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This edition contains new material, but it is shorter (though not meant to be attempted at one sitting) than its predecessor and, I sincerely hope, much clearer. One other criticism of the first edition I fully deserved. There was an irritating swarm of new-coined words. These I have almost completely abolished. [from the Author's Preface to the second edition of 1968, as reproduced in the New American Library edition of 1970].
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Subjects
Civilization, Life, Philosophy, Philosophy and religion, English Philosophy, Individuality, Philosophical anthropologyPeople
John Fowles (1926-2005)Times
20th centuryShowing 8 featured editions. View all 24 editions?
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The aristos
1993, Picador in association with Jonathan Cape
in English
- Rev. ed.
0330322931 9780330322935
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New York, N.Y
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This book was first published against the advice of almost everyone who read it. I was told that it would do my ‘image’ no good; and I am sure that my belief that a favourable ‘image’ is conceivably not of any great human – or literary – significance would have counted for very little if I had not had a best-selling novel behind me. I used that ‘success’ to issue this ‘failure’, and so I face a charge of unscrupulous obstinacy. To the obstinacy I must plead guilty, but not to lack of scruple; for I was acting only in accordance with what I had written.
My chief concern, in The Aristos is to preserve the freedom of the individual against all those pressures-to-conform that threaten our century; one of those pressures, put upon all of us, but particularly on anyone who comes into public notice, is that of labelling a person by what he gets money and fame for – by what other people most want to use him as. To call a man a plumber is to describe one aspect of him, but it is also to obscure a number of others. I am a writer; I want no more specific prison than that I express myself in printed words. So a prime personal reason for this book was to announce that I did not intend to walk into the cage labelled ‘novelist’.
Aristos is taken from the ancient Greek. It is singular and means roughly ‘the best for a given situation’.
[From the Author's Preface to the second edition of 1968, as reproduced in the New American Library edition of 1970]
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September 17, 2023 | Edited by bitnapper | merge authors |
September 1, 2021 | Edited by Jenner | merge authors |
April 27, 2016 | Edited by contulmmiv | Minor correction to description |
April 27, 2016 | Edited by contulmmiv | Correction to toc; added edition description |
May 5, 2010 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from Internet Archive item record. |