First published 1974. Granada paperback, 1981, pp 304, c.110,000 words.
Nowhere on the cover of this edition does it say that this is a collection of stories, presumably because the publishers know that would lower sales. There are actually five stories here, the first being the longest at about a hundred pages. I was just thinking the story was developing nicely when it ended. Was it intended to be a full novel, and Fowles had a failure of imagination or got bored with it? There are some tentative links between the stories, but they are not a coherent whole adding up to more than the sum of their parts. Three of the stories are set in France, two in England. Two of the protagonists are critics, three of the stories relate to the arts. Relationships, consummated or unconsummated are central themes, but then aren’t they for most stories? Four are contemporary, one set in medieval times.
The first story, The Ebony Tower, concerns a visit by someone to a prominent painter who he has been commissioned to write an introduction to a book about. The artist, now an old man, is living in the Breton countryside and is famously bohemian and rude. He lives down to that reputation, sharing the company of two women in their early twenties who are first seen sunbathing naked in the painter’s garden. There are some interesting discussions on art between the two men, which brought to mind other books like John Banville’s The Book of Evidence. The women are largely foils and used to build the sexual tension. Fowles is brilliant in creating creepy atmosphere. Usually his sentences are well-crafted brimming with subtle illusion (although the opening sentence of this story is a complete disaster – so over-wrought that I had to read it several times to get its meaning.) What, in the end, one is left with is a sense of the unfulfilled, the dissatisfies, the unconsummated, and ultimately the sterility of the intellectual life.
The author supplies an introduction to the second story to frame it as a French tale from the age of chivalry. Don’t people who went to Oxford or Cambridge University (as I did to both) love to tell you that they did? It stands in interesting juxtaposition to the first in that it is the story of a married man who falls in lust with a much younger woman, and then his wife conveniently steps out of the way. Ultimately this story also has an air of sterility, the characters feelings overwhelmed by the moral climate in which they lived. The ‘modern’ language used here is sometimes a little crude, perhaps in an effort to escape the archaic courtly language used in the originals of such tales.
The third story also concerns a critic who is writing a biography. He retreats to the country to finish the work. There, in a lonely cottage, a visitor comes calling. Again the protagonist is a weak man, bound in by his literary, educated, moral universe, unable to really engage with people from different backgrounds.
The fourth concerns the disappearance of a back-bench MP; a man who was playing a role of barrister, Tory constituency man and rural landowner. Once again the characters seem to be completely sterile. There is a whole artificial atmosphere to the piece, with every character fitted into a neat box – chess pieces, each with a limited set of moves. It gives the appearance that Fowles got stuck with this one: having established an intriguing premiss, his story evaded him and he resorts to literary origami.
The final story is once again set in rural France. This time a small group of English people, adults and children, are on holiday, the weather is drowsily hot and sultry. In contrast to the previous story the relationships between the characters are not clearly defined. We catch fragments of conversation, all is ambiguous. There is an erotic charge that might prove explosive. The ending is as inconclusive as everything else.
Fowles is very good at creating atmosphere. Each of these stories contains a plausible, distinctive, quickly built and sustained little world, powerfully drawing us in. There is something of J. G Ballard here, particularly in the inability of the characters to really connect emotionally. A good deal of tension is built up in each of them, but then Fowles seems to have either run out of road or got bored, and fails to deliver a satisfying arc. Mostly his sentences are beautifully crafted in high-literary style, just occasionally tripping over themselves with their cleverness. Fowles does not live up to one of his characters: ‘The old man’s secret; not let anything stand between self and expression.’ [p109]. Fowles seems too often to be looking over his shoulder to check that the literary critics are taking note of how clever he is.
Mostly women in these stories are there to provide motive for men’s actions. Rather too many men of middle or old age are playing with women in their twenties – fantasy stuff. Fowles is capable of delivering a fully realised erotic encounter in masterful style, as demonstrated in the final story, and here it is minutely choreographed so that we are left unsure quite who is driving the action. It’s very cleverly done. Much of the rest of the encounters are sterile, and the characters hidebound with intellectual bonds. Fowles also ticks off the literary pretentions with the occasional use of uncommon and obscure words: ‘aleatory’ [p57], ‘desmure’ [p122 and again p124], ‘psittacism’ [p184] (and that during a critique of a young man’s use of ‘man’ and ‘right’ to pepper his conversation). Sometimes words are used in a strange way: ‘southward’ used as a noun [p11], and ‘anathema’ used as a need [p180].
Fowles does get some things right: ‘Jane Austen… …set a new standard for accuracy over human emotions and their absurdities.’ [p122]. He is reaching for that height but falls short here.
Wikipedia biography of Fowles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fowles
Wikipedia summary of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ebony_Tower
Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56030.The_Ebony_Tower?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_10
© William John Graham, June 2023