Reflection on the passing of John Fowles

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The NYT reports John Fowles, 79, British Postmodernist Who Tested Novel's Conventions, Dies. I am saddened by the news.

The first John Fowles novel I read was The Magus. A friend, whose name I unfortunately do not remember, gave it to me in 1968 in Vietnam shortly before he rotated back to the United States. The book was a dog eared paperback. I trusted my friend's reading instincts. I quickly became absorbed in the book. I, too, was about to rotate back to the United States. The Magus made feel there was an entire world I had not experienced. I needed that at the time since I had grown melancholy and reclusive. I could not connect with anyone or anything.

We didn't have many books in Vietnam. Most of the books passed around were cheap paperback pornography. Every now and then I would get my hands on some good crime fiction such as John D. McDonald's Travis McGee books, or scintillating bestsellers such as Valley of the Dolls and The Carpetbaggers. I am a book person. I needed The Magus, but did not know it.

Anyway, it was at that time in 1968 that I became a John Fowles fan. I have read all his novels (some of them several times) and two years ago I read his collection Wormholes.

I wish I still had that old paperback copy of The Magus from Vietnam. It, like the name of the friend who gave it to me, are as lost as the places I planned to go and the things I planned to do.