Darkness Visible by William Golding First edition signed

"The Scorpion God" by William Golding

Princess Pretty – Flower has a problem

Her younger brother, still a child, is not able, not even willing to lie with her and make her pregnant. This is a disaster for she is badly in need to conceive an heir to the Egyptian throne.

Her father, the King, has a problem too.

King “Great – House”, has failed to finish his royal run *, a ritual which seals the prolongation of his Godlike status for another year. In the sweltering heat, moments before successfully accomplishing the expected feat he stumbles and crashes down in the dust. The onlookers, his subjects flocked together to encourage their King, are stunned and schocked. If the King cannot succeed his run, how can he keep the skies from falling down, how can he make the Nile rise once more?

As the bloodline of the Kings has to remain pure and a non – incestuous relation never an option for the succession, Pretty – Flower’s only possibility is to get her father to sleep with her. With a lascivious dance, during the ensuing ceremonial feast, she tries to get his attention. But the old King is absorbed by the chess-game he plays with his Vizir and the stories his Jester “Liar” tells him. At the end of a furious dance “Pretty – Flower” collapses. She has failed to arouse her father. The weak King, symbol of the kingdom of Egypt” has turned impotent too.

The Vizir, unaware of the Prince unwillingness to sleep with his sister, starts the preparation of the King’s planned death and his immediate succession.

Published in 1971, The Scorpion God is a compilation of  different “short novels”: the title story set in  a  proto-dynastic Egypt ( 3200 – 3000 BC ), the humorous Clonk Clonk, ( 1971 ) and Envoy extraordinary ( 1956 ) . The three stories share the theme of early societies in trouble.

This compilation is nearly the last and only work Faber and Faber could still wrestle out of Golding in ’71. It would effectively mark a long intermission in Golding’s literary output. Some would even announce the end of Golding, seeing in the “Impotent King” a symbolic echo of the drying up of the writer’s inspiration.

During the decade following his first novel “Lord of the Flies”, Golding had been the most fascinating of writers, submitting masterpiece after masterpiece: “the Inheritors” ( 1955 ), “Pincher Martin” ( 1956 ), “Free Fall” ( 1959 ) and “ The Spire” ( 1964 ).

But the sustained hard work and Golding’s personal problems, most notably the depressions of his son David, had taken their toll and indeed after the Scorpion God it was over. It was over for the next eight years until Golding would come back with his “Darkness Visible” and his “To the Ends of the Earth” trilogy.

The writing of the Scorpion God is still brilliant and it is truly impressing with what subtlety and with what few words he creates the ancient civilisation out of the trembling light that hovers over the incandescent desert sand.

But there is more in the Scorpion God than just beautiful phrases. A hint to a deeper understanding lies in the “Liar” character. A slave from the North, he is the Jester and favourite of the King. His nickname “Liar” summarizes the opinion of what the people think about the many stories he tells. However entertaining, these narratives are so “off the wall”, that the Egyptians think of them as fairy tales.

He speaks for example about lands surrounded by salt water, he speaks about countries so cold that if you lie down in the white dust ( which is in fact water ) you turn into a statue,

John Carey, in his biography of Golding calls this the writer’s “Martian Mode”: showing familiar things from an alien viewpoint. We of course understand the “Lies”, but it underscores the fact that we cannot understand the world of the Nile valley in 3200 BC any more than that the Ancient Egyptians could believe anything as alien as a Northern climate. We cannot comprehend the incestuous dynasty or believe in a God – Man who holds up the skies and makes the river swell. We wonder about the killing of the King and disagree with the mass sacrifice of his court...

And, however mesmerized we are by his fictional rendition of the world from the past, we would call our entertaining jester, William Golding, a liar too…

Not that Golding did not aim to be a realist. He had an argument with Faber and Faber, about the cover of his book. The first edition picture, based on an advice by the British Museum, showed a Pharaoh in full regalia. Golding, well informed, argued that the depiction was not of “Narmer”, one of the possible candidates for the mysterious Scorpion God. But it was too late, the printers were in a rush and the depiction of the Narmer Palette was put aside.

If nothing else, my illustrated review gives me the opportunity to give Golding what he asked for: a depiction of the true Scorpion God! 






* Sed - festival
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sedfestival.htm

William Golding's signature ?

I recently purchased this signed edition of William Golding's "The Scorpion God".

The signature however, when compared to handwriting samples on the internet, looks rather akward. Doubts are seeping in. Is it a genuine signature of the master, a bit strange because he signed the book in a hurry, or in a standing position, book in hand or is it a fake ?

I submitted the question to three parties: a knowledgeable friend, the William Golding website team and the bookseller:

a) the knowledgeable friend concluded as follows :

About WG's ( William Golding’s ) signature, it doesn't look like his at all. The G is backwards, and both the G and the W start in the wrong place on the stroke. (…) in the opinion of this expert, it's a fake. Even if WG was standing or in a hurry, he would still do his strokes in the same way, it's an ingrained habit.

b) The William Golding  website team :

Many thanks for your interest. I'm afraid we're not signature
specialists! You might ( try ) Rick Gekowski, the book dealer, perhaps.
With best wishes,
WGL Website Team

( Rick Gekowski ? Why on Earth Rick Gekowski ? Well he seems to be an expert on rare books and has written a biography on Golding - not really helpful )

c) The bookseller

I am very sorry that you were so disappointed with the book and convinced that the signature is a fake. The irony is this - this is one of my books that I actually got signed personally by the author on that date in St Martins-in-the Fields. However, I obviously do not expect you to take the word of a complete stranger, especially after the advice you have received.
I will of course give you a complete refund, including the cost to you of returning the book,(...)
Once again, I am sorry for your disappointment in this transaction. (...)

( He sounds like a nice guy, he is probably a nice guy and has a 5 star ( Very trustworthy ) rating at ABE books )

what to do ?

I submitted the signature to several friends. People who advised me to keep the book outnumbered the ones who told me to send it back.

The pros:

“I'd keep the signature, who knows?” 

“Hold on to the book. I sign my name several different ways. Totally mood dependent. Where are Golding's papers kept???? Get someone to copy some pages with G' s and W's. To me it looks like the writing of someone with a tremor - making an effort to write neatly.”

“Oh signs and their signifiers! Seems to also raise the question of whether you want the signature of Golding, or a signature that looks like the signature of Golding (for if the answer is the latter, then the answer is to send it back regardless of whether it is G.'s signature or not).You could probably try to get in touch with his daughter care of Faber & Faber.”

“It totally could be genuine, Mac. I'm convinced it is. The sigs I googled are mostly shots of the same signature, not different signatures. Have you tried placing Golding on that day in SMitF? If it was a lecture or signing or something. But really, it wouldn't bother me for a sec. If anything, seeing one of those perfectly legible, just so sigs supposedly by a man close to eighty (?), THAT would be suspicious.”

“For not much money involved, the forgery could be more interesting than the signature.”


"I guess it depends on what you intend to do with it and how much you paid for it. It's plausible that it is indeed his signature, as people's signature change through time. I'm sure you compared his autograph in 1950 to 1988, it would be kinda different. Given that it was in 1988, Golding was quite old then, so I duno if that explains it."

The Cons:

“Interesting dilemma. It sure doesn-t seem to be the same guy in the two, but at the very worst yours is a somewhat careful copy. would someone do that? is there enough money in it? I would be surprised if he dealer was lying, but...In other words, there is reason to come down strongly on both sides. I decide on fraud just because of the slight slight slight miasma brought on by the dealer-s -it just so happens that this is one of the few signed books I personally...”

Further googling gave me a sample a signature done by William Golding in 1980. This one looks already more like the one in the book.

TC advised me to heed Werner Herzog's wise words: "To acknowledge a fake as fake contributes only to the triumph of accountants".

I chose to keep the book.

It is only fair to give the last word to "Jon the bookseller"

Hello ( ...) - thanks for your communication and for the interesting debate about what's fake and what's not! I must say it felt a bit odd to see my motives discussed in a public forum. And some of the comments baffled me - the one about miasma miasma miasma?? which seemed to condemn me with words i never used. like a wicked courtroom lawyer. A number of points come to my mind. The fact that I have a 5star rating with ABE doesn't actually mean much - unlike on eBay where the ratings are based on very clear criteria - the ABE system is based on order fulfillment only. Another point, that none of your colleagues raised - why would a forger add place and date, giving more handwritten clues as to authenticity or the reverse?

