The Tree

by John Fowles

Overview

“For years I have carried this book...with me on travels to reread, ponder, envy. In prose of classic gravity, precision, and delicacy, Fowles addresses matters of final importance.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

 

“The Tree is the fullest and finest exploration I’ve ever read of how the useless delights to be discovered in nature can ripen into the practice of art.”

—Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

 

 “The most original argument for wilderness preservation I have encountered.”
—Washington Post

 

Finally back in print, here is the 30th anniversary edition of The Tree—the renowned English novelist John Fowles’s (The Magus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman) moving meditation on the connection between the natural world and human creativity. An inspiring modern ecological classic, The Tree is both a powerful argument against taming the wild and a major author’s  inspiring and beautifully written defense of “the joys of getting lost,” and of spontaneity in life and art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061997778
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/28/2010
Pages:	91
Sales rank:	270,613
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

John Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, and won international recognition with his first novel, The Collector, in 1963. His many other bestselling novels include The Magus (1966), Daniel Martin (1977), and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), which was turned into an acclaimed film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. John Fowles died in 2005.

What People are Saying About This

Lydia Millet

“Please read this book. It says the most important thing, and with a lovely succinctness. Step off the narrow path, so cleverly engineered for you, into the deep cathedral of the woods-where there are no engineers and the true self abides.”

Lewis Hyde

“THE TREE is the fullest and finest exploration I’ve ever read of how the useless delights to be discovered in nature can ripen into the practice of art.”

Brad Kessler

“THE TREE defies easy definition and even genre. Whatever else it happens to be-memoir, philosophy, natural history-the book is a kind of forest, and Fowles a masterful field guide. He shows us the hidden place where the woods and literature converge.”

Editorial Reviews

Beautiful. . . . A cross between Thoreau’s “Walden” and John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing,” with a dash of “The Gift,” Lewis Hyde’s cult-classic manifesto on creativity.

New York Times

The most original argument for wilderness preservation I have encountered.

Washington Post

Delightful... The real subject of this arboreal excursion is not trees at all, but the importance in art of the unpredictable, the unaccountable, the intuitive, the not discernibly useful.

Atlantic Monthly

[John Fowles] is a master of style, evident in the ease with which he transforms the abstract into the highly tangible, without sacrificing any of the subtleties.

Christian Science Monitor

The Tree is part memoir, part explanation and part warning, one of the most beautiful, succinct and prescient pieces of writing we have.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[B]elongs alongside the finest wilderness-rambling narratives."

The New Yorker

"A revelation."

The Paris Review

[A] great book. . . . [T]he perfect little thing to roll up in your pocket and take with you for a lunch in the park. It’s like having a laid-back, wide-ranging conversation with one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.

The Stranger

[A] beautifully honed plea for us to “be” in the natural world, to seek human creativity through the wild. . . . Beyond the tree and beyond the woods, Fowles challenges us to embrace the unpredictable, the untamable, the unquantifiable.

Women's Voices for Change

The Tree is a powerful, absorbing and beautifully written meditation on the connection between man and nature. . . . [A] magnificent and perfectly poised argument for a form of conservation that is even more pertinent now than when it was first published.

Financial Times

A gentle plea for wilderness [and] an argument for art and the imagination.

Chicago Tribune

THE TREE is the fullest and finest exploration I’ve ever read of how the useless delights to be discovered in nature can ripen into the practice of art.

Lewis Hyde

Please read this book. It says the most important thing, and with a lovely succinctness. Step off the narrow path, so cleverly engineered for you, into the deep cathedral of the woods-where there are no engineers and the true self abides.

Lydia Millet

THE TREE defies easy definition and even genre. Whatever else it happens to be-memoir, philosophy, natural history-the book is a kind of forest, and Fowles a masterful field guide. He shows us the hidden place where the woods and literature converge.

Brad Kessler

[B]elongs alongside the finest wilderness-rambling narratives.

The New Yorker "Book Bench"

A revelation.

The Paris Review "Daily"

This is a very short book which delights as it piques and puzzles. And how very right that The Tree should be "made from wood from sustainable forests."
—Times Literary Supplement

E. S. Turner

"The most original argument for wilderness preservation I have encountered." - Washington Post

"A text of unusual beauty and perception." - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher