A Maggot, by John Fowles
First published: 1985
Pages: 455 (First edition, Little Brown and Company)
Summary: Not from me, not for this book.
Since my tone and word choice can sometimes overwhelm my overall impression, I would like to start by stating that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
A small part of my enjoyment of this book was stolen by reading a little too much about it first. Thus, no summary from me. I suggest that you avoid reading cover blurbs and dive right in to the novel itself. In that spirit, I will start by reproducing the entire Prologue: A maggot is the larval stage of a winged creature; as is the written text, at least in the writer's hope. But an older though now obsolete sense of the word is that of whim or quirk. By extension it was sometimes used in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century of dance-tunes and airs that otherwise had no special title … Mr. Beveridge's Maggot, My Lord Byron's Maggot, The Carpenters' Maggot, and so on. This fictional maggot was written very much for the same reason as those old musical ones of the period in which it is set; out of obsession with a theme. For some years before its writing a small group of travelers, faceless, without apparent motive, went in my mind towards an event. Evidently in some past, since they rode horses, and in a deserted landscape; but beyond this very primitive image, nothing. I do not know where it came from, or why it kept obstinately rising from my unconscious. The riders never progressed to any destination, but simply rode along a skyline, like a sequence of looped film in a movie projector; or like a single line of verse, the last remnant of a lost myth.
What follows may seem like a historical novel; but it is not. It is maggot.
John Fowles, 1985
After this prologue, the novel proper begins with almost eleven pages of descriptive prose, introductions to most of the main characters and entry into a small village, with absolutely no dialog, internal or external. This book sometimes requires a little patience.
The lack of dialog is eventually remedied with a swing far in the other direction; legal depositions in the form of pages and pages of "Q." and "A.". From famine to feast. And then the lawyer taking the depositions transmits them to his client with letters setting forth his own opinion. In the end, this is a novel of epistles and depositions with some "normal, novel-like" prose and an occasional interjection by the author piercing the "omniscient narrator" curtain. The 1001 Books You Must Read entry refers to this as "the layered pastiche style of Fowle's earlier work, The Magus." This might seem like it's steering too close to "experimental" or "academic" writing, but I found the balance manageable.
For some reason I was intrigued or tormented with this idea of a novel so clearly set in England in 1736, yet not a "historical novel." I finally decided that a historical novel either puts ordinary, unhistorical people in the midst of important historical events, .e.g., Johnny Tremain for those of us of a certain age; or adds invented (sometimes plausible) details about the lives and events surrounding important historical people, e.g. Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome (which I have not read.) This book contains virtually no mention of famous or important people, and if there are important historical events in 1736, they have no bearing on what happens. Interspersed through the book are two-sided facsimile pages from The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle (which existed and took on that name in 1736; Samuel Johnson got his first job as a writer there) and while they appear authentic to me (somewhat unevenly typeset and rife with script "f"s which are really "s"s and a strange, space-saving glyph of a small "e" atop a small "y" representing "ye", a word not much used in the present time), I read all of them and found nothing which bore directly on the story though they certainly gave a flavor of the times, particularly the prevalence of severe punishment, including banishment to the colonies, physical disfigurement and death, often for what we now consider "crimes of property", punishable only by imprisonment. (I guess those pages are another "experimental" aspect to this book.)
There certainly are fascinating bits of historical trivia to be found: [She stepped over to] the bed, and stooped, lifting the side of the coverlet and looking on the floor below it; pulled out what she was looking for and, quickly raising her skirts, sat upon it.
She did not have to remove any other garment for the simple reason that no Englishwoman, of any class, had ever worn anything beneath her petticoats up to this date, nor was to do so for at least another sixty years. One might write an essay on this incomprehensible and little-known fact about their under-clothing, or lack in it. French and Italian women had long remedied the deficiency, and English men also; but not English women. All those graciously elegant and imposing upper-class ladies in their fashionable or court dresses, whose image has been so variously left us by the eighteenth-century painters, are - to put it brutally - knickerless. And what is more, when the breach was finally made - or rather, covered - and the first female drawers, and soon after pantalettes, appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they were considered grossly immodest, an unwarranted provocation upon man; which is no doubt why they so swiftly became de rigueur.
Rebecca stood relieved, and pushed the earthenware jordan back beneath the bed, and straightened the coverlet.[…]
This book contains nudity, sex and pissing. It was part of life in 1736. Of course, it still is. I am sure there are people who would be offended by this book, and the movie version might have to be rated "R", but there is less sex and violence in this book than on television. Actually, when I last lived somewhere with a television, there wasn't much sex, just violence (and no pissing.) From what I read, there is now more sex on TV than in this book.
In a way, A Maggot boils down to a mystery novel set in historical times. The solution to the mystery is gradually revealed by the testimony of the participants, each with a unique viewpoint and motivation. Further, as 20th (and now 21st) century readers, we view the events from yet another vantage point.
However, like any good novel, there has to be more and Fowles (again piercing that veil) proposes the idea that these people weren't like us, that the modern "sense of self" was not yet developed. I read his argument with interest, but it seems to me that even if true, his characters present convincing evidence that they are becoming us (even if you define us more generally than 20th century British people.) And of course, it sometimes seems as if we are regressing, less able to handle nudity, sex and pissing than our forebears. (Some of the characters in this book seem to be hopelessly homophobic, in keeping with our knowledge of the period. There has been some progress in this area in some parts of the world.)
In my opinion, the writing is excellent. Fowles gives the characters a style of dialog which is convincingly archaic, though I'm not sure anyone can say that it's authentic. If I analyze it closely, it is perhaps a bit too "written" sounding, which probably comes from the fact that we only have written materials available to us for understanding how people really spoke in those days. The retracing of the same events from different viewpoints could become tedious but actually stays fresh. Again, since much of the dialog is in the form of depositions taken in shorthand, it shouldn't be too surprising that any "Um"s and "Ah"s have been edited out by the stenographer (who, in keeping with those times, is male.)
This book has my unqualified recommendation for those with just a little patience. It was enough of a page-turner to get me to finish it before Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, even though Freedom was due back at the library much sooner. I should add that, in refreshing contrast to some of the books reviewed so far, this novel does feature a strong female character, only somewhat limited by the times in which she lives.