Now, as to the meeting with WG. I have to cast my mind back nearly a quarter of a century for this one. I know I went with my father, who was a writer and broadcaster, and knew Golding. (...)I remember that WG was not well at the time. And I also remember asking him some questions about 'Lord of the Flies',  which I was using with my students back then. One thing he said really stuck in my memory. I asked him about the dead pilot, who seems to come alive when his parachute is caught by the wind and causes him to sit up (you remember?) - Golding said that he meant the pilot to represent History - it's dead, but it won't lie down! I was amazed by the exactitude of this image and I've never forgotten it.

"The Double Tongue" by William Golding

The terrible ending of The Inheritors, “that beautifully imagined, poetic fable” where Lok, the last surviving Neanderthal Man, dies of grief, are among the most profoundly moving lines William Golding has ever written.

Golding died in the fall of 1993 and at the memorial service held for the deceased author at Salisbury Cathedral, Ted Hughes, the famous English poet, read Lok’s passage, “in an unforgettable way” to a grief-stricken audience, “the raw, colossal syllables booming and echoing around the cathedral’s freezing columns.”

This passage was well chosen, for Golding too, was one of a kind: a complex man, a very talented writer, courageous in his choice of topics and cleverly original in their elaboration. His disappearance left an irretrievable emptiness in the British literary scene.

A first and second draft of one last book was discovered on his desk. His family and his publisher, Faber & Faber, braving the frowns of the literary critics, decided to publish the first draft in its unfinished shape. They picked the title The Double Tongue from among several possibilities Golding himself had considered, dedicated it to the people at Faber, especially to Charles Monteith, lifelong friend and editor, and presented the hardcover edition to the public in the summer of 1995.

“One of the perks - or plagues - of being a Nobel Prize winner is that your heirs get to publish whatever they find on your desk” said David Mc Cullough, in what must have been the lowest level of critical wit and understanding the New York Times ever reached, for if you expect the unfinished book to be a hastily assembled draft of a text, written by a muttering and slobbering octogenarian, you are in for a surprise.

Despite, or thanks to the novel being “just” a mere first draft, the general reader for once is allowed a troubling insight into Golding’s creative process and therefore has to listen more carefully to the fading voice. For this original and intelligent novel might well be considered the old writer’s testament. It discloses, combative and ironic as ever, Golding’s final statement on a number of issues that concerned him throughout his career.

The moment of inspiration for The Double Tongue is precisely recorded. Probably triggered by his reading and pondering over the texts of Plutarch and Euripides, his journal mentions that he jotted down a splendid set of ideas on 14 January 1993. A first draft was already finished before the end of February and it is this version that was published and presented to the public. A second draft was worked on from March to June, but Golding seems to have only adjusted the historical period. Julius Caesar mentioned in the first draft, Sulla in the second. All the basic issues are already well elaborated in the first draft, and remain unchanged in the second. Still Golding thought a third draft might well be needed. Normally he would write three or four versions of a book before considering publishing. The first draft of The Double Tongue seems to indicate that Golding, after a surge of inspiration, would have the book as “good as finished” and all the subsequent versions adding nothing more than thin layers of varnish. If this is indeed so, I have the impression that the writing of drafts was just another symptom of the writer’s notorious lack of confidence in front of his critics and no more than an excuse to delay the submission of the manuscript.

The Double Tongue has as a setting the sacred site of Delphi. We are in the first century BC and the once famous oracle is on the decline. The Roman occupier is steadily but still respectfully tightening his grip on the Greek Province. Arieka, the eighty year old prophetess of the Oracle, known as the Pythia, is the narrator and she remembers her life.

She remembers how she grew up as a young girl in her aristocratic family, living on the shore of the Gulf of Corinth. She is not attractive, her face a bit unbalanced, lopsided. She is also not loved, and she suffers contempt and neglect from her family because of her often weird behaviour. A heightened sense of empathy and mysterious healing skills announce Arieka’s destiny. Her psychic powers and mystical inspiration are noticed by Ionides, the Head of the college of priests of the nearby Oracle of Delphi. He proposes to her father that he take Arieka with him and educate her to become a Pythia, a priestess of Apollo.

Her parents seem to be quite happy to get rid of Arieka, more a tomboy than a petite fille modèle, who has only brought shame and scandal to the family and whose uncanny ways have jeopardized her chances for an arranged marriage. Arieka is happy too, she feels herself rescued from a future which could only bring her misery.

Ionides kindly grooms and educates her into her religious function. She is introduced into the complex ceremony of the oracle. Seated on a tripod, in the cave under the temple, inhaling fumes that induce an alternate psychic state, she has to experience a “visitation” by the God Apollo, who speaks through her voice and delivers (preferably in hexameters) a prophecy, an oracle. But the Pythia never speaks directly to the people who consult her. Ionides or other priests have to “translate” her words to the public.

Arieka really does believe in the God Apollo and often speaks true oracles. Ionides however, her mouthpiece, has a double agenda: he cheats. He does not believe in the Gods, but he uses the reputation and the political value of the Oracle in a futile attempt to free Greece from the foreign ruler. Not only does Ionides give his own, untrue interpretations of Arieka’s or Apollo’s words, but he even goes so far as to ask Arieka to fake her divine utterances and to manipulate her prophecies to help him attain his political aims.  But Arieka feels herself really inspired. In her prophetic trance she utters truths she has no memory of afterwards. She feels that Apollo really does speak through her - he “tears” her mouth - and she is unwilling to betray him and to soil her sacred gift.

Although Arieka and Ionides differ in opinion, they still respect each other. They age together and form an awkward couple. Ionides being a homosexual does not make any claim on her, and Arieka, who experiences every visitation of Apollo as a rape, is in no need of a man. Together they form a strange androgynous prophetic entity, speaking in a double tongue, within the oracle. Over the years, during the further decline of the Oracle’s reputation, a curious metamorphosis takes place. Ionides, whose doings are eventually found out by the Romans, believes more and more in the God inspired prophecies of Arieka, while she has growing doubts about the Olympian Gods and her inspiration by the god Apollo. In the end, when the people want to honor her with a statue, she refuses and proposes to dedicate it instead to “the unknown God” announcing by this that “on the subject of God or Gods, nothing can be known” and that the end of the Old Olympian Gods has come.

The last four words of the novel: “to the unknown God” are the mythical words announcing Christianity, picked up by Saint Paul in his proselytizing crusade. "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD" (Acts of the Apostles 17.22-23)

The Oracle can easily be understood as a thinly veiled albeit witty metaphor for the relation between the Artist, his public, and the critics - those interpreters who have to explain a work of Art to a larger public.

Arieka represents Art, or the Artist, divinely inspired; and Ionides stands for the editors and critics, the intermediary between the Artist and the larger public. Golding, notoriously, had a life-long problem with critics and criticism. The necessity to pass through them to access the larger media was unavoidable and a good review could do wonders while a bad one, especially at the beginning of his career, could bring his growth to fame to a grinding halt.

Golding was strongly aware of the symbiotic relationship between the Artist and the Editor - Critic. So while he could become literally sick with anxiety about the possible misinterpretation and misrepresentation of his ideas, he was also aware that his reputation, especially after his death, was highly dependent on their curatorship.

Neither party can fully control or steer the other and nothing is more difficult than a good collaboration on this level, but if there are good intentions from both sides, both Artist and Critic can evolve into a unity not unlike that strange androgyny of the Delphic Oracle producing a so-called socialized text, a spontaneous collaboration between the writer and the individuals responsible for seeing his or her work into print. The Double Tongue is of course a prime example of such a redefined notion of Art, but so was Lord of the Flies.

Charles Monteith, the editor at Faber who helped Golding to get his first book published, had also been very critical about certain parts of Lord of the Flies. He persuaded Golding to take all references to the divine out and especially to scrap the Theophanic (the manifestation of a God) experience of the boy Simon. Golding agreed under pressure, eager to get his book published but he regretted it. He would, much later, explain to an audience that he felt it as a betrayal of the Divine and that he regretted it deeply. While Monteith got Golding printed, he damaged the artwork in the process.

