an Australian air hostess, who takes a teaching position at a Greek academy on the island of Phraxos. He has been warned by a former teacher about a certain gentleman who owns a large estate on the island. Despite this warning (or perhaps because of it), he meets up with said gentleman, Conchis and becomes involved in odd philosophical and psychological games.

The set up is ripe for fascinating explorations of character or philosophy, and the story is full of mythological and literary allusions. However, for all it's apparent brilliance, it never really manages to achieve the kind of mind-bending exploration of truth or human nature that it seems to have set out for itself. Despite the novel's many references to Othello and The Tempest, to me this felt more like a case of Much Ado About Nothing.

All of what should make the novel fascinating, it's psychophilosophical speculation, its many allusions, its labrynthine structure, ultimately work against it.

The psychological exploration reaches an interesting point in a flashback encounter between a rational man and an overwhelming evil, but then that gives way to one bored cad's inability to commit to his girlfriend. The novel's many allusions to literature, to art, to mythology and occultism reach a level of oversaturating, creating the impression that they exist in the novel not so much for their fidelity to the plot but because the author wanted to show that they could be worked into the plot.

And, worst of all, the twisty narrative ultimately twists into itself. I have simple criteria for what makes an effective plot twist: it must create the impression of being both unexpected and inevitable. The twists in The Magus may be largely unexpected, but there is nothing inevitable about them. And without inevitability, a twist is just artificial, a transparent attempt at tricking the reader. The result, then, is of a plot that is not organic so much as mechanical.

For the novel to work as it should, Nicholas should serve as a proxy for the reader. We should feel some thrill or relief when Nicholas has managed to get things his way, feel a sinking feeling when events move unexpectedly outside his control. But neither the character nor the plot ever really allow for that degree of investment.

If I may delve into the analogy of a horror movie (because horror is the least of the genres), when Nicholas goes to open the door into the haunted house, there should be a feeling of, 'No, don't open that door!' Instead, the feeling is one of, 'C'mon, open the freakin' door; I want to see the kind of CGI they used on the monster.'

Most grating is that Nicholas keeps asserting that he has things in hand, that he understands Conchis' scheme, and that he's not going to let himself be manipulated anymore. Seriously, you could change his name to Nicholas Dumbass (with an aside from Nick regarding how he liked to claim he was descended from the French Dumas) without in any way decreasing my estimation of his intelligence. As a reader, it seemed clear the twists were designed to be impossible to guess beforehand.

(Warning: I'm going to start tossing out spoilers here.)

Perhaps most dissapointing was the way that the artificiality of the story affected some of the elements that were actually intriguing. Allison, Nicholas' emotionally damaged Australian girlfriend, makes for a compelling foil for him throughout the early part of the novel. There's something real about her--messy, vulnerable, too honest--that made her endearing to me. After she fakes her death and becomes involved in Conchis's conspiracy, she lost that realness, becoming as artificial as the plot. Whatever spark of messiness animated her early on no longer seems charmingly real by the end, which meant emotionally I was moving in the opposite direction than the protagonist. At the beggining of the novel, I could wish for Nicholas and Allison to try to stay together and work out their issues. By the end, when Nicholas is meeting her and having his little 'OK, I'm a total cad and probably no good for you, but I'm ready to try to commit' speech, I couldn't see why he bothered.

And that is, I think, meant to be the culmination of the novel, the final emotional awakening. A few hundred pages earlier, Conchis had related a story of the island during WWII. In the story, the Nazis occupy the island. Some German soldiers are killed by Greek partisans, and Conchis' functions as a kind of liasion for them. Some German soldiers are killed by Greek partisans, who are later captured by the Germans. In a bit of cold-bloodedness, the Nazi commander orders Conchis to beat the partisans to death with an unloaded rifle. If he refuses, they will execute the adult males in the village where the partisans were discovered. Of course, we can't be sure how true the story is. Some on the island claim that Conchis' participation with the Nazis was more sinister, and there's no reason to believe his own account of the events won't be self serving.

But the result of this actually intriguing question of truth, guilt and responsibility is: a callow English man-child decides that he can kinda, sorta commit to his flighty foreign girlfriend. Shortly after finishing the novel, I thought of it as some literary version of David Fincher's 'The Game,' where Michael Douglas undergoes many trials and tribulations to figure out that he should be less of a jerk and ask the cute blond out on a date. 'The Game,' though, manages to be relatively consistent in its pulpiness. This is actually a bit more like some version of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' where the big emotional pay off is that a callow English man-child decides that he can kinda, sorta commit to his flighty foreign girlfriend. (Call if 'Forty Literary Allusions, One Nazy War Crime and an Island.')

As much as I was disappointed by the novel, it does have some great moments and does reflect the work of an author with some degree of skill. Which is why I feel the most fair thing I can say is that it's the first novel of a talented writer. However, I think like many first novels, Folwes doesn't succeed to match up his ambition with his literary skill. ( )

A classic as soon as it was published, I read this twice before Fowles released his revised version with the changed ending. I prefer this version, because and not despite of the greater ambiguity. ( )

Catch-22. The plot device twists like Hellers novel. Puritans would probably want to ban this book but the funny thing is that the redemption of a bed-hopper could be one of the moral interpretations. Many issues are addressed in the book while the symbolism and literary referances add to the thesis worthiness of this novel. It could easily be seen as long and tedious but I believe it is worth the effort.. ( )