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JF’s alternative title, The Englishman, would have been more appropriate. It is in one way a novel primarily about Englishness through the eyes of a middle aged humanist egotistic screenwriter.
It scares me how deeply flawed it is as a novel. Such an important writer could have such poor judgement? Didn’t anyone warn JF? Couldn’t he seem himself? Its major flaw is its boring wry dialogue between characters who don’t seem to be able to express anything more than a kind of bemused English banter. Hundreds of pages of this!
It gets better at the end in Egypt when Daniel and Jane finally express something deeper. More should have been made of Anthony’s character; the situation is potentially very interesting.
Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth 
No, Nathan – you’re missing part of the Englishness, I would say (as a Scot living in England I can say this): it is that unspoken, that understood but inarticulated, that knowledge between the two people in particular with words failing that is the very point.
The echos of The Waste Land (Eliot, 1922, an American in England) throughout highlight this brooding ‘Unsaid’. Daniel is a kind of fisher king, unable to be ‘fertile’ in his art form, frightened of sincere expression, always a man in masques.
I’ll stop there, but does that make sense to you? Yes, there ARE flaws in the book, but Fowles never claims to be the perfect writer. Let me know what you think!
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Thanks for your interesting comment. I must tell you that I write as a huge fan of Fowles. I know what you’re talking about and can see how Fowles was trying to do it, but I feel like he didn’t pull it off very well. Great to hear your perspective on it!
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Absolutely fair enough – have you read Wormholes? I am letting it sink in and then will go to more fiction (so much I have not yet read: shorter & earlier stuff).
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Anthony, the Catholic philosopher, *had* to die. He could not become a main part of the novel because he is a symbol for the death of God and of straightforward truth – something that Fowles the existentialist wrestles with elsewhere (in The Magus for instance). Anthony combines two forms of truth: metaphysical and philosophical. His death indicataes that we are not able to rely on those two forms for comfort in the C20th. Don’t underestimate the extent to which Fowles is an existentialist writer.
So the main characters are all left without the consoling comfort of God, or of an over-arching philosophical master narrative, or even a solid sense of what historical Englishness is (Daniel Martin is himself working on a screeplay for a bio-film of Kitchener, that ur-Englishman). They are marooned in a post-war world that seems empty of meaning, but are still requried to try and find something meaningful to cling on to – or otherwise to create themselves.
Their sometimes chronic inability to come to the point and to be normally open, spontaneous and even human, is a symptom of the problem. (The epigraph to the novel, indeed, is a quote from Gramsci about morbid symptoms arising when old form pass away.)
Daniel is annoying for not being able to make any decisive step (Eliot’s Prufrock is quoted several times to make this point). Jane is annoying because she is stuck in the opposite bind: she can *only* exist by being subsumed into a larger, over-mastering narrative – Roman Catholicism or Communism. Jenny is a proffered way out for Dan, she represents a mildly hedonistic life in America; his continuing on in the film world and simply enjoying that. But he at least can see that that is impossible for him due to its inauthenticity.
In the end, it is the straightforward act of committing yourself to another in the form of a love which proffers a sort of redemption, even though it is not fathomable, nor is it perfect, nor is it immediately comfortable. But it is the best we have, concludes Fowles, because it is life, and life is all that we *do* have.
Fowles said the novel was about Englishness, and so it is, but only in a way that Englishness comes to stand for our existential predicament.
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What can I say but ‘wow’ James? I feel humbled by the clarity and depth of your reading of Daniel Martin. I agree that existentialism is key to reading Fowles work – although perhaps especially so his earlier work. You’ve brought out a lot here that I plain missed.
My brief comments were just some notes – originally only for my private reference – about why the book didn’t work for me and maybe how I would have tackled it as a very different writer to JF.
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Ta. It’s an annoying novel , I agree, and I only persisted because I know fowles is genuinely good.
I start from the deeply old-fashioned notion that novelists write novels because they want to tell us something. Thus one’s main task as a reader is to figure out what that is. I was pumped full of post-modern death-of-the-author stuff at college, but never believed it. It just seemed like an excuse to be idle and not do the hard work of reading.
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Arieh – July 2009
I must disagree with most of the comments, (but for those of James), and with Mr. Hobby’s initial reading.
The novel is about redemption – redemption of a normal man in normal times during which time “heros” exist only in day dreams of the terminally bored.
As with his earlier work, “The Magus,” Fowles is concerned with ethics, principally, sexual ethics. In this field Fowles is unmatched in English literature.
I see his work as continuing Albert Camus’ broader occupation with ethics, but on a personal level. As I see it, one quote,”Thou Shalt Not Cause Unnecessary Pain”, underpins his major theme, you are responsible for what you do, and for what you do not do. Philosophy in a beautifully written narrative form.
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I agree that the novel becomes boggy with dialogue in places, though Fowles is unfailingly intelligent and has a great sense of place. The places (and their histories, or lack thereof) determine the people, or at least exert huge gravitational forces.
I like the mirrored images. Daniel as an undergrad surrounded himself with mirrors, and there are many twinning images, especially of women. The two sisters, Jane and Nell, the two girls the young Dan has a threesome with, Jenny, in Hollywood, who has another threesome. But these are fleeting fantasies and Daniel can bring together his desire for both Jane and Nell only across the span of a lifetime.
The novel that’s to be written, the screenplay on Kitchener, constitute further mirrors of Daniel’s life. I like the conscious way Fowles sets up all these parallels.
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I realize this is a blog post from 2007, however I was googling this book now, at the end of 2011, as I’m reading it for the first time, and am seeking to understand why JF chose to employ this strange, annoying, seemingly random use of the first and third person – often within the same paragraph – even though it’s always Daniel Martin’s voice narrating. Nobody has mentioned it, so perhaps it hasn’t annoyed others as much as it does me (I find it jarring and sometimes confusing), although I’ve greatly enjoyed the comments here. Will definitely subscribe to this blog!
Shayne
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Thanks for stopping by Shayne. I don’t remember the book well enough to make a sensible response to your comment, but I can understand your frustration.
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Shatne,
I’m reading the novel for the first time myself, although I have been a fan of JF for many years. Yes, his switching of perspective can be jarring, but I’ve found, with JF and another favorite, Thomas Pynchon,not rto fight them. Sometimes the technique makes sense suddenly later, or upon a rereading. With JF we can be sure he had a reason for using this device– some of the fun is figuring out why.
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