SOURCE: "The Ebony Tower and Mantissa," in his Understanding John Fowles, University of South Carolina Press, 1994, pp. 91-118.

In the following excerpt, Foster provides a thematic analysis of the collection The Ebony Tower.

The novella The Ebony Tower will be quite familiar in structure and substance to readers of The Magus. A young Englishman travels to a foreign, isolated locale, where he meets an obstreperous-yet-wise old man, who is accompanied by two young women, one of whom becomes a love interest for the young man. Through a series of encounters that are as symbolic as realistic, the young man receives the opportunity for growth and development, which nevertheless he fails to achieve. The surface details differ, as does the element of crisis and resolution, yet the basic stories are closely related. David Williams, an artist and writer, has gone to Brittany to interview Henry Breasley, an expatriate British...