One striking thing, 30 years on, is Fowles's pessimism about the state of English fiction and the literary climate generally.
I said I take it you're not in sympathy with the theory that the novel is dead.
He said, "I think it's bloody nearly dead in Britain. It's in a terribly serious state. For a young novelist today it must be a depressing situation to come into. It's just that the whole English establishment's turned its back on the novel, most young people have turned their backs on the novel, and there's a kind of silent majority and all they want is Daphne du Maurier and Frederick Forsyth.
So, why do you continue to write fiction then? I said.
"Because I happen to have a large international readership, but I don't know what I'd feel if I was the average novelist in this country, selling, if he's lucky, 2,000 to 2,500 copies, and very often not getting reviewed. And you know this whole general feeling, the telly ... when do we ever see anything serious about books on the telly?
What else did we talk about? Miles Davis' album In a Silent Way, which he liked; Victorian erotic fiction, of which he was "the collector;" William Golding, whom he admired above all living English writers; nationality. To him, I was "as foreign as an American would be."
It was to be another two years before I transcribed the tape and submitted it to an academic quarterly in Wisconsin, which printed it in question-answer form. Before publication, I sent the typescript to Fowles for approval, and it came back with emendations on every page.
"I wish you could have given me more warning, as I feel it badly needs editing. I should hate to see it printed in its present verbatim form. I've done what I can to make it a little more coherent."
For the first time, I felt offended by his characteristic bad temper and huffily omitted to take on all the suggested changes -- something I would never do now, without good reason.
Reading over the typescript after hearing of his death, I experienced a melancholy pleasure at being reunited with that naive apprentice, and also a passing embarrassment. Putting myself in Fowles's shoes as the door of Belmont House opened on a long-haired enthusiast in military jacket and funny-colored trousers, with a screed of earnest questions, I groaned on his behalf.
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