Monday, September 20, 2010

WILLIAM GOLDING - LORD OF THE FLIES


William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies.

In this book Golding puts a lot of effort into describing the bodies of young boys.

"Demoniac figures with faces of white and red and green rushed out howling… the tallest of them, stark naked save for paint and a belt, was Jack".

The movie "seemed to be just a big excuse to show us fifteen-year-olds frolicking in their underwear." (Cached)

William Golding taught at a boys' school.

He was not very good with women.


On 20 September 2010, we read that William Golding's daughter has revealed his 'darker side' in a new book.

According to the daughter, Golding was "in many ways very kind and very understanding and very sweet..."

But, "both my brother and I had problems growing up.

"My brother now, very sadly, though he's completely open about it, has a mental illness.

"While I can't say it was my parents, it is a tricky business. I'm sure they wondered all their lives had they been instrumental, or made it worse or better or no difference.

"When I was growing up I did have a breakdown.

"I am robust in the extreme now, but this is why it's called The Children of Lovers. There was not that much room, really, for the two of us. I didn't feel we had enough from them."



On 16 August 2009, The Sunday Times reported that the 'Lord of the Flies' author, William Golding, once tried to rape a fifteen year old girl called Dora. e

Golding refers to the incident in an unpublished memoir.

This was written for his wife in an attempt to explain how his own 'monstrous' character had developed.

William Golding writes that he, a student at Oxford, and Dora, aged 15, went for a walk and he "felt sure she wanted heavy sex, as this was visibly written on her pert, ripe and desirable mouth".

Soon they were "wrestling like enemies" as he "tried unhandily to rape her".

But she resisted and ran off.

Golding had a girlfriend called Mollie. He let her down by breaking off their engagement.

John Carey, who has written a biography of Golding, says that Golding "was aware of and repelled by the cruelty in himself and was given to saying that, had he been born in Hitler’s Germany, he would have been a Nazi. Dora seems to have played her part in this self-knowledge".

The Nazis often preferred boys to girls.

Golding had a drink problem.

According to Carey, "Things like his war experience, the nervous breakdown of his own son David, who had been born with a club foot, and his inability to write as the years went on contributed to this drink problem..

"He actually thought he was a monster.

"Maybe because of how he had treated David as a child, or Mollie, whose life he had ruined when he left her, or the people he killed in the war."

~

Many famous authors have been both spies and fans of boys:

Graham Greene

Somerset Maugham

T. E. Lawrence

Rudyard Kipling

Ian Fleming

John Buchan

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