The Collector by John Fowles
The Collector is yet another book that I've known about for years but never read until I signed up for 1001 Books. My loss. It is a fascinating, intriguing, suspenseful novel. It tells of a young man, Frederick Clegg, a clerk and a collector of butterflies, who becomes fascinated by a young woman, Miranda Grey, whom he has seen and watched--stalked, rather--but never met. Persuaded that he loves her but could never meet her and attract her in the ordinary way, he captures her instead, and adds her to his collection. He keeps her imprisoned in a sort of basement apartment he has prepared for the purpose.
Miranda is a thoroughly attractive woman: smart, educated, articulate, talented, extremely resilient and resourceful, and, as we learn from her diary, admirable in her determination somehow to return to her regular life. She is by far the more appealing of the two characters, but I didn't find her mysterious or opaque. Clegg, on the other hand, was puzzling. He is utterly selfish in important respects (though generous in minor things). He lives in a cocoon of self-justification, and although he knows that others would condemn his behavior--indeed, they would arrest him and put him in jail--he is completely convinced by his own rationalizations and does not think he is doing anything bad or wrong. If his actions seem bad it is because others don't understand, or because he had no choice. He is at times pathetic, but that is as near as he comes to enrolling our sympathy.
The book is a tragedy. But it is not Miranda's tragedy--at least not if one buys the Shakespearean idea that tragedy refers not merely to a bad outcome but to a bad outcome that results from essential elements of a personality. The tragic figure is Clegg, though he doesn't realize it, which is the most disturbing thing in the book: he remains clueless at the end. We realize that he has learned nothing from all that has passed, he is still in his cocoon, and, after some brief and shallow moments of self-justification, he prepares for the next addition to his collection. Almost as disturbing is the thought, hinted at from time to time, that although Clegg's actions make him extreme, there are, in fact, many people like him: many people live in live in similar cocoons of rationalization and self-justification.
I strongly recommend this book. It is thought-provoking on many levels, and it explores many topics (such as, interestingly, art collecting) that I have not touched on here.
Miranda is a thoroughly attractive woman: smart, educated, articulate, talented, extremely resilient and resourceful, and, as we learn from her diary, admirable in her determination somehow to return to her regular life. She is by far the more appealing of the two characters, but I didn't find her mysterious or opaque. Clegg, on the other hand, was puzzling. He is utterly selfish in important respects (though generous in minor things). He lives in a cocoon of self-justification, and although he knows that others would condemn his behavior--indeed, they would arrest him and put him in jail--he is completely convinced by his own rationalizations and does not think he is doing anything bad or wrong. If his actions seem bad it is because others don't understand, or because he had no choice. He is at times pathetic, but that is as near as he comes to enrolling our sympathy.
The book is a tragedy. But it is not Miranda's tragedy--at least not if one buys the Shakespearean idea that tragedy refers not merely to a bad outcome but to a bad outcome that results from essential elements of a personality. The tragic figure is Clegg, though he doesn't realize it, which is the most disturbing thing in the book: he remains clueless at the end. We realize that he has learned nothing from all that has passed, he is still in his cocoon, and, after some brief and shallow moments of self-justification, he prepares for the next addition to his collection. Almost as disturbing is the thought, hinted at from time to time, that although Clegg's actions make him extreme, there are, in fact, many people like him: many people live in live in similar cocoons of rationalization and self-justification.
I strongly recommend this book. It is thought-provoking on many levels, and it explores many topics (such as, interestingly, art collecting) that I have not touched on here.