Arieka does not only stand for the Art or Artist in general, she represents Golding too! That very masculine writer, reacting to earlier criticism, chooses for the first time, tongue in cheek, a female persona as the narrator of the story. Golding recalled a childhood memory, in his journal. When he was two years old, his nursemaid gave him her hair-clip to play with. Little Golding, turning the tortoise-shell and brass thing over in his little hands, was overwhelmed by a proud happy feeling that he belonged with “the right sort of people, the females.” By identifying with a female narrator, Golding herewith, in a certain sense closes a circle, between this childhood memory and his last book.

But there is more.

Like Golding, Arieka is in her eighties when she remembers her life. The book opens with a strange recollection of her own birth: “Blazing light and warmth, undifferentiated and experiencing themselves”. Golding too claimed he remembered his birth and jotted it down in his journal as a color experience: “red mostly, but everywhere, and a sense of wind blowing, buffering and there was much light.” Both Arieka and Golding, remembering something which cannot be remembered, not only tags them as one of a kind, but sets them apart in their exceptionality. But if Golding is Arieka, who is Ionides? It is of course Charles Monteith, the man who saved Lord of the Flies from the wastepaper basket. And in that sense The Double Tongue is also Golding’s homage to his Muse.

Let’s remember the legend surrounding the publication of Lord of the Flies. Faber’s first reader had gone over the manuscript and finding it “unsatisfactory”, threw it away. Monteith, still a junior member of the firm, not only picked it up, but fought against heavy opposition from the board to get it publicized. Only his skill and persistence saved Lord of the Flies for posterity. Says Frank Kermode: “Had it been scrapped it seems possible that it would have had no successors.” Golding was uneasily aware of that key moment of luck on the road to success, international recognition and the Nobel Prize. Was it all just chance? Nothing more than coincidence? Golding, a religious man, could not but consider it a manifestation of Divine intervention.

I have always thought writing books was just work, hard work. The more an author would work on his book, the better it would become. My heroes are Joyce, Flaubert and Mann. Joyce could suffer for days looking for the right word; Flaubert would test all his sentences in le gueuloir, declaiming them aloud, checking the music, the sound and the rhythm. Mann’s very German discipline in the daily chores of his writer’s job is legendary. There was not much space (or so I thought) in the conception of a novel for the intervention of the Muse or that lightning bolt of sudden inspiration.
Golding, however, challenges this opinion. Looking back at his career as a celebrated and successful writer, he remained skeptic about where “it” all came from. The Double Tongue allowed him to express this sense of mystery that he felt was an ineluctable part of the creative process. “I practice a craft I do not understand and cannot describe,” Golding wrote earlier and he was convinced that “there is a mystery about (the trade of the novelist), a mystery in every sense of that ancient word.”

As a conclusion, what has the reader to make from this all?

If critics can be both reliable and unreliable, then we the readers are at a permanent risk. We could miss opportunities of reading worthwhile pieces of fiction, or we could miserably waste our time on junk. The commercial forces that are unleashed on us to manipulate our reading choices are huge. Advice, tips, recommendations are rammed into our brains through newspapers, magazines, shop-windows, radio, internet, billboards etc.

If we do not want to lose ourselves, we need to decide and draw our own reading path – our sendero luminoso - free from all manipulative media. We have to find ways to bypass the wall between us and the Artist, to find traces of that “divine inspiration” or to hear the Gods speaking directly to us.

This saddles us with the responsibility for the choice of our reading, for the development of our own soul. And so it should be, for Golding’s last work shows us that only we, ourselves, can decide what is good for us and decide to which Voice we should listen.

This review was included in "A fabulous Opera", Running girl press ( 2015 )

Sources :

The Artful equivocation of William Golding's The Double tongue - critical essay - Twentieth century Literature - Fall 2001 by JH Stape

"Fiction in the wild, modern manner" Metanarrative Gesture in William Goldin's To the end of the earth trilogy by JH Stape

Editing : Tomcat Murr ( thanks!)

Illustration :

Priestess of Delphi (1891) by the Honourable John Maler Collier OBE RP ROI (27 January 1850 – 11 April 1934)

“Fire down below” by William Golding

JMW Turner
Snow Storm - 1842

By the time Edmund Talbot arrives at the end of his story, he is a changed man. And so is William Golding, the writer of “Fire down below”, the last part of that marvelous sea-story.

There is after all a time span of thirteen years (1976-1989) between the conception of “Right of passage”, the first part of the trilogy and the publication of “Fire down below.

“Rite of Passage”, which set off with the assertion that “man could die of shame” was still that typical dark book, written by a Golding fighting of his demons, an author the readers knew from his previous works.

The next book, “Close Quarters”, has already a lighter tone, with a hero earning, fumbling and stumbling, his badge of courage and falling madly in love. Still written by the same author, but now a different man, winner of the Booker and the Noble prize, Golding is by now enjoying national and international appraisal and recognition.

But with “Fire down below”, the final and third part, it is play – time! Golding has nothing more to prove and passionately and clearly with joy, he unleashes his creative forces on a subject close to his hart and challenges with this maritime masterpiece no one less than Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Alan Poe.

“Knuckle biting” says John Carey and indeed, “Fire down below” has all the excitement and trepidation of a genuine adventure story. As said, Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym and the “Ancient Mariner” are not far away when the old battle ship is surfing the huge following seas of the “roaring forties” towards a “blink” at the horizon which might as well be their happy destination as their inevitable doom.

Crammed with salty “tarpaulin” terminology, awash with sea-topics, sea-issues, seafaring problems and seafaring solutions, the words urge the reader forwards as if we too are thundering down these liquid mounts. There are the fascinating descriptions of the monster waves. There is a bad and nearly fatal broach. There is the issue of fixing of the foremast, the technique of the frapping, the installation of life lines, the use of sea anchors, and the use of dragging oil to calm the waves. You learn to construct makeshift fenders, alternative ways to estimate longitude. You dodge freak waves, cope with storms, read clouds and finally encounter that mother of all horrors: an ice-walled lee shore!

“Fire down below” is of course much more than just a sea-yarn. During the long voyage, two major storylines are developed by the writer. First there is the increasing competition between Benet, the young innovative risk-taking and creative second lieutenant and the more conservative, careful first lieutenant Charles Summers. Captain Anderson apparently sides more towards Benét but Edmund Talbot for once sides openly and aggressively with his friend Charles Summers.

The competition and the factions separate on their opinion of the complex technique needed to secure the moving foremast with an iron hoop reshaped with open fire (inside that wooden boat!) and then cooled down. This is the fire down below of the title and a cause for great worries for it might be too dangerous to do at sea. I will not give away if the technique works or not, but Golding gives it, be assured a very unexpected and ironic twist.

A second storyline is the one of the couple Prettiman. Prettiman is a social philosopher, disciple of Voltaire (and keen advocate of Candide) who wants to recreate a utopian colony, based on the principles of the Enlightment, in the Australian outback. Prettiman asks Talbot, who has befriended him, to join his noble utopian enterprise but Edmund does not answer. Social responsibility and Equality are too new and strange to Edmund to take an immediate decision. Carey states in his biography that the Prettiman’s would loosely be based on Golding’s idealistic parents. Ideals the writer did not share or did not publicly defend. According to Carey, Edmund feels ashamed of his cowardly failure to support Prettiman’s altruism and Hopes for Mankind”. But I think that this should not necessarily be so. Talbot could also refuse his participation (although he does not refuse, he simply does not respond) because he feels that, even if it is noble aim, their enterprise is by definition utopian and not realistic. For thus he not remark in his dream “…they were going to some great festival of joy, though where in the desert around them it might be found there was no telling.” It sounds to me that in the eyes of Talbot, who is more realistic, they are doomed already.

I herewith come to the end of the reading of Golding’s sea trilogy. And a most diverting and interesting sea yarn it was. I leave it open if Talbot and his co-passengers will ultimately reach Australia, as I do not want to spoil the fun.

