THERE IS SOMETHING precarious about interviewing one's heroes. You can all too easily be disgustingly sycophantic or, compensating, overly harsh. Worse still, overawed. But John Fowles makes it childishly simple. Propped up in bed, swaddled in voluminous nightwear, the remnants of breakfast still flecking his beard, he looks nothing like arguably Britain's greatest living author, the sofa-sized brain behind The Collector, The French Lieutenant's Woman and The Magus.
The latter, voted in one poll as one of the best 100 novels of the 20th century, was so erudite that even the reviews were baffling. The Financial Times wrote: 'A splendidly sustained piece of mystification such as otherwise could only have been devised by a literary team fielding the Marquis de Sade, Arthur Edward Waite, Sir James Frazer, Gurdjieff, Madame Blavatsky, C. G. Jung, Aleister Crowley, Franz Kafka.'
And the movie, starring Michael Caine but regrettably shot in Majorca instead of Greece, was so impenetrable that Woody Allen, when asked how he would live his life differently if given the chance, replied: 'Exactly the same, except I wouldn't watch The Magus.' Fowles chuckles throatily at this assessment, adding that as the screenwriter for movie he was 'completely defeated'.
At the age of 77, Fowles has been ravaged by ill-health. He had a stroke in 1988, two years before Elizabeth, his wife of 33 years, died of cancer. He subsequently had heart surgery and his diaries, out last week, may be his final book. He says this will be his last interview.
Today he is nursed at his rambling seaside refuge in Dorset, England, by his second wife Sarah, 20 years his junior and an old friend of Elizabeth.
He has not written a novel since A Maggot 18 years ago, reads only his old Oxford University French text books, and battles to maintain his daily diary. 'I do think a lot, though,' he adds.
