I've gotten through 496 pages of The Magus, and I cannot get over the way in which this book has constructed a total mind-maze! I mean, usually it's incredibly easy to see through a book's plot; to end up where you suspected you would end up, even though your resolve in your initial intuition may have been shaken a bit from time to time. But this book is different. It's different because, even if you know what is going to happen, you never know how much is laid out for you to see through, and you never know how much deeper each little vein of the plot really goes. Just like Nicholas in Conchis' masque. It's really very well constructed for that reason; it puts the reader in the situation of the main character, and not just because of the first person perspective, nor simply because you have a mystery to figure out along with the character, but because you too must feel the indignant sting of having been wrong in a conclusion, and you too must feel betrayed every time Nicholas feels betrayed, and because you are forced to sympathize with a man who you do not want to admit is really quite similar to yourself in many ways. Am I assuming too much about your personality? I should think not. Nicholas is like all young people I know, my friends, my "enemies", and my self. I say so because he starts out with too much confidence in what he wants to do (this is not everyone, but it is one large group of people), then he realizes that he detests the conditions he's in (change of major?) and decides to pursue something a bit different, thought I will admit, going to Greece is not quite the same as switching from a pre-med major to an anthropology major, or something of the like. Nicholas also has a relationship that he isn't fully invested in, but that tugs at his heart strings a bit every time he's getting a little lonely (at first anyhow). This is kind of a slap in the face for some people, who would think "Oh, I've never been nearly such a pig!", but just give it some thought. Maybe our cases haven't been nearly so extreme as the relationship between Alison and Nicholas, and maybe we've even resisted the urge to use somebody to temporarily patch up a hole in our lives until we've found something better, but we've all had that little thought. Even if it was just the shade of a notion that you labeled as a demon right away, Dionysus has possessed you for one or more seconds at some point in time and said, "Maybe, just for a night or two, you could..."
             Anyhow, I would hate to sympathize with a character I don't much like any longer. But how could I avoid talking about what seems to be the ultimate betrayal against him? Alison is dead, and proven (in his mind) to be so, and yet "Julie/Lily" still makes love to him with apparent amour, only for us to see that it's truly been done with the callous of a hooker! If you don't feel bad for the man at that point, you're even more hard hearted than he had ever been toward Alison. Elle ne l'aime pas du tout! The poor sap. But now, truly, I am done sympathizing with this man.
             I have postulated theory upon theory about what might be happening. Most of them have become rubble strewn at the base of my final plausible conclusion to the book (which I can't possibly write in my blog, just in case people are not so far into the book), but I will say this. If the pattern of my theorizing continues, in two or three chapters, my final plausible theory will be in the same state as all my others. In fact, I wouldn't hardly claim this theory out loud if someone asked me, because it is so outlandish, but only because everything which is not outlandish is refuted the page after it is conceived. And furthermore, the book has a way of making you doubt your own sanity to a degree, or rather, I think I might known what happens, but the book doesn't particularly suggest it, so I feel the characters of the book staring at me through the pages saying "that's what you think is going to happen? No way man, you're miles off." And since I can't get my footing on what may or may not happen next, I have to accept the roll of Nicholas, of the bystander who cannot escape the masque, and so must let its natural current whisk him along, until finally, battered and bruised I have reached the natural conclusion. And the foreboding notion that everyone hates the end of this book certainly doesn't assuage the feeling I have that the natural end to this current is something analogous to a waterfall.
                 I also feel almost like a character who has made it yea far in the masque, because when I hear which page others are on, all I can do is smile and think "have fun", and then laugh to myself in that menacing chuckle that denotes some sort of dramatic irony. In other words, I am the ancient stone bust on Conchis' silver platter, and I have that wry smile that you cannot decode any more than you can escape it. So, to all of you who are not so far into the book, have fun.