The one year travel with young Edmund Talbot has endeared him to me nearly quite as much as that other “Life child”, Mann’s Hans Castorp.

Rites of passage, Close quarters and Fire down below, will get an honorary place in my library, three great works which will invite rereading time and again.

So dear reader, grab your foul weather gear, wash down your sea-sick pills with a dash of “Navy Rum” and do read Golding’s masterly written trilogy “To the end of the earth”.

“Close Quarters” by William Golding ( second reading )

William Turner
Sunrise with Sea Monsters c. 1845

The first book I tackled while on holiday was Golding’s “Close Quarters”. In fact it was a second reading for I was not really satisfied with my first review and I felt I had to go back to CQ for a better comprehension of its content, especially before tackling the last part of the trilogy “Fire down below”.

“This voyage will be the making of you, Mr. Talbot” prophesizes one of the ship’s officers and so it is. We witness in the 17 chapters of the book (of which only one bears a title) the further development of our friend, young Edmund Talbot.

We are still on the un – named ship on which Talbot and his fellow passengers, crew and immigrants, hope to reach Australia on the other side of the world. The ship has freed itself from the calms and the heat of the doldrums in the middle of the Atlantic, and is now making way south to reach the prevailing east – ward winds.

On rereading CQ, I discern now three identifiable parts, each a stage in our hero’s development and understanding of the world around him. As Talbot celebrates his birthday on page one, I think Golding hints at this “development” structure. In each part Edmund Talbot has to confront new feelings and take emotional hurdles which will lead ultimately, we hope, to responsible adulthood.

Part one takes about 5 chapters and I would label it ironically “Courage under fire”. Indeed Talbot has to prove and does valiantly prove his courage in two incidents that badly shake the community on board of the old warship. First there is the incident whereby the boat gets severely damaged when taken aback, an incident caused by a grave neglect of responsibility by Lieutenant Deverel who has left his watch to have a drink. The incident is important as it sets in motion the final destruction of the old ship which is now literally falling apart after “one blow too many”. Also the conflict between Captain Anderson and Lieutenant Deverel starts now to build up towards its climax and thirdly Talbot gets in that incident an opportunity to show that in a crisis he has the right attitude, even though it is to no avail and he gets seriously knocked for his intention.

The second happening in which Talbot can prove his courage is the appearance of a threatening sail at the horizon and everybody, passengers included, prepare for the battle. Here too Talbot, although seriously damaged in previous incidents, shows his courage by putting himself on the first row of the “entering – party”. Edmund has really become more of a man during this voyage. In the first book “Rites of passage”, Talbot could still be (mis-)used by Captain Anderson in a cover-up scheme but this time he courageously stands up to him. When the Captain orders that he should be a witness in an incident with Deverel, Talbot refuses with a: “I do not wish to interfere in a service matter” – rebuke. Edmund has clearly learnt his lesson.

The Second distinctive part of the book, which I would call “ Love and Passion” starts with the exceptionally titled chapter six “The great day”, which sees Edmund fall in love “head over heels” with lovely Marion Chumley, a passenger on the other boat. With Love come all the undesirable by-effects: passion, (self) doubt, jealousy, suspicion and separation. The amorous behavior of Edmund makes up for the funniest scenes of the book. So “madly” is young Talbot in Love that he has to be dragged away and locked up in his hutch to protect himself against his uncontrollable passion. This part ends with the “she is gone” end-phrase of chapter eight but unhappily lingers trough the next two chapters.

The third and more difficult part is tricky to label. It could be called “Truth and Responsibility”, but too much happens to label it accurately at this point of my reading of the trilogy. It starts off with a “descent in to Hell” in chapter eleven and end runs until the end of the book.

Two things trigger this haunted last part of the book: Edmund has moved into the “cursed” hutch of the late reverend Colley and Wheeler, the servant of Talbot, who fell over board in the previous book, reappears, like a real “revenant”, a ghost back from the underworld!

Talbot’s descent into hell is of course a descent into the inner world of that huge hulk of a wooden warship. The crippled ship moves wildly, the inside of the boat is a dark confusion of noise and smells. The first “gate-keeper” Talbot meets is the satanically depicted master – gunner Mr. Askew (ask you?), enveloped in a disgusting smoke cloud and a face reddened by the glow of his pipe. In a quite venomous conversation, he confronts Talbot with false and not so false (crew) opinions. For instance Askew challenges Edmund with the fact that he enjoys the title “Lord” even though he is not a peer. He accuses Talbot’s lofty attitude at moments he could have sided with the common people. He criticizes Edmund’s naïveté for not knowing how the real world functions – for instance that officers will never attack other officers in public. “It’s what comes from not knowing the rules where you are sir”. He confronts him with social issues of which Talbot is not even aware of and finally mocks Talbot’s friendship: “I am surprised you never heard, seeing he was such a friend of yours.”

Talbot flees deeper into the boat, and finds Jones, the mysterious purser, who makes it clear that if the boat will sink, and there being not enough life-rafts, it will not be woman and children first, but the fittest who will make it. Jones, to the astonishment of Talbot even develops the idea: not only the physically fit but also those who like himself have financially secured a “life-insurance”. Money can buy you security, also far out at sea.

Finally Talbot arrives at the central spot of the boat, where she endures the least movement and where the chronometers are kept. He finds there Lt Benét and the first Lt Charles Summers who are debating the question of the boat’s safety and the measures to take to reach Australia before the ship goes to pieces. Summers and Benét are becoming more and more competitors to each other. Summers is a more conservative experienced sea-dog, while Benét, the dashing young risk taker, with the blessing of the Captain, advocates a risky drag rope action to clean the hull and gain some speed. This action is not without risk, especially in open sea. (Pieces of the old boat might be scraped off together with the encrusted weed or coral).

Edmund Talbot, his head spinning with all the “Truth’s” he has heard, flees back to the safety of the deck.

In a dramatic finale of the book: three, nearly simultaneous “coup de theatre”, happen. All three are of major importance to our hero but I will not spoil them for you. There is a possible sighting of a Sea-Monster, a ghastly suicide, and a reconciliation with an old friend. Typically Golding, these occurrences stir up more new questions than that they bring answers.

But as the reader knows, we are not yet in Australia and the final book of the trilogy has yet to come.

Two strands in Golding’s nautical yarn surface time and again in the different pages and make up for the (at moments) darker mood of the novel although the general tone of CQ is lighter, more happy, than “Rites of Passage”

First there is the “coming apart” of the ship which is described as if that huge inanimate wooden hulk slowly turns into something alive. This disintegration mirrors the general coming apart of each and every passenger on the boat. This whole fantasy of the ship coming alive is triggered when the drunken carpenter Gibb, who on an inspection round of the structure of the boat spooks Talbot with a yarn. He tells him how, when he was still a young shipmate on another boat, he found a bud growing on one of the wooden knees of the ship and in a nightmare saw the bud turn into a twig, the twig getting leaves and the boat starting to turn into a green living organism. Talbot, who has already noticed the green weed growing, like hair, on the hull, feels even before he sees that the boat has indeed acquired an awkward movement. Losing its rigidity the central part of the ship starts to “hogg” on the crests of the waves and “sagg” in the troughs. At a certain moment it seems to Edmund that the boat has really come alive: “There was a strange feeling in my naked feet…” observes Talbot….”It was true, good God, the planking was alive! There was a creeping and almost muscular movement! It was a realization even more disconcerting than the brutally uneven movement of the whole ship as the wave passed under her”
The second element that accounts for a more uncanny feeling throughout the novel is the return of that creepy figure Wheeler, or is it Wheeler’s ghost, which is back. Talbot’s lost servant has come back from the world of the death! For really, one cannot imagine how someone who is washed overboard can accidently be picked up by another ship in the middle of the ocean. Says Talbot addressing his spectral servant: “You was a lucky dog, you know. It must have been a chance in a million! It would be proper to give thanks, you know”. Then as if blasphemy was just spoken: “An extraordinary shudder shook the man from head to foot”. Wheeler does later confess “I am in Hell Sir” and seems to be even more afraid than before. He sticks to Talbot, haunting him like a shadow and keeping close to the evil hutch in which Colley died earlier. Although he explains hesitatingly to Talbot, that he just slipped and fell overboard he explains later that the crew bears him a grudge for revealing some matters in the Colley affaire. Talbot forces him to confess what exactly happened to Colley, but we are not informed for says Talbot: “the information was of such a nature that I do not propose to commit it to this journal”.

