John Fowles has consistently distanced himself from the middle-class English society that was his familial lot and a source of much resentment toward his father. Now living in a sort of self-imposed exile in the Dorset town of Lyme Regis, Fowles has bound himself to the artistic aesthetics of innovative, naturalistic writing. Yet this image seems to conflict with that of Fowles as the author whose novels have sold millions of copies and whose collection of short fiction, The Ebony Tower (1974), was a best-seller in the United States. Three of his novels have been made into motion pictures, thus heightening the image of the public author in conflict with the private artist. In "The Enigma" (The Ebony Tower) John Marcus Fielding, a Tory member of Parliament, is described in terms that might apply to Fowles: "He feels more and more like this minor character in a bad book...