Word: erato
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...degrade women: "Ever since I got into serious liberation, you been takin' the mickey. I got your number, mate. You're the original pig. Numero Uno." Despite the leather gear, dyed hair and garish makeup, Miles recognizes this apparition as an old, inspiring friend. She is Erato, the classical Muse of lyric poetry and, by historical default, of fiction as well...
...questions. Why, for openers, does he call this novel Mantissa and then provide a self-deprecatory definition of the word, "An addition of comparatively small importance, especially to a literary effort or discourse"? Does that mean readers seeking substantial fare should look elsewhere? Other queries quickly arise. Is this Erato who breaks into Miles' story real or a figment of his imagination? Wait a minute. She has always been a myth (has she not?), and what could possibly be called real in a made-up story that takes place entirely in a gray area suspiciously resembling a brain...
...presumably the only one with the answers, has disappeared, leaving the slim trace of a smile between the lines. Mantissa is a jeu d 'esprit with a vengeance, its principal characters, like so many of Fowles' earlier creations, held in thrall by forces they cannot quite explain. Erato and Miles are prisoners of gender. When they squabble, as they do throughout the rest of the novel, they helplessly re-enact timeless wars between the sexes...
...stare each other down, and the contest is a standoff. As he has done so often in the past, Fowles makes sure that the tie goes to the author. During one of his short-lived triumphs, Miles pedantically explains his art to Erato: "Serious modern fiction has only one subject: the difficulty of writing serious modern fiction." The joke is on everyone except Fowles. Mantissa is clearly an example of serious modern fiction, with itself as its subject, and not a trace of difficulty is visible anywhere in its construction. A susceptible soul might be led to believe that...
From that time on, Mamma Erato spent her life reading of her son's doings in the newspapers or visiting him in jails. "For nine years I went to different prisons," she says, "taking him food and clean clothes. He likes to be tidy and neat." Now she is denied even that. No word comes to her from Nico himself and only a very occasional note from his Czech wife Mania to tell Erato that all is well with...