William Golding died in 1993 at the age of 81 having written 12 novels. There were other writings which included a journal of around 2 million words written over a period of 20 years.
It seems Golding was not the perfect man at all. He was clumsy, inept when it came to social etiquette and his life as a writer was without trying times.
Golding was rejected throughout his career as a writer. Lord of the Flies was turned down by 21 publishers. Faber’s reader Polly Perkins said the book was: ‘Absurd and uninteresting fantasy … rubbish and dull. Pointless’ quoted from the Spectator.co.uk’s post Reviving a Reputation by Philip Hensher. Here’s more:
After that, too, many of Golding’s novels were often greeted with a certain amount of carping. Even some of his best novels, such as Free Fall came out to a torrent of abuse. He never took the trouble to meet fellow authors, and at a Booker dinner in the 1970s is reported as sitting there with his wife, knowing nobody at all.
In the end, the daunting, sage-like hermit of his last years remained, as Carey respectfully and convincingly suggests, the same self-doubting, needy, self-critical but love-hungry man so unmistakably documented in Free Fall.
Golding was tormented by his own feelings of inadequacy. So we learn that even a great writer like Golding was still prone to all the negative thoughts all writers have experience. His self-doubt found its way into his writing. Like all of us trying to write everyday, these thoughts were probably like brakes on a car, crippling at times.
Golding was the eccentric recluse – the ‘archetype known to the trade’. The Independent.co.uk’s article William Golding, by John Carey said this of Golding:
As a writer, on the other hand – in his habits, obsessions and routines – he fits every archetype known to the trade.
As for the work – next to which all of Golding’s quintessential literary bad habits, the amour propre, the drunks and the misery, pale into insignificance – Carey is excellent on what gives the novels their distinctive patina: that odd mix of symbolism, derring-do and elemental human hurt. Here, inevitably, Golding’s detachment from the literary world works to his advantage. A sharper operator, who spent his time carousing with Kingsley and co., would have lost something in the process. You suspect that in the end he falls into Virginia Woolf’s invaluable category (first applied to Hardy) of “genius but no talent”. But it is this that makes him modern literature’s great outsider – not the sulks about Marlborough or the wasted days before the Bishop Wordsworth’s blackboard.
He was an island and was not ‘in’ with the literary crowd. The article also described Golding as a depressive and a drunk and he, like any writer could not dodge the bad reviews:
Free Fall’s middlingly hostile reception in 1959 is supposed to have set him back creatively for years.
Solitude was part of Golding’s upbringing. Christmas for William Golding meant family members spending time in separate rooms so writing and reading became his friends, a way to express himself and a way to participate. This is from Scenes From a Life
So I must have learned in the awareness of my own solitude that reading was a sort of companionship.
He read ferociously. He was not an island when it came to reading – see post by Lynn Price Ransom Notes about reading. So not only was reading a solace for Golding but as we can imagine he found comfort in his writing, his imagination and drink. As writers, we understand this. In the NewStatesman.com article William Golding the Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies Golding was said to have been “imaginative to the point of hallucination”.
He preferred to keep himself to himself. If you thought yourself as ‘a monster’ perhaps you too would hide. In the post A Talent for Writing and Falling into Things in the NYTimes.com, we find that
Golding was an intensely private man, one who gave few interviews and did not want a biography written during his lifetime.
The article also suggested he was aware of humanity’s potential for cruelty and the primitive nature of man. With this profound ability to understand human cruelty so well he thought himself as ‘a monster’. This brought about the fear of hurting other people for Golding and the urge to experiment. In an extract from ‘Scenes From a Life’, he hit his brother by accident and he described the ‘terror’ he felt creeping into the house and hiding ‘from everyone else under the dining room table’ even though later he found out that it wasn’t as bad as he had thought.
The article Author William Golding tried to rape girl, 15 spoke of his self-hate. The problem with journals, especially from the point of view of someone who seemed to be inside his own head most of time is that they’re very subjective, when strong emotions can distort events. Every man has a dark side but if you write about it and dwell on it, it consumes your thoughts. His dark side consumed Golding’s thoughts which led to musings, self-torment, and experimentation. Those who wrote about him may discuss his delusions snidely but to this man it was all very real. Demons feel very real when the demons are your own. And sometimes these demons inspire great writing:
“The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis, and we’d have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.” ~ William Styron, Writers at Work, 1958 (via Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen on Steffani Cameron)
He lived in a time when the writer’s platform was not something expected of writers. In some ways social media and blogging are the perfect platform for writers in that the Internet allows for the illusion of anonymity and privacy. But would Golding have used blogging and social media instead of writing in his journals or would he have done both? Would he show one persona in one and another in his private writings?
How many writers and authors out there who are only showing their ‘cheerful’ faces? I bet there are enough who can relate to Golding. But it’s not cool to have self-doubt, self-hate and be needy. No, of course, not. We don’t show that side of us until after our deaths.
What can you and I learn from William Golding?
That even with rejection throughout his life, he persisted. Sure, he stopped but then he carried on. We can do that too. Golding was full of self-doubt and still managed to write and get published. We can do that too. Even with the self-disgust, the drinking, the depression and not having the support of the writing community, he still kept going. We can do that too. He was dysfunctional socially and below par when it came to hobbies and personal pursuits and yet he still managed to write books and get them published. We can do that too.
So next time you’re feeling discouraged, think of William Golding and think if he can persist, then you can persist too. Are you moving? Are you persisting?
[pic taken from here]
Similar Posts ~
Stephen King – Read, read, read
Why Supporters Are So Important
“Fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.” William Golding – Lord of the Flies
CURRENT STATUS: Reminder, Motivator and Daily Review Meeting (Read on if you want to join me in my Corporation of One meeting)
What l learnt:
What I have done or decided:
- Added some iPhone apps recommended by Jane Friedman to help with writing.
- Going to cut down on blogging to a few times a week.
WORD COUNT: Night Walker 123,000 in total. Wednesday 7 July 500 