SON OF MAGUS

Un debauche de profession est rarement un homme pitoyable

That should have been a dead giveaway that the author is full of schit.
But then I read part of the introduction to the revised edition before I looked online and found the revised edition is Evil.  I stopped before finishing page two, b/c it was keeping me from walking successfully (success = not getting ran over by a car).
Then I posted a Q on Y! to find out where the NON revised edition could be bought and someone took the time to answer a very detailed answer, seemingly w/o much prior knowledge of the matter.  He said most readers like both the revised edition & the original text.  So I took it upon myself to look up other opinions (reviews) of THE MAGUS Revised.  And someone was kind enough to give it 4/5 stars despite serious flaws.  One of them is hinted at in the quote above, which is from a novel by the Marque De Sade, titled in its native language Les Infortunes de la Vertu.  The English translation of whatever that says is irrelevant, the point is that people in general have never been bi, tri & quad+ lingual.  I myself am probably one of the lesser educated people in my community, but I do have a fairly good mind, although it gets stuck sometimes...tedium is something I am very sensitive to and dislike very much, to the point I get sick to my stomach in the face of it.  I could have advanced my math and reading skills from day 1, but my impression of school, from that day until it was too late for me to catch up, was "What the heck is this place and why am I here?!"  I felt like I was being tied up and held down.  Resistance was my rebellion.  Do I strike you as a rebel?  Hmm...Anyway, the school found something abnormal in my thinking patterns so instead of branding me as lazy and a traditional failure, they put me in a class with a bunch of other similarly misfitting children and didn't ask very much of me.  So heck, no: I do not speak French.  Most U.S. citizens don't learn French because The USA is the top dog and everyone who knows anything will learn English so they can speak effectively when in its presence.  The USA is lucky in this regard; we certainly did not earn this ability, although we have done a lot to make it look like we did, i.e: the Civil War, The Civil Rights Bill, etc...I still think the Vietnam war was just gov't sanctioned mass murder.  There was no goal in invading their land.  There was no strategy.  And the police here stateside often were almost as brutal.  I can't believe Ronald Reagan ever became president, after reading the liner notes of George Carlin's CLASSIC GOLD.
It seems like we never really had a free country until the decade I was born into, the 1980's.
But anyway; I wouldn't expect a Frenchman to learn English.  I think the French have a culture and a country just as worthy as any.  If THE MAGUS were written by John Folwes primarily for the French to read, I'd probably missed out on reading the original text.  Many an English speaking person missed out on Matthew Ward's translation of Albert Camus' THE STRANGER and thus had to settle with Stuart Gilbert's, inferior from what I can tell (although THE STRANGER, as beloved as it is, is a rather boring meandering pile of nothing, IMO).
I guess John Fowles expects the non-uber-educated folk to steer clear of him and not get his silk suit rife with mud.  Sorry I bought your book, Mr. Fowles.  I don't mean to intrude on your insular circle.