The Magus by John Fowles proves that Dark Academia isn't Necessarily Good Art

Before I begin my review, I’d like to thank Ms. Byrne for being such a generous and knowledgeable teacher. When I described my plan to explore the origins of the Dark Academia subgenre, you recommended me this book and let me borrow it from your personal library. It’s teachers like you who make the world a great place to read about!

“I have long learnt to accept that the fiction that professionally always pleased me least (a dissatisfaction strongly endorsed by many of its original reviewers) persists in attracting a majority of my readers most” (5)

Thus saith John Fowles in the introduction to his 1965 debut novel The Magus. And although I am disinclined to concur on any topic with the acclaimed British postmodernist, I agree in one respect: those early reviewers had the right idea.

Fowles is known for The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Daniel Martin, but the book I found today represents the worst qualities of ‘classic’ literature. It draws from a variety of sources, including Henry James and the Marquis de Sade, without proving that those authors are worth reading in the first place. Its definition of liberty is Heinleinesque: it claims to be a battle “between freedom and God” while flashing phalli and mamillae across the page like a psychologist trying to traumatize a toddler. It is profoundly immature. 

And yet! Despite its immaturity, The Magus is Dark Academia.

The novel follows an aimless Brit who accepts a teaching job on an obscure Greek island and finds himself drawn into the web of the eponymous Magus, mysterious millionaire Maurice Conchis. Nicholas Urfe, our hero-in-name-only, is he worst kind of man: an Oxonian imbecile guided partially by a dim sense of morals but mostly by the whims of his penis. Thanks to a series of pseudomystical encounters, he transforms from a tepid, profligate misogynist into a tepid misogynist who takes time to contemplate his failings before unzipping his pressed, oh-so-English trousers. Readers who want to give Urfe the benefit of the doubt should listen to him describe his love life:

“I mistook the feeling of relief that dropping a girl always brought for a love of freedom. Perhaps the one thing in my favour was that I lied very little; I was always careful to make sure that the current victim knew, before she took her clothes off, the difference between coupling and marrying” (23)

Does that sound like a man you’d want to spend an evening—let alone a whole book—with?

Fowles thinks so; he drags the reader along on Urfe’s katabasis for 650 pages. By the end of the story, it’s still not totally clear whether “Nicko,” as he is called by his three (three!) love interests, has learned his lesson. Not that books with unlikable protagonists are inherently awful; one of my favorite books, César Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, is particularly enjoyable because it requires the reader to challenge the personal biases of its protagonist. But Aira only followed Johann Rugendas for 88 pages, and focused almost exclusively on the one character.

By contrast, The Magus is stuffed with characters. From a cheerful, dissolute colleague to Conchis and his assistants, almost all the secondary men are worse than the already-slimy Urfe. The women don’t fare much better: characters like Julie/Lily and June/Rose disappear like mirages when the obligatory male gaze is lifted, leaving only the faintest aroma of personality. Fowles almost—almost!—finds a complex female character in Alison, a lonely air hostess who inexplicably finds herself attracted to Urfe’s nothingburger personality. Even she can’t seem to figure out how he does it.

“I didn’t realize you can get softer. I thought you went on getting harder. God only knows why, I felt closer to you than I’ve ever felt to any other man. God only knows why. In spite of all your smart-alec Pommie ways. Your bloody class mania” (280)

But perhaps it is this “bloody class mania” that makes Urfe, and by extension The Magus, a point of interest. Fowles’ novel uses an awe-inspiring command of language to depict a cringe-inducing vocabulary of longing—the hallmark of the Dark Academia subgenre. Nicholas D’Urfe has more in common with Richard Papen than any other vacant 20th-century youth. As icky as the concept is, Julie/Lily, June/Rose and Alice each wear shades of the Eternal Femine. Even Maurice Conchis is the reincarnation of a thousand immortal tricksters.

So although I think The Magus is pretty bad, I can see its appeal. If you’re interested (as I am) in tracing the roots of Dark Academia, you might enjoy reading the missing link between George Byron and Donna Tartt. But if you’d rather avoid unlikable twentysomethings and tedious sex scenes, keep a wide berth. When even the author of book disowns his work, you might want to pay attention.

“Conchis had talked of points of fulcrum, moments when one met one’s future. I also knew it was all bound up with Alison, with choosing Alison, and having to go on choosing her every day. Adulthood was like a mountain, and I stood at the foot of a cliff of ice, this impossible and unclimbable: Though shalt not inflict unnecessary pain” (652)