A book about freedom. About art and real artists. It raises the question of whether one should go with the flow or opt for unknown, harder ways to express oneself, to live. Life gives one just a glimpse of how he or she can live - a glimpse of a fairy-tale, where everything is possible; where life acquires its truest sense. Why do people choose the other way: the conventional things? It's easy to adapt, easy to be understood. But all of us have this craving for miracles; why is it so easily given up? Or is it so that it's alien to human nature: to take risks and go for them constantly. Does it live somewhere deep in us that life must be secure, quiet and tasteless; and only youth, the insane can enjoy the happy experiences for a little bit more than blinks of an eye?
It seems that no answer can be found. That, really, for a human being, it's so much easier to stop thinking about it and come back to the beaten track. Though it seems a great challenge to stop thinking, too; but to stay there - in the solitary lands of crazy chances.
It's hard to answer, seems so easy to surrender. And therefore the real problem turns up - the problem of ever knowing, ever learning. A desire to become one of those ignorant and happy. Sometimes even a strong conviction that you are the ignorant one - for you don't know the way to sweep away this philosophical nonsense and live life in its full potential of now, here; clarity and simplicity.
And such a book becomes a trap in itself - a glimpse of the bright unknown in the perspective of an ordinary human being's life. And it's always about coming back. Who knows - may be this is the eternal answer?
It's really hard to think, for Fowles' language opens up new horizons in mind, and the wish to find these new horizons in reality is unbearable, because it contradicts it.
Sometimes, I'm sure it is much better without any freedom or knowledge.