Jun 29 2009
The Collector by John Fowles
I think I am reading this because it is going to be discussed in the First Tuesday Book Club, Jennifer Byrnes’ entertaining literary discussion program on ABC 1. But I am also reading Fowles’ book because I am fascinated by the premise. Like Sebastian Faulks’ Engleby, it features the voice of obsession: a lonely misfit stalker.
Written in 1963, Fowles’ book seems utterly contemporary, despite the dated references to Beatniks, etcetera. I suggest this is because misfitting and sexually frustrated young men probably haven’t changed very much. They probably never will. More importantly, there is a strong narrative parallel between Engleby and Collector: the use of the first-person gives the reader privileged access to the character’s weird logic and therefore forces us to counter that voice, to challenge it when we realise how far off the rails it is. Fictional accounts of sexually obsessed young male narrators — American Psycho is another example — make for disturbing and compelling reading, but they need to sustain to the end to work. Everything is in the voice. Psycho certainly does sustain, wonderfully. Engleby falters, particularly when external information (the report by a psychologist) is required to round off the narrative.
I am halfway through Collector and something terrible has happened. The writer has introduced another first-person voice, that of the young woman, Miranda. In theory this can work. We have a chance to see the story from another perspective. We can examine the psychology of imprisonment more completely. But Fowles has, I think, done this too late. The first narrator has been taking us through everything, every sordid detail of his plans and his crime. We’ve already (well, I have anyway) constructed in our own heads a counter-narrative, that of the imprisoned girl. If we are to see the story through other eyes, they should have been opened much earlier on; it’s too late now. The general rule (except that there are no rules of writing) is that you can employ as many voices in whatever combination you wish, but you should make clear early on that this might happen. Otherwise the reader can feel badly treated — they might feel tricked.
I feel tricked. I think I am going to read the new narrative somewhat faster that I read the previous. I know what the girl is thinking. I could tell, or I could tell enough, from how her reactions were described by the male narrator. That’s my argument anyway. We shall see. The other half still to go, and I have to read on because I want to know what happens!
<– after the second half –>
Well, the story is good. I won’t say what happens, but it’s chilling. I am sticking to my position that the switch into the young woman’s voice halfway through lets the story down. I think there are several reasons why the writer made this particular choice. One, was that Fowles was able to widen the scope of the story to include the obvious class difference between the protagonists, allowing him a bit of space to expound theories of (then) contemporary Britain. But this is weak, not only because the book is 45 years old. Another reason is to allow the reader to establish an emotional link to the girl, Miranda. Either way, there’s a lot of exposition, particularly in the second half, in Miranda’s voice, explaining the world she came from and her relationship with an older man, GP, an artist, who tried unsuccessfully to bed her. For a brief moment, a page or so, the voice takes off. We see inside her head, we begin to wonder if there might be a good ending to this awful situation, one that could work for both of them.
This isn’t the way the story goes. Everything gets worse and the end is chilling. In summary: the sociology and the lives of Beatnik artists, I could have done without. But the story, simple though it was, held me riveted to the end. Oh, yeah, and I definitely think Fred & Rosemary West (suburban British serial killers) and that Austrian cellar bloke (Josef Fritzl) must have The Collector in their collections.