Once more a truly good book: easy to read, a fascinating recreation of a fictive world and food for thought served as a six course meal. A sure recommendation!


( about the illustration " Sunrise with sea monsters " )

We have already commented that the "dissolution of the forms" present in Turner's last works was interpreted by numerous critics as the beginning of a dementia. Even Ruskin himself was quite disturbed by these works by Turner, who was sometimes forced to place nails in the frames to indicate the top and the bottom part of the canvas.
The  (1845, London , Tate Gallery) is one of the best examples of this last epoch. The forms of the sea monsters are hardly recognizable in the middle of the omnipresent marine atmosphere. The almost divine quality of the light reflects Turner's theory of considering the Sun as the centre of all life.

Close Quarters by William Golding

In the poor light of an early morning in July 1967, William Golding’s yacht “Tenacious”, a cutter-rigged traditional wooden barge, crossing the English Channel, had a collision with the Japanese freighter Heian Maru. As the Maru disappeared in the morning fog, the “Tenacious” was left alone, sinking.

“They clouted our stern, holed us, and disappeared into the mist. Our wooden stern was stove in and we started sinking very quickly”

On the yacht, besides Golding, were his wife and daughter and some close friends. During the next 45 minutes, the bewildered crew considered the ludicrous options to escape their fate: a plastic sound-horn, a hand held emergency torch, a small inflatable raft.

For Golding, an ex Navy officer, well aware of the odds, these 45 minutes must have been truly traumatic.

But the crew of the Maru had luckily been aware of the collision and were able to steer back to the place of the contact, with the help of the radar that had initially failed to spot the yacht and the British pilot who was still on board. Golding and his loved one’s where saved " in extremis".

The “Tenacious” unfortunately was lost

Golding never did get another boat, or ever sailed again far from shore. The “Tenace” disaster had a lasting effect on the writer’s confidence and self-esteem.

That this experience kept haunting Golding is proven by that threatening background atmosphere, that rumble sense of menace, that pervades Golding’s novel “Close Quarters”: Drama at sea does not come necessarily with high waves and strong winds; sometimes the horror engulfs the luckless sailor on a calm sea and windless day.

Close Quarters, written in 1987, is the middle part of the Sea-trilogy “To the Ends of the Earth”. It follows “Rites of Passage”( reviewed earlier) and precedes “Fire down Below”. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable style breach in comparaison with the previous book. “Rites of Passage” was an impressive dark allegory and this follow-up is completely different. It is lighter in tone, there seem to be no allegoric intentions, it is no mirror of what a reader called: “the horrific testimony to humankind’s propensity to evil”.

But ofcourse it remains an excellent piece of fiction writing.

The still unnamed old warship, after being blown aback in a nasty gale by the negligence of the officer on watch ( Lieutenant Deverel), has got one blow to many and seems to be damaged in her very structure and appears to be sinking slowly. The Foremast is damaged and has to be brought down. This considerably slows down the old ship.

Why then, if the conditions on board remain critical, this lighter style?

According to Golding’s biographer, the major reason lies in the fact that “Close Quarters” was written in one of the happiest moments of Golding’s life. The writer was by now enjoying his Noble –prize status and he moved to his new home, a splendid Georgian Manor named Tullimaar. Golding was also enjoying a happy time with his wife, when they were finally able to make their dream voyage through Canada.

“Close Quarters” is a real "middle book", unlike “Rites of Passage” it is not a self-contained novel and to fully enjoy it, one needs some knowledge of its predecessor. The reader has to understand the characters presented in the first book, to fully appreciate what happens in the second. 

Like the first part, the book is presented as a journal, albeit this time a personal one, well structured and organized. Our friend, young Edmund Talbot, still that mixture of charm and unconscious arrogance, starts the narrative by telling how he bumped his head ( twice ) quiet badly and in my opinion after that he becomes an unreliable narrator, “par excellence”.

Unreliable , because the things Talbot narrates are never what they seem. The threatening French Man O’war turns out to be the British HMS Alcyone, announcing the end of war, Napoleon’s abdication and his exile to Elba. When Talbot , during an investigation in the very bowels of the ship, clearly hears surging water inside the boat, nobody can confirm if the sounds come from within the sinking ship. His servant Wheeler, who was lost overboard, is back! A new officer appears on board, another vanishes. Thickets of weeds, engulf the old ship, and seem to turn into a sea-monster slowly dragging the boat to a complete halt.

The biggest trick of course is the two boats meeting each other in the middle of the ocean and the sea being so calm (very unlikely), that the two becalmed ships are attached to each other to celebrate the victory over the French in a Victorian ball organized on deck! Talbot gets the opportunity to dance with a young woman, a passenger of the Alcyon, beautiful Miss Chumley, with whom he has fallen in love, head over heels. No doubt, the reader will enjoy this infatuation, as much as young Talbot does!

Besides the Love affair of our friend Talbot, Golding still brings up the same issues of privilege, class, hope, he tackled in the first book. The initiation, like the voyage, is far from being over...

Golding’s summer read, while composing “Close Quarters” was N.A.M. Rodger’s “ the Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. Golding had accepted to review it for a newspaper.

Rodger defended the Navy against the popular assumption that it’s motive forces were in Churchill’s words “ Rum, Sodomy and the lash” Golding, as an ex Naval officer agreed that flogging captains were fiction, and that alcohol consumption was never so as too endanger the boat and crew, but he did not agree with Rodgers that sodomy did not take place. Golding argued: “There is vast oral evidence in naval speech, custom and lore that where men are cooped up in a wooden world for weeks and months at a time, unnatural acts take the place of natural ones”. Golding’s affirmation ( without judgment) brings to mind the reaction of Bruce Chatwin’s parents, when confronted with the possible cause of theirs son’s HIV infection. Bruce’s mother is shocked, but his father, a Navy officer with a tough reputation, strangely accepts his son’s homosexuality more easily than his wife.

Talbot might be in love with Miss Chumley, but others might be ( never is anything sure in this book ) in love with Edmund ! “Close Quarters” therefore in treating the issue of homosexuality as an undercurrent theme, follows in this the mood set by “Rites of Passage” which ended with Reverend Colley’s “dying of shame”. Colley’s unhappy ghost still lingers between the pages. His hutch for instance remains empty as the superstitious crewmembers and passengers avoid that damned place. Edmund, who himself is fearless, in attempt to lure his Miss Chumley to his bunk, frees his own hutch and moves to the mirror hutch on the other side: Colley’s hutch, which incidently will claim another victim ! A suicide of someone, who has just confessed to Talbot, that he is in hell!

Once more Golding has managed to write a very entertaining and interesting book. It really is a page turner. And now he has even instilled in us a curiosity about Talbot’s further adventures. Will they all reach Australia? What shall be the outcome of the encounter with lovely Miss Chumley? What shall be the fate of the wallowing old ship?

The impatient reader has to wait till Golding, our own pilot through the mists of our dark conscience, picks us up and bring us back to safety.

( to be continued )

Rites of passage by William Golding

“In the not too ample volume of man’s knowledge of Man, let this sentence be inserted: Men can die of shame.”


Edmund Talbot, an educated young man from the British upper class and the main narrator in Golding’s “Rites of Passage”, must have had Diderot’s famous opening lines from “le Fataliste” in mind, when scribbling on the virgin pages of his journal:

“The place: on board the ship at last. The year: you know it. The date ? Surely what matters is that it is the first day of my passage to the other side of the world…”

We are in the beginning of the 19th century. The Napoleonic wars are coming to an end and young Talbot has joined a heterogeneous crowd of émigrés on board of an old decommissioned warship, for a long voyage to Australia where he is up to become an important man in the administration.
Talbot has promised his Godfather and sponsor to keep a detailed journal and although he very consciously begins with a detailed narration of what happens around him, the gale that awaits them at the entrance of the Gulf of Biscay and the ensuing “mal de mer” rapidly mocks his good intentions. Edmund starts messing up the dates in his journal, totally loses his sense of time and awkwardly tries to maintain his aristocratic “aplomb” on the heaving and tilted deck awash with overcoming seas.

