A Review about Golding's Work © By Velissarios ValsamasComments on W.Golding's Books
All these comments are made by me (Velissarios Valsamas) who I am just a William Golding's reader and fan and I have no other qualification about literature or criticism. I have include some official critisism in the page, but the most of them are personal and completely unofficial. So, do not consider all these reviews as anything else than just my personal thoughts.
Excuse me for any spelling mistake and especially for the wrong way of names writing. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to write the English names which Golding uses because I have his books in Greek edition. I'll be glad if you could help me solve these problems!The Lord of the Flies (1954)
The "Lord of the flies" is considering as the greatest novel of William Golding. It is a story of a group of young boys who are the only survivors of an air accident in a small island. The boys are trying to survive alone, without any adult man to help them. They take their surviving as a gam and they choose the older boy as a leader. Soon they will separate themselves in two groups because of their differences about the way of playing. The other group, will select another leader and finally the two
groups will fight in a not childish way... The Lord of the Flies, is a great novel in which W.Golding explains the real nature of the human being, which is not as innocent as we think. The young boys, before they have receive the complete procedure of social formation, when they have to live in a world where they make the rules, they become savage and merciless like the animals. These ideas of W.Golding , give a complete explanation to the atrocities of war. War is a "game" which human knows from the begining of his life. War is the game which the human nature never gave up! This novel has already sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
Personal Note:There is an interesting point about the title of this novel. The Lord of the Flies is also a charactirization of an assyrian demon, the Pazuzu. According to the assyrian mythology, this demon tries to destroy the space of the universe. It's possible for Golding to use this name allegorically (the human nature is the "Lord of the Flies", the Pazuzu, the
creature which trying to destroy the space).Pincher Martin (1956)
Like a cold sweat, a day-mare or going under gas... Prose more tighly packed, more jaggedly concrete, I can't imagine: and the shock ending, which throws a new and doubly alarming retrospective light on the whole book, is technical wizardry of the first order.
Kenneth Tynan (in the Observer)
Golding's imagination works brilliantly just within the limits of fantastic nightmare... Martin's stuggles in the water, with which the story opens, his slow climb up the rock to a short of plateau on the top, the confused meditations in which his rational minds strives to reduce the horror of his position to tolerable terms: of all this Golding writes with remarkably sustained
imaginative intensity.The Times Literary Supplement
Free Fall (1959)
Sami is a famous and succesful painter who is trying to describe his life and find the reasons which deprived him of the free choice. His narration has no chronological order and it walks through Sami's life, career and romance. Sami was born in a poor neighbourhood and there he meets the love for the first time. Soon, he will become a famous artist and he'll move to London. But the war will change his life (for another time, Golding puts the war in his hero life, as it was put in his life) and it
will drive Sami in a German concentration camp. At last, Sami will feel the big shock of his life in an asylum where he finds his first love. Why are we loosing our freedom in choosing in our lives? If we ever had it...The Spire (1964)
The priest Joslin believes that God chose him to build a giant spire on the cathedral he works. Without any ground works and against any advice of the architects and the others, Joslin is trying to build the spire. But the shadow of this spire will fall on his life. Written with clear simplicity which hides a great power of composition, "The Spire" is an excellent tragedy, based on a subject which Zola tried many times...
Rebekka West
Excellent written... It's just a wonder.
Frank Kermode
Darkness Visible (1979)
In this novel, W.Golding describes the lives of five different people. First is Maty who was born in a fire and he becomes seriously deformed in his face. He has no parents and he finds a shelter to the spiritual world. He lives for the good.
Then is Sophy. She is beautiful and smart. Soon, she understands her power to assert men and she uses it. She drives herself to the crime, just to prove her independence of feelings and morality. Mr.Pedigree is the most tragic person in the novel. He is a teacher in a school and because of his homosexual needs he losts his job and his pride. His need drives him to humiliation and to social isolation.
Golding has a great imagination, so he convinces even if he is so dark. He believes that imagination can penetrate in this "curtain where all threads are moving", as says the soldier which saves Maty in the beginning of the story. He believes that violence in our century is a revolution against humiliation. Maybe this is what he says when in "Darkness Vissible" the truth appears in Sophy's mind: "The road to simplicity walks through the blasphemy, the desecration".
I consider myself lucky because I know Golding the last 20 years. He and some of his best works compose a mystery to me. He didn't want it other way; me too. What our century needs is mystery.Anthony Storr
Even if Golding denys persistently to talk about "Darkness Visible", his position in the whole work is obvious. Because in this book he examines the sections which attract him more: the extreme behaviour for which the human is able, his ability for the good and the wrong, his eternal strange holiness and sin. And behind all these, lies the mystery of the spiritual world
which surround us continually, but in his biggest part is closed to us, forgotten or ignored from the most of the people. In these mysteries, Golding penetrates , this darkness tries to light, by choosing two characters who lives mainly in the spiritual level but in completely opposite poles... "Darkness Visible" gives more because it just tries more. An exploration in
the most critical desert, where will happen the last confrontation between the right and the wrong, the good and the evil, between the darkness and the light, between the God and the Devil.
