After arising some days later from finishing the [revised version of The Magus], one feels—as is usually the case in reading Fowles—ambivalent. Doubtless "The Magus" is too long, but, as with the recent "Daniel Martin," that seems a dull thing to say. Sentences and paragraphs have been recast into a generally less sporadic if not clearly superior narrative. The erotic scenes have been developed and extended, though to no new point of revelation. And the same big, un-English ideas are kicking around: Hazard, Freedom, Infinity and those other concepts, which in "The Aristos: A Self-Portrait in Ideas" (1964) Mr. Fowles went on about so solemnly in so many aphorisms for so long. Those who, unlike this reader, were bored or annoyed by the speculation and argumentation in "Daniel Martin" will not find any more to their tastes the intellectual content of the revised "Magus."
Yet it is a remarkable tour de force, and not just as a promising writer's first novel. (pp. 7, 41)
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