But he is not alone in his suffering. The uncomfortable progress of the ship beating its way through the storm mirrors the emotional upheaval of all Talbots co-passengers.
Through his observations, we recognize in Talbot the typical naïve, albeit engaging young man from a higher class, observing with a detached and aloof superiority the microcosm around him but at the same time totally estranged from reality, from all practical things and the normal ways of the world. For instance when he discovers the small stinking hutch in which he will have to live the next months, he insists to see the Captain to request a change of lodging. Of course the Captain has absolutely no time for him as the reader half expects.

Melvyn Bragg in Punch thought it Golding’s “most accessible’ novel since Lord of the Flies but it is much more than that. The “rites” first 100 pages are very entertaining indeed and at times surprisingly funny. Surprising, because wit and humor are not exactly the trade mark of our normally “glumly serious writer”

Rites of Passage, published in 1980 earned Golding his Booker prize, barely beating Anthony Burgess’s masterpiece “Earthly Powers”. One critic saw in it “the work of the master at the full stretch of his age and wisdom”. The 69 year old author was surfing on a wave of fame and recognition, which would cumulate three years later in the Nobel Prize.
Still, it took the seasoned writer quiet a lot of work to finish his book and it necessitated four full drafts before Golding finally consented to send it to Faber & Faber.
Edmund, our friendly narrator resembles those typical heroes of German “bildung romans”, not much different in his ways from Mann’s Hans Castorp or Goethe’s Wilhem Meister, young men about to experience such life-lessons as to bring them to a higher level of understanding of life and humans actions.

And so it is with Talbot.

Occurrences linked to the death of the reverend Colley, a fellow passenger, following “shameful actions” during the equator - crossing ritual, make up a horrific rite of passage which Talbot’s unconsciously passes.

Unconsciously, because Edmund, who is just lightly implicated in the affair leading to Colley’s mysterious “death of shame”, does feel responsible for not intervening into the chain of events but curiously misses to see the moral implications of the administrative cover – up requested by the Captain. Colley, to whom Talbot spoke only once, seemed to be on a lonely crusade to recover the respect from Captain Anderson and his officers. (He has been publicly humiliated in an incident on the afterdeck)

The moral responsibility, which Talbot will acquire from this “nasty” experience still has to sink in and he too after experiencing his “rite of passage” will carry his ”burden of shame”. Ironically, the alert reader can suspect that conspiring in this hypocritical attitude, to protect members of his social class, will give Talbot the moral edge to tackle the difficulties of his upcoming task as a higher civil servant.
For even if the “moral education” has to be understood in a “a contrario” sense, a “Bildung” – experience it certainly is.
Structurally complex, Rites of passage, is done very much “à la Golding”.

Narrated first through Edmund’s journal addressing a peripheral personage, then followed by Colley’s letter to his sister, rephrasing and inverting the pages of Talbot’s journal, shifting abruptly the narrative point of view, this complex structure brings the reader to a whole new level of understanding and a deeper insight in the occurrences of what was first described in Talbot’s journal.

This inverted perspective cleverly urges the reader to sit up and give attention.
The letter which ends at the Parson’s death is followed by an interrogation with which the reader tries, unsuccessfully, to fill up the blanks in the understanding of what has happened (actually it brings even more confusion). The interrogation is promptly closed, when the enquiry unexpectedly risks implicating some officers.
The book ends in some simmering gossip and a few afterthoughts trying to make sense of it all.
This structure of this progressive insight is very successful in giving the reader a deeper understanding of the unfolding truths.
Adding to the complexity, Golding spices his story with some loose ends, unexplained or half explained acts, conversations or personages. The mysterious purser, for instance, controlling his debtors from the heart of the ship does not belong to the story but adds to the general feeling that “things happen” in the shades of this old war ship.

There is in fact, an entire subculture on the ship -- the crew and "the emigrants" -- that the reader is barely exposed to, since neither Edmund nor Reverend Colley would mix with them. One exception is Wheeler, Talbot’s self appointed valet and provider of the soothing opium, who is murdered for unexplained reasons by unidentified fellow crewmen, officers or why not…passengers.
Not only is the structure of the book very much what we expect from Golding, but so are the themes which are, according to his biographer, James Carey, the one’s that most preoccupied him during his life.

A first theme is of course that of “Shame” and how it defines who we are.

How can the field of tension between our own perception of an experience and the perceived opinion of others about that same experience, lead not only to a feeling of shame but even to someone dying of shame? Golding shows us the complex mechanisms behind our behavior and emphasizes how human they are. Alas!

Obviously all characters living on the middle deck (and being of the middleclass) are carrying their “burden of shame” and their identity is largely defined by it. It is as if these middleclass passengers are hoping to leave their identities behind them in their voyage to a new world. They hide their humble origins, their immoral occupations, their childhood horrors, the fact that they need to work to make a living and that they sleep with each other. They hide their sexual preferences, their lost battle to alcohol and their vacillating faith in the Almighty.
Only Talbot, seems to carry a childish innocence at the beginning of the voyage. Still he has to go through his rite of passage and we suspect that he too, if he makes it to the antipodes, will have experienced things he regrets and feels ashamed of and that it could define part of his identity. I understand it as such: according to Golding, people are defined by what they do and what they don’t do. Shame or pride linger after the deeds have been internally analyzed and appreciated against the morality or expectations of one’s social class.
According to his biographer, Golding, remained "revoltingly" dependent on what people thought of him and his work. Through his life, the author was coping with a nasty inferiority complex and self-depreciating attitude.
We know that Golding’s early encounter with the academic establishment and the glass ceiling of the social classes left an indelible stain on his character. Maybe alcohol abuse, violence and flight were Golding’s only options to cope with his issues. Unfortunately after a brief spell of a liberating feeling, shame caught him back the next day like the backwash of a wave.
Carey, who had access to Golding most private notes like his dream diary points out that Golding had the occasional – innocent – homosexual fantasies, but that it bothered him and made him question his sexual nature. Much of what happens in the forecastle to the Parson and the ensuing sense of shame comes right from the desires or un-desires of Golding himself.
Another interesting theme is the analysis of responsibility in what happens to reverend Colley. Colley is an unattractive character. His over-eager attempts at friendship, his religious zeal and his personality turn him into an outcast from the moment he sets foot on deck.
For Talbot the parson is a bit like a stray dog. He pities him but the other hand he refrains to show him sympathy because he realizes that the parson, will stick to him like a drowning man pulling his rescuer down. And the parson is too vile a character to be associated with, taking into account the difference of social class.

The only one who could have saved the parson is Captain Anderson. But his despise of the robe in general and Colley in particular, sets an example to officers and crew alike and the reverend becomes a target for abuse. The Captain has the social status to reverse the flow of things but does not assume the responsibility which goes with it.

We are often not aware when having power over other persons (as teachers, managers, parents, role models), what damage we can do by uttering opinionated biased statements or acting in inconsiderate ways.
In the end, one image lingers. The image of a dead man, slowly sinking through that vast and uncaring void of liquid darkness, death because people with authority did not take their responsibility and others refrained from doing the right thing, hampered as they were by their social weakness and their self inflicted shame

“The Inheritors” by William Golding.

“He always thought it his best book and many critics would agree”

“It was another masterpiece. It was a masterpiece as original, as compelling, as powerful – perhaps even more original, more powerful – than Lord of the Flies”



The opening chapter of “The Inheritors” introduces us to a small family of early hominids while they are challenged by a basic exercise of problem solving. The fallen tree that used to help them cross the river has disappeared and the swift stream of ice-cold melt water has become a hurdle in their move from their bleak winter quarters towards an idyllic summer cave.

Little do they know that crossing the river will seal their doom and just simply erase their species from the very face of the Earth.

By the time they have crossed the river, Golding has instilled within the reader a tremendous sense of empathy  for this small group. We understand from their awkward behavior and poor communication that the family party consists of an earlier, more primitive version of our-selves but still their minds resemble ours closely enough to understand them.

