Yesterday, after a few weeks of dedicated effort, something unusual happened.
I completed a long book.
Reading that is. Not writing it.
The book was The Magus by John Fowles, of the French Lieutenant's Woman fame.
It's always held a bit of a mystique for me not least in the title.
I'd seen a fragment of the movie adaptation on BBC1 decades ago. It hinted at mystery and supernatural trickery which it turns out is the sort of thing that floats my boat.
As a consequence, it's always held a bit of a mystique in the back of my mind not least in the title.
There are not many pieces of work that lend themselves to the claim of being one of the best books ever written - frequently hitting the top 100 books of all time, and also claim that they represent one of the worst movies ever made.
The Magus movie - damned forever by Woody Allen's brilliant quote.
"If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see The Magus."
Cruel, but brilliant.
Brilliant, but cruel.
I read the 650-page copy I bought abroad 10 years ago. And knowing what I am like for not completing long books or any books at all, I threw every trick in the book at finishing it - by carrying my paperback, obtaining a computer file, and using an audio book.
I could read it when I was sitting. I could have it read to me when I was walking somewhere or falling asleep.
In the end by combination of paper and audiobook alone I finished it.
Yesterday.
I mentioned that.
Of course it wouldn't be quite that simple. The audiobook was the original edition but John Fowles revised this with an extra 70 pages - my paperback is the Revised edition - that is his capital R not mine - and with apparently, though I still have to check this, a slightly different ending. But the ending is fairly open-ended anyway so I don't expect too much of a change.
Along the way I could often track the words he changed or moved around or expanded by reading and listening at the same time, my confusion hopefully adding to my concentration.
It pleasingly phased in and out its ideas of hypnosis and magic, dreams and intoxication, morality and reality checks.
Exactly the same thing as I offer my dating profile.
So in completing the book and jolly good it was too, I finally watched the movie.
Actually, I thought the movie was rather good, and a sight quicker to acquit.
It felt exactly like the book I just read.
Michael Caine was actually giving a performance,
Of course his character was unsympathetic. But that's the point. It doesn't make it a bad performance. Quite the reverse.
These possibly supernatural Mediterranean mysteries are almost a genre in themselves but a very small one.
There are strong echoes of a BBC TV serial called The Dark Side of the Sun, which has lived with me for many years.
This was one of a number of BBC series written by Michael J Bird, so my next task is to revisit a little bit more of that.
His legacy was series known as the Lotus Eaters, Who Pays the Ferryman, and the Aphrodite something-or-other.
I was always pleasantly haunted by the supernatural paganism of The Dark Side of the Sun.
Is there a deeper well?
I'll let you know. In your dreams.
