Word: mantissa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...FICTION: Mantissa, John Fowles -A Midnight Clear, William Wharton Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene My Old Sweetheart, Susanna Moore Selected Stories, Robert Walser The Third World War, General Sir John Hackett
Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa Famous Last Words, Timothy Findley ∙ Mantissa, John Fowles Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene Selected Stories, Robert Walser The Third World War, General Sir John Hackett
Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa Famous Last Words, Timothy Findley ∙ The Frog Who Dared to Croak, Richard Sennett ∙Mantissa, John Fowles∙ Someone Else's Money, Michael M. Thomas ∙The Woods, David Plante
Literalists who try to track down such matters will find that Fowles, 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...
...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 the Muses are amusing. Perhaps Erato lives...