They laugh, play gentle jokes, they cherish their children and bury their dead. Although they are certainly not the brutish ogre – like beings described in the epigraph, we have to wait till near the end of the book, to understand how physically different they are from us.

We are in the beginning of spring and the small group consists of only eight people. There are the three men, Ma, Ha and Lok and four women of different ages: an older woman, a mother with a baby, there is FA and the child Loki. All are famished but happy that the season of plenty is approaching.

The already ill and exhausted MA falls in the water with dire consequences, as he soon dies coughing and shivering. The disappearance of their most experienced member makes the group extremely vulnerable just at the moment that strange new people are spotted in the woods. Ha, the leader tries to find out who they are and does not come back from his expedition.

In a few hours, the family has lost its two leading males.

While Lok investigates the location of the newcomers, his own encampment is attacked by the new people. The mother and the old woman are killed and thrown in the river and Loki and the baby are stolen. Only Fa has survived.

Golding narrates the story through the eyes of Lok, the inexperienced adolescent. His inexperience allows us to understand what is happening while he is not. This has a double effect. While we empathize with the childlike innocence of Lok, we recognize in the strangers characteristics and behavior of our own species.

If not for the “Mother of all spoilers” on the Faber & Faber paperback’s blurb, Golding’s cunningly literary device would have worked perfectly. Starting with an epigraph taken from H.G.Wells’ Outline of History he both gives away an explanation for the strange text the reader is about to discover and at the same time puts him on the wrong foot:

‘Says Sir Harry Johnston,…( describing Neanderthal man)…: “The dim racial remembrance of such gorilla-like monsters, with cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy bodies, strong teeth, and possibly cannibalistic tendencies, may be the germ of the ogre in folklore…”’

Our heroes are gentle, innocent and childlike in their naivety, in tune with nature and their environment. They have no initial aggressive feelings towards the newcomers. They are not Ogres. They are not Monsters.

The 'new people' are quiet different. They show elements of early religious behavior (the antler headed stag – man echoing the pig head on the pole), they communicate easily; they have canoes to cross the water and are armed with bows and arrows. Even when they look at the others with fascination and fear, they themselves are a ruthless, savage, lustful bunch.

It takes some time to be acclimatized to Golding’s prose and to get into the flow of the writing. Everything is filtered through Lok's alien Weltanschauung and the reader has to be very attentive to the written word. It reminds me a bit of the opening chapters of Faulkner’s “Sound and Fury” where a similar problem of communication is elaborated.

The book, as such is a bold prose experiment. The heroes are after all pre-literate. How does a book made of words relate the thoughts of people who do not have a language? Critics are divided over how successfully Golding pulls this off but I think that even tough it is tedious at moments, he does it with brio.

It is unfair to criticize Golding for not being accurate within this paleontological setting and depicting his Neanderthal more like gorilla’s than the men they really were. Not only was that knowledge not yet uncovered but scientific accuracy is not the point in this novel. “The inheritors” is a fantasy, a dark one indeed, but still an artistic rendering of a fictional event. It is a revisionist version of pre-history, detailing the rise of violent civilization over gentler life forms. One should read the book as an allegory on the origins of violence, racism, imperialism and other evil byproducts of civilization.

Even as an allegory, the story bears strong emotions. The terrible ending, when Lok is alone, the last of his kind, and dies of grief, is the death of innocence. Arthur Koestler confessed it to be “the most moving scene, I have read for a long time”.

Understandably, William Golding describes our species in a most dark and evil way. Both “Lord of the Flies” and “The Inheritors” have after all been conceived within a decade only after the full horror and the atrocities of the Second World War were disclosed. Still a whole generation of survivors had to come to terms with what they had experienced in those terrible years.

I find that there is a systematic logic in the three first books of Golding. First he debunks the innocence of children. Savagery is inherent to our species. Then Golding states that evolution does not evolve from the barbaric to the civilized. Barbarity is a constant in Homo sapiens. Finally in Martin Pincher he looks for the motives or mechanisms behind this behavior and pinpoints one: Greed. Fear, hinted at in “the inheritors” would be one of the others.

As a conclusion, let’s go back to the title of the book.

It is a quote from the Bible: Matthew 5:5; this is the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus says, ‘blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth,’

Golding boldly makes his statement in an irony: It is not the gentle submissive beings, showing patience and humility who have inherited the earth.

Quite on the contrary.

It is us.

John Carey : William Golding, “The Man who wrote Lord of the Flies”.

I was scanning titles and authors at the FNAC bookshop in Ghent, where I was looking for some books scribbled on my TBR list, when my attention was caught by John Carey’s brand-new biography of William Golding. (Faber & Faber 2009)

Was it the massive presence of its 573 pages which made me pick Golding’s biography out of a row of slimmer volumes? Or was it the front-page picture of the bearded writer (half Captain Horn-Blower, half Saint Augustine) lost in tought in a whirl of cigarette smoke as if he was thinking up another enigmatic Delphic prophecy?
No, it was that strange superfluous affirmation in the subtitle “the man who wrote Lord of Flies” that caught my attention and puzzled me.
Was this obvious statement needed because no one remembered who was the writer of that cult book or was Golding, slipping under the radar of the modern reader’s attention, in need of undusting?

In his postscript John Carey indeed affirms that the subtitle is meant to be ironic and that his prime intention is to show “how much more Golding was than just “The Man who wrote Lord of the Flies” and that most readers “…remain unaware of the protean variety and inventiveness of his work...” Despite huge public acclaim during his lifetime – the Nobel, the Booker, a knighthood and millions of copies sold – Golding is still chiefly remembered for just one book.

John Carey, emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, is a long-time admirer of Golding, He is the first one to have been given access to the author’s family archive, containing several unpublished novels, two autobiographies, and a 5,000-page private journal. Enlightened with this vast amount of hitherto unpublished information, Carey takes upon himself the task of setting the record straight.
As such the book seems to be directly aimed at readers like me. What did I know about Golding? Like everybody else, I read and appreciated "Lord of the Flies". I even tried another of Golding’s books: The Spire (La Nef in French) but the book was too difficult for me at that time and I dropped it half-read. It was thanks to a recommendation by a friend of an impressively good “Pincher Martin”, that Golding came back to my attention.

Carey deals sensitively with William Golding's private life and introduces us to a writer who was shunning all publicity and living quietly with his family in south-west England. There is a lot likeable in Golding. He admits to have “four enthusiasms”: He loves Greece and is passionate about Classicism. He is a keen sailor and a lover of music and archeology.
Very interesting is Golding’s relationship with his editor at Faber and Faber, Charles Monteith, who helped him editing his first work and getting him published.
Carey, known for his anti-elitist tone and iconoclastic views on Culture paints a man in flesh and blood in all his greatness and his weakness, writing masterpiece after masterpiece, while fighting off his demons.

And Demon’s there are.

Golding surprisingly describes himself as "a monster in deed, word and thought". What is there to discover? Quiet a lot it seems: Sexual violence, alcoholic excess, shame, depression and vanity are all part of Golding’s story.

Incredibly so, Golding, a war hero in the British Navy and a published and acclaimed writer remains "revoltingly" dependent on what people thought of his work. Despite his proven talent and the public acclaim we see the author constantly battling off a nasty inferiority complex and self-depreciating attitude. Carey implies that it might have found its origin in Golding bumping into the glass ceiling off British social classes while studying at Oxford.
Sadly, alcohol abuse, violence and flight are Golding’s only options to cope with his issues.

Besides gathering information about the writer, Carey helps us to fill up the gaps in our understanding of the authors works. Understandably he does not dwell too much on “Lord of the Flies”. Enough is said about that book.

Carey spends more time on the other books of Golding. There is for instance a whole analysis of “Darkness visible”, structurally one of Golding’s most difficult works.

More interesting for me was the “analysis of Pincher Martin” that showed that evil Pincher was largely inspired on Golding himself or at least on the way Golding saw himself. Pincher is very much Golding when an officer in the Navy, his attempts to become an actor and in his cruelty towards others. We learn for instance that Golding, like the fictional Pincher attempted rape. In a bizarre episode, Golding admitted to have made an unwelcome pass at a 15 year –old girlfriend when he was home from Oxford. British press have mostly dwelled on this confession since the biography appeared.

