But The Magus remained essentially where a tyro taught himself to write novels-beneath its narrative, a notebook of an exploration, often erring and misconceived, into an unknown land. In 1964 I went to work and collated and rewrote all the previous drafts. Yet when the success of The Collector in 1963 gave me some literary confidence, it was this endlessly tortured and recast cripple that demanded precedence over various other novels I had attempted in the 1950s… and at least two of which were, I suspect, more presentable and might have done my name, at least in my own country, more good. Both technique and that bizarre face of the imagination that seems to be more like a failure to remember the already existent than what it really is-a failure to evoke the non-existent-kept me miserably aground. A more objective side of me did not then believe I should ever become a publishable writer a subjective one could not abandon the myth it was trying, clumsily and laboriously, to bring into the world and my strongest memory is of constantly having to abandon drafts because of an inability to describe what I wanted. But I had no coherent idea at all of where I was going, in life as in the book. In its original form there was a clear supernatural element-an attempt at something along the lines of Henry James's masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw. I began writing it in the early 1950s, and both narrative and mood went through countless transformations. The story appeared in 1965, after two other books, but in every way except that of mere publishing date, it is a first novel. I have long learnt to accept that the fiction that professionally always pleased me least (a dissatisfaction strongly endorsed by many of its original reviewers) persists in attracting a majority of my readers most. I have taken this somewhat unusual course not least because-if letters are any test-the book has aroused more interest than anything else I have written. A number of scenes have been largely rewritten, and one or two new ones invented. Though this is not, in any major thematic or narrative sense, a fresh version of The Magus, it is rather more than a stylistic revision. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at Thank you for your support of the author's rights. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property.
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