"Darkness Visible" can be considered as a book full of hope, which with his ending gives at least the possibility of escape from a world which has the threat of a nuclear bomb, the spiritual disorientation, the continuous noise and the tyranny of words.Don Crompton
The art of Golding is the art of exploring, but not the art which tries to explain. It discovered that the universe is inexplicable and it can't be described completely with words. But words isthe only thing that a writer has. The problem of the language and its relationship with the natural and metaphysic world is a matter which always occupies Golding. We could say that
art is occupied exactly with this matter. One of the strongest points in his writing is that inside words, he can make us understand that there are areas of being over the limits of language. As Golding say: "The power, the sobriety, the truth of a book can not be found in the fidelity of the attribution of the phenomenal world, but in the fact of how can it stand alone.
Consciousness, intuition. We stand in a height - or depth - where the questions can not be answered with words."
...The mystery can not be explained - otherwise it wouldn't be a mystery. So, Golding uses the structure of his books, their shape and their form as the vehicle of the meaning. The reader who meets this structure by reading, forced to recreate and reorganise the text. The complication of the books forces the reader to this action. By living it, he lives the paradox
and the mystery as he tries to find an explanation in the facts which the writer narrates. The reader doesn't stay out of the text as an objective observer, but he is pulled into this, he gets complicated and driven, just to end in the conclusion that some things are inexplicable.Philip Redpath
Golding has a particular part in the modern novel by staying (to say it simple) such obviously "sui generis", a writer original, unique and he made his personal writing school. I don't write like him. But he belongs to a category of writers, he composes a whole category - he's the kindof writers which I'm trying to be. This which I like more in Golding is the different way he
manages his subject in every book, without standing at his previous successes at all. Everyone knows that he's a great fabulist, an excellent creative interpreter of the far history (The Inheritors) when he wants it. But he never relied on a granted approach, an already owned power. He was for me something like an ancient menir, a monolith which comes with the
prooves that there are and other believes, other religions. His example has helped me - as I believe that has helped other writers too - to stand in storms and swamps. He showed to us how vital is to trust our sense of smell (our imagination), to let it drive us, even in mistakes. To stay ourselves against to conventionalities, fashions, flattering and not criticals,
commercial "wisdoms" and other related things. I owe this to him. And now, the half of shame to me and the other to him... Sometime he refered to me by calling me "the young Fowles" -something which had offended me deadly those times. To revenge him, I call him "cher maitre" and I embrace him warmly.John Flowes
Rites of Passage [Trilogy vol.I] (1980)
This is the first novel of W.Golding's trilogy. In this trilogy, W.Golding describes the big voyage of a young man from England to Australia. In the first part, Edmound Talbot, a young aristocrat and nephew of a very important man, begins a travel to take a govermental position in the new colony. Ambitious and possesive, he faces a new world in which going to sink into and be incorporated very slowly and tormenting like the sailing of the ship. A young priest who is travelling with Edmount, is
going to be the tragic person in this novel.Close Quarters [Trilogy vol.II] (1982)
For Edmound, nothing was more important than his political career which was the reason of his voyage. But all these before he met the Love. His meeting with Love will be stong and fatal, and when he should choose from love and career, he will choose the first.
Paper Men (1984)
This is a very strong and unexpected novel. Wilfrent Barkley, a famous novelist, gets very angry of Ric Taker who is trying to be his personal biographer. He is cynical and almost alcoholic, with a dead wedding and many unsatisfied sexual needs but also rich and famous. He is continually avoiding R.Taker until he meets his wife. He falls in love with the young woman and this makes him to make a relationship with the couple.
Fire Down Below [Trilogy vol.III] (1989)
This is the third and the last part of Golding's trilogy. Edmound's voyage comes to the end. But he faces a great surprice when he learns that his uncle died. This fact will change his life and all his dream will fade away. But his great love will meet him and give him new hopes. All these, before the tragic end.
The Double Tongue (1993)
An old priestess in Delphi, the most ancient oracle in ancient Greece, is trying to make a narration of her life. After a whole life in the mercy of Gods, priests and her parents, she had been a witness of oracle decay and its influence to the people.
This small novel is just a design of Golding's book which unfortunately never been finished -cause of Golding's unexpected death. Although, it's a great portrait of a woman's experience.
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Creada: 08/10/2000 Última Actualización: 08/10/2000