(no subject)

[skygiants]

Now is a bad time to acquire books, but nonetheless I ended up picking up an old paperback called A Maggot from a used bookstore on a whim the other day. Then I read it. Now I'm ... frustrated and existentially confused?

A Maggot begins with the journey of five travelers: a nobleman, his deaf and mute right-hand man, his uncle, a manservant, and a lady's maid. In the first chapter it is rapidly revealed that the uncle is actually a fake uncle and the lady's maid is a prostitute.

Then they all ride off and a month later the right-hand man turns up hanged in the woods with some flowers stuffed in his mouth. Everyone else is missing, mostly because they never existed in the first place in the identities that they were introduced as.

The rest of the book is mostly a series of testimonies, as the nobleman's father sends a lawyer to investigate where he's gotten to, why his right-hand man has turned up dead in the woods, and why he hired a bunch of people to pretend to be, variously, a fake uncle, a fake manservant, and a fake lady's maid for a lady who didn't exist, and then set off to a trip to a cave in the middle of nowhere. The reader would also reasonably like to know most of this. Alas, reader and father both end up GENERALLY DISAPPOINTED.

(The narrator is omnipotent, but only when it comes to making sweeping generalizations about the eighteenth-century mindset, NOT IN ANY WAY WHEN IT COMES TO THE ACTUAL PLOT.)


Options from the last piece of testimony are:
1. Aliens? The nobleman made contact with aliens? Or time-travelers? And then hired the fake uncle and the prostitute for ... reasons?
2. Or a religious experience? Or Satanic experience? Or fairies? WHO THE HECK KNOWS. There's some magic silver people, that really seems to be the only fact on offer here
3. but anyway it's all sort of irrelevant because the end result is that the prostitute pretending to be a lady's maid gets pregnant and becomes extremely religious and gives birth to the Ann Lee, founder of Shakerism and possible reincarnation of Jesus???? and actually the book is about Shakers????? or at least that's what the last hundred pages would like you to think!
4. well, Shakers and, like, philosophies of change and social mobility and the status quo in 18th-century England, I guess
5. BUT SERIOUSLY WHAT WAS GOING ON THERE, WAS IT ALIENS OR WHAT. WHY DID THE MANSERVANT COMMIT SUICIDE. WHY DID ANYONE EVEN NEED THE FAKE UNCLE. WE WILL NEVER KNOW. I hate postmodernism.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Aliens???

...oh. John Fowles. That explains a lot.

[skygiants]

This is my first encounter with John Fowles! WHAT DOES IT EXPLAIN???

[rachelmanija]

He's a notoriously bizarre writer.

[cyphomandra]

The impression I got from The Magus was that John Fowles is actively insulted by people who want rational explanations for things (also, he dislikes science fiction and fantasy a bunch). I did like The French Lieutenant's Woman, but this appears to be a blip.

[sovay]

I did like The French Lieutenant's Woman, but this appears to be a blip.

I like The Collector (1963), which is a kind of proto-serial killer story; I've read some philosophical statements by Fowles on what he thought he was doing with the novel which I don't think I agree with, but on its own it wins points with me for knowing exactly what a creepy, creepy self-deceiving misogynist its protagonist is.

[skygiants]

Well fine then, John Fowles! I am actively insulted by authors who refuse to provide rational explanations for things! >:(

[antisoppist]

I was furious with the French Lieutenant's Woman when I was about 16 because it was all fine until he says "or perhaps it didn't happen like that at all, perhaps this is what happened instead" and teenage me was all "you are the author! You are supposed to make your bloody mind up, not just wander off and leave it to me!"

[sovay]

but anyway it's all sort of irrelevant because the end result is that the prostitute pretending to be a lady's maid gets pregnant and becomes extremely religious and gives birth to the Ann Lee, founder of Shakerism and possible reincarnation of Jesus???? and actually the book is about Shakers????? or at least that's what the last hundred pages would like you to think!

whut.

[skygiants]

ALL OF A SUDDEN SHAKERS ARE REALLY INEXPLICABLY IMPORTANT. Then John Fowles reveals in an afterward that he wrote the whole thing because of a fascination with Ann Lee, which, like, cool, OK, but ... murder mystery via potential aliens seems like a REALLY ROUNDABOUT way to get there ....

[sovay]

he wrote the whole thing because of a fascination with Ann Lee, which, like, cool, OK, but ... murder mystery via potential aliens seems like a REALLY ROUNDABOUT way to get there ....

Plus I'm not sure how Ann Lee would feel about being retconned as an immaculate alien conception!

[evewithanapple]

See, an eighteenth-century whodunnit/Rashomon book sounds right up my alley, but then . . . Shakers? Aliens? SHAKER ALIENS?

[skygiants]

hahaha man there are parts of it that would be SO up your alley, too. Plus the whole female messiah thing -- there's a ton of emphasis towards the end on Quaker and Shaker beliefs about gender equality in Christianity, and the one female character, who gets really protagonisty towards the end, interprets the aliens/angels/WHATEVER THEY ARE as basically a female version of the Trinity -- and all the unreliable narrators making judgments based on pre-existing prejudices, lots of interesting stuff going on! IT'S JUST THAT NOTHING GETS RESOLVED OR EXPLAINED AND ALSO, SHAKER ALIENS.