John Fowles

Today is a sad day for me because of the passing of a great man, the author John Fowles who was 79. When I was 21, a student at Cambridge University, his labrynthine fiction was the most eye opening thing I could imagine: the double ending of The French Liuetenant's Woman, the subtle shift of narrators in Daniel Martin, the description of the dying Mozart in The Collector and, above all, the wild twists of one of the great books of the past century, The Magus. His Journals have been recently released, with a second volume forthcoming, and though his last novel came out over two decades ago, his work was still a vital part of our--or at least my--landscape until his sad passing. Too young, too soon...