The Paper Men | William Golding

I don't know what prompted me to read "The Paper Men", but a couple of days ago I decided to give the third Golding book on my shelf a try. After reading "Lord of the Flies" in high school (and enjoying it) and "Darkness Visible" earlier this year (and disliking it), I figured I'd give Golding another chance to redeem himself. He did not.

I dove into the book with no preconceptions, as I had no idea what it was about. Without spoilers, here is a brief synopsis:

Wilfrid Barclay, a 60 year old alcoholic author, is all washed up. He drinks like a fish and travels all over the world. He treats people in his life that are 'close' to him (which are few), like garbage and never really understands if he's living in a dream or a stupor, but for him, that is life. This book reminds me of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", without the drug induced hallucinations (most here are alcohol related) and without pretty much everything that made the latter interesting.

Rick Tucker is an Associate Professor who follows Barclay around in his travels, attempting to get him to sign over biographical writes to him. He offers everything he has and has no sense of moral integrity, giving into all Barclay's degrading demands.

I have not delved into research enough to determine if the main character is based on Golding himself, largely because I don't really care. This character was so boring; events, while described very well from the point of view of a confused alcoholic, were altogether uninteresting. The point never quite hit the mark, and the novel circled the earth in uneventful ways to get at it.

Overall, stick clear of this book.

[No quotes - although due to absurdity of the main character, some were very witty. That being said, nothing was profound].

Darkness Visible | William Golding

You may or may not know that I refuse to read the backs, sideflaps, forewards, etc of any book before I have read it. As such, as soon as I finished Darkness Visible, I read everything I could get my hands on. Reason being: it was so obscure, that I wanted to see if anyone 'got it'.

After reading a bunch of reviews, I found out that people are all over the map on this one. There was only really one person, I more-or-less agreed with.

The book is essentially about a boy named Matty that survives a fire and is scarred for life. As a child, he witnesses the death of a school acquaintance and is blamed for it by his child-molesting teacher. Matty never gets over the thought of letting his teacher down. He becomes very religious, and experiments with the idea of divinity as well as the occult (it is not known for sure, which he embraces more).

The parrallel story involves two twins, who grew up quite wholesomely, it seems. Sophy, the less attractive of the two, continues to vie for her father's attention (who is preoccupied with finding a wife). She ends up despising her father, moving in with a thief and getting into sexual and unlawful mischief involving kidnapping of children of political figures.

Anyway, the book is interesting... and the theme around 'vieing for attention from role models' seems to be central to the novel, IMO. Terrorist & sexual mischief all seem to stem from this central theme. There is an attempt to explain the darkness of man, and how people are governed by this impulse that they cannot explain or fight... they find themselves doing what the darkness tells them to. It's interesting, but not explained very well by Golding.

Overall, I give this book a 3/5.