Golding, William (Vol. 3) - Golding, William 1911–

Golding, William 1911–

Golding is a talented and original major British novelist whose best known works—Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, and The Spire—reflect his interest in anthropology and psychoanalysis. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)

Golding's novels are rigged. All thesis novels are rigged. In the great ones the drama escapes from the cage of the rigging or is acted out on it as on a skeleton stage set. Golding's thesis requires more rigging than most and it must by definition be escape-proof and collapsing….

Lord of the Flies is simply a carelessly documented book. Its opposite number, Swiss Family Robinson, is ridiculously impossible, with flora, fauna and geology from the ends of the earth, all dumped on one tiny island, but we forgive the improbability because the boa constrictor really seems to eat the mule and if polar bears had eaten breadfruit we would have...

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