The self-begetting novel is a major sub-genre of this century. Its paradigm is Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, at the same time an account of its own birth and of the rebirth of its principal protagonist as novelist…. Notable examples of self-begetting novels since Proust's have been Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée, Michel Butor's La Modification, and Claude Mauriac's La Marquise sortit à cinq heures. Iris Murdoch's Under the Net (1954) is a remarkable instance of this French tradition transposed to British soil. (p. 43)

On the very first page of Murdoch's very first novel [Under the Net], published soon after her study of Sartre [Sartre: Romantic Rationalist], the narrator [Jake Donaghue] presents himself as, perhaps like his creator, arriving in England 'with the smell of France still fresh in my nostrils'…. His suitcases are heavy with French books.

Jake Donaghue never relinquishes the center of attention in...