SOURCE: "John Fowles's Variation on Angus Wilson's Variation on E. M. Forster: 'The Cloud,' 'Et Dona Ferentes,' and The Story of a Panic'," in Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Vol. 20, No. 3, July, 1989, pp. 39-52.

In the following essay, Holmes compares and contrasts similarities and differences among the three stories, asserting that the stylistic devices, thematic development, and narrative mode of "The Cloud" surpass the originality of the other two.

The working title of John Fowles's The Ebony Tower was Variations, and Kerry McSweeney has shown that the short fictions which make up the volume do present variations on the techniques and themes of Fowles's own novels and on the works of other writers (101-50). One of those writers is Angus Wilson. McSweeney remarks that in its methods of characterization and narrative presentation Fowles's story "The Cloud," in particular, is reminiscent of Wilson's fiction. McSweeney...