If nothing else, a good biography must motivate the reader to explore other works from the writers "oeuvre". Carey is very efficient in nudging us on to read more Golding. The pages are really littered with praises for the different works and you honestly feel ashamed that you have not read all the others! See for yourself!
“In search of my father” … is magnificent…told in Golding’s most spectacular prose…(p171). The Inheritors…[Golding] thought it his best book, and many critics would agree (p 173). Pincher Martin… one of the most profound and original novels of the twentieth century. ( p192). The Spire…brilliantly…masterly…(p282).The pyramid [Golding’s] finest…unstrained throwaway brilliance…The scorpion god … the finished story is a masterpiece…. Its style is flawless… its revelation beautifully subtle…(p327). Darkness visible… apart from the power of its writing, it is a technical marvel….Golding’s greatest piece of religious writing…( p367) it’s best novel to date (p385). I stopped at the chapter which was going to dwell on the book “Rites of passage” because I didn’t want to spoil my upcoming reading of it!

Carey has done his tribute. Mission accomplished ! He has written a very readable and interesting book. Golding, we understand now, is much more than just the writer of “Lord of the flies”. The author might have been an engaging albeit difficult man but a great writer he was. At least 4 or 5 masterpieces within his legacy deserve to be read and studied. And if after this review, or even better, after reading Carey’s biography, you are yearning for more, don’t reread “lord of the flies”. Do the genius posthumously a favor and read anything, – the Inheritors – Pincher Martin – the Scorpion King – Rites of passage-, anything, but “Lord of the flies”

Pincher Martin by William Golding

Rockall

25 – 28 March 2009: Pincher Martin by William Golding

After the Right Stuff, I started Byatt’s book Possession. But a friend recommended me Pincher Martin, which “would blow my socks off”.
As a student, I enjoyed “The Lord of the Flies”, but I couldn't finish Golding’s “The Spire”.
So I got curious after this mysterious recommendation, I ordered Pincher Martin through Amazon and finished it in a few hours hours spread over a mere 3 days.

Warning !

Pincher Martin has a twist ending, so if you intend to read it and I surely recommend you do, stop reading these lines and go to the library to purchase this book.

Pincher Martin, written in1956 is the third novel by William Golding.

The novel is set during the second World War, on a remote rocky islet in the North Atlantic, somewhere close to the Hebrides. Christopher “Pincher” Martin, a British sailor, has been washed up on its pebbled shore after his ship is torpedoed and sunk. The islet is just a bare rock, without life or vegetation. Martin survives by drinking rain water from pools and eats cockles pried from the rock. He is suffering a lot and he tries to keep his sanity through the ordeal.As the weather worsens and his condition further deteriorates, Martin reviews parts of his life.This part of the book ends with what appears to be a storm, with "black lightning", in which Martin becomes convinced that supernatural forces are trying to kill him, and he rails against them.
The last sentence of the novel features a twist ending which makes it clear that Martin actually drowned shortly after his ship was sunk in the first pages of the book. His whole survival ordeal on the rock is then understood as a life after death experience.

The reader’s information on the back flap of the book with a summary description warns the reader that a twist ending might be expected. While reading I was of course distracted by that knowledge and I was trying to guess what the twist could be. One of the possibilities might have been that he thought he was just a few days on the island but in fact it could have been many years. It is said in the book that “an hour on this rock is a lifetime”. Another possibility was that it never happened, that it was just a dream or that Martin would wake up in an asylum. I thought about the “story of Pi” by Martel and the “Sixth sense”movie.
I did not however think of “ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge “ by Ambrose Bierce to which in some sense it resembles. In Bierce ‘s story, an escape from a hanging turns out to be a split second fantasy of the condemned just before his neck snaps at the gallow. Golding goes further than Bierce : Pincher survives after his death.

At the last word of the last page, Martin’s suffering on the rock can only be understood as an allegory of purgatory and damnation.
According to Catholic belief, immediately after death, a person undergoes judgment in which the soul's eternal destiny is specified. Some are eternally united with God in Heaven, others are destined for Hell, and still others are condemned for a stay in Purgatory before their final destination. This transit zone is for the souls that are not sufficiently free from sin to go to Heaven, nor are they sinful enough to go to hell either. Purgatory stands for a temporary moment of postmortem suffering and painful punishment short of everlasting damnation.

Martin is indeed suffering on his rock in the middle of the ocean. He undergoes near drowning, he falls on the rocks. He suffers pain, cold, exhaustion, sunburn, bird attacks, mad hallucinations, thirst, hunger and even constipation!

What has poor Martin done to deserve this fate ?

In civil life Pincher is an actor. Through a number of inconsequential pictures which serve as flashbacks, we understand that Pincher Martin has become a symbol of nasty greed. Greed, not just for money but for everything. “He takes anything he can lay hands on: best part, best seat, most money, best notice, best women. He is “born with his mouth and fly open and both hands to grab”

The different snippets of his life, show us that Martin leaves behind him a trail of use and abuse. As a child, in a bicycle race, he forces his friend Billy of the road and the kid breaks his leg horribly. In adult life, he has an affair with the producer’s wife Helen and breaks up their marriage. He sleeps with Sybil, the girlfriend of his friend Alfred and he makes cruel fun of it.
Nathaniel, his best friend, to whom he even calls for help when drowning, entrust his fiancée Mary to Martin’s care when he goes to the Navy.
Pincher rapes her, because he must “have” her.

Pincher is an evil man.

Golding presents us a metaphor of greed with the story of the Chinese tin box. In the box lies a dead fish, which is eaten by hundreds of white maggots. When the fish is finished, they start eating each other until one big fat white maggot is left.
But even that one is eaten when the noise of a spade against the tin box, announces that it will be opened and serve as a Chinese delicacy.
Christopher Martin is the number one maggot; he is the last maggot in the tin box.
“Killed and eaten”, becomes a declaration of conquest. Martin remembers : “Eating women, eating men, eating Alfred, eating that other girl, eating that boy, that crude and unsatisfactory experiment” His victims, the used and defeated people are described as maggots, fat and white bodies without attraction or excitement.

Christopher Pincher is drafted into the Navy as an officer and he finds himself on board with his “friend “ Nathaniel. Nathaniel or Nat is a humble religious man, often praying, not really fit for the Navy.He seems to suffer on board. Does he know that Martin has raped his fiancée?

Nat has told Pincher in an strange premonition that Martin is not happy, that “he doesn’t know the technique of dying”. Pincher retorts “I am damned if I’ll die”

So Martin Pincher finds himself in Purgatory, like Prometheus attached to a rock. Even the flesh eating Gulls are there to complete the picture. We prepare for the final showdown.
Martin asks himself: Have you had enough surviving? Have you had enough hanging on? He is advised: Give up the thought of return; give up the thought of living. There is nothing here but torture, give up leave go

But Martin does not give up. “I have considered, I prefer it, pain and all”

Golding explained that Martin Pincher stands for the man who is so greedy for life that he refuses to die. The life he seems to invent for himself from half-remembered scraps of physical life becomes literally a Purgatory. The life in Purgatory is preferred to giving up and attaining Salvation.

Martin resists, defending his personality, his only treasure until finally in an apocalyptique setting, the black lightning splits and destroys everything we call live.

William Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980, for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.

During World War II, Golding fought in the Royal Navy and was briefly involved in the pursuit and sinking of Germany's mightiest battleship, the Bismarck. He also participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, commanding a landing ship that fired salvoes of rockets onto the beaches, and then in a naval action at Walcheren in which 23 out of 24 assault crafts were sunk. At the war's end he returned to teaching and writing.

Having moved in 1958 from Salisbury to nearby Bowerchalke, he met his fellow villager and walking companion James Lovelock. The two discussed Lovelock's hypothesis that the living matter of the planet Earth functions like a single organism, and Golding suggested naming this hypothesis after Gaia, the goddess of the earth in Greek mythology.
In 1970 Golding was a candidate for the Chancellorship of the University of Kent at Canterbury, but lost to the politician and leader of the Liberal Party, Jo Grimond. Golding won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1979, the Booker Prize in 1980, and in 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.