the OTHER John Fowles
Char
John Fowles, the British author who wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, has
died at the age of 79.
A spokesperson for publisher Jonathan Cape, a division of Random House,
announced the news Monday, saying that the novelist died at his home in
Dorset on Saturday, after being "ill for some time."
Fowles had a stroke in 1988 and had heart problems.
Born in Essex in March 1926, Fowles worked as a teacher in France, Greece
and the U.K. before turning to writing full-time in 1963 upon the success of
his first novel, The Collector, which tells the story of a young butterfly
collector who kidnaps and imprisons a young woman. His other works include
The Magus, The Ebony Tower, Mantissa and A Maggot.
Fowles is best known, however, for The French Lieutenant's Woman, which was
published in 1969. Though peopled with Victorian characters, the historical
romance is told through the lens of a writer living during the 1960s.
The book was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film
starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons in 1981.
In addition to his writing, Fowles worked for many years as the honorary
curator of the Lyme Regis Museum and was a devoted conservationist.
Fowles was said to have based many of his female characters on his first
wife, Elizabeth, who died of cancer in 1990. He married his second wife,
Sarah, in 1998.
The author preferred to live a private life by the sea in Dorset and was
considered a virtual recluse. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper in
2003, he acknowledged his "reputation as a cantankerous man of letters" and
claimed to be "persecuted" by readers.
we've still got OUR Sir John!
;)
Char
johnfowles
Not everybody knows that I have three collecting passions
and have written gradually evolving sections on my own website about
all three:-
1. the works of some Canadian singer by name of Gordon Lightfoot
A section badly meriting a complete rewrite (pending)
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/
2. A fine English novelist the "Prince of Storytellers" Nevil Shute
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/nevilshute/
3. Another great English novelist with whom back in about 1965 I was
astounded to find I shared my name
(I later found that I shared the experienvce of suffering a stroke mine
in 2000 his in 1988)
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/johnfowles/
Following his death last Saturday I have added an extra page to my JF
section at:-
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/johnfowles/obituary.htm
I ended with a nice quotation about my very favo(u)rite novel "The
Magus" at:-
http://www.gnooks.com/discussion/john+fowles.html
that site led me to:-
http://www.flork.com/
I have registered there and whilst waiting to be accepted I googled for
"flork lightfoot"
and found:-
http://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/gordon+lightfoot.html
to which I will return once I receive my "login code"
also no real surprise I found Nevil Shute
http://www.gnooks.com/discussion/neville+shute.html
The odd thing here is that "To access all functionality" i.e.
contribute to a discussion on both http://gnooks.com (for literature)
and http://www gnoosic.com (for music) one has to log in via
http://www.flork.com
ah I see all these are parts of:-
http://www.gnod.net/ where apparently
"Gnod is my experiment in the field of artificial intelligence"
This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and
efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you
don't know about.""
So that's all right then!!
In other words a sort of web users' accumulated knowledge base for
books music and movies akin to wikipedia which is
"The biggest multilingual open access encyclopedia on the internet.
Over 500000 articles and still growing"
which naturally has a GL section at:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Lightfoot
Thinks. I am currently working on my long planned development of my
idea for a
GL "Webring" and will when done add a link to it at the wiki and gnod
sites
John Fowles
So fine, so fine the web you spin, I come too close and Im caught again
ran...@telus.net
you'll probably end up with the FACE OF A THOUSAND PEOPLE. Ron Jones.