Mantissssssa

First of all, I want to say that I enjoyed Mantissa. It really helped me pull together all of these theories we have been talking about. The way Fowles presented the theories in a jesting way helped me figure out how to pick theories out of any text.

One scene which I really enjoyed reading was the first part of the book when he first wakes up and has amnesia. As I opened the book, I started reading it looking for the authorship of the book because I knew that is what I wanted to talk about in my class discussion. I found something that I felt had to do with that right away. However, at first glance, I did not quite understand how it was related to authorship. On page four when the being that we see the point of view from realizes, “ it was not just an I, but a male I” I know that we spoke about this quote in class, but I just feel like it is so important to the book. Not only as a quote of identification, but also as a foreshadowing of the personality of this “I”.

When we first read this quote, we think about authorship. The narrator is identifying itself as a male. There, we found the author, he is definitely not dead yet. Then, when we look closer at the quote, we see “male I”. Is this a coincidence or a pun that Fowles has creatively slipped in? Considering that in the rest of the book, the main point of view is from a male gaze, I would think it is the latter. We are always seeing Erato from this sexualized male view of women, and we never see Miles being sexualized. As a matter of fact, we hardly get a description of him! Once the author identified himself, the only depiction I could think of for Miles was the picture of John Fowles on the back of my book, with his graying beard and his blob of a sweater.

The last thing that I really liked about this part of the book was that it was identifying the book as a book about theories. Although it does not blatantly say it, this part of the book shows the reader that there are going to be many different theories intertwined in the plot, and that the author is going to make it fun.

I think that Mantissa is a book that was written to be picked apart and analyzed by any theory, and I liked that about it. It was like wax in my hands; I felt I could apply it to any theory I could think of.