Everyone is planning summer holidays. People ask me where to go, since I have been many places. Camille from the diamond exchange was wavering between Morocco and Turkey.
I had been to neither, but heard Morocco was a hassle and Istanbul was a gem on the Bosphorus.
“Thanks for the info.” Camilli was the queen of the plain joes in Bushwick. Most of them had beards. She would feel comfortable on the beaches off the plains of Troy.
On my way home to Fort Green I had a glass of wine at the Oyster Bar, several beers and margaritas at Solas on East 9th Street, then more beer at Frank’s Lounge before arriving at my apartment around midnight to crash onto my bed almost a dead man.
The next morning I woke from my slumber with the rise of the dawn. My bedroom has no shades and day comes early these days.
I rewarded my survival with a daylong lay down during which I read John Fowles’ THE MAGU, the story of an selfish Oxford graduate escaping a complicated relationship by accepting a teaching post on a remote Greek island, where he enters into a series of metaphysical games with a rich tycoon mimicking the lives of the gods and heroic humans. I fast-flittered through the pages since I had read the novel in the 70s, but immensely enjoyed visiting THE MAGUS.
After finishing the novel I remembered that it had been made into a movie with Michael Caine cast as the hero and Anthony Quinn as Maurice Conchis with Anna Karina and Candice Bergen as the love interests.
The 1968 film adaptation had been a critical box office disaster and I killed the afternoon watching it on Youtubes.
It was so bad, that Michael Caine had once said that it was one of the worst film in which he had been involved.
Woody Allen topped this critique by saying, “If I had to live my life again, I’d do everything the same, except that I wouldn’t see The Magus.”
THE MAGUS as a film really did suck, but the book was a nice escape on a hang-over day, especially if you didn’t have to read every word, and I planned to give Camille my copy.
She’ll enjoy it sunning on the beach.
I won’t tell her anything about the movie.
Some things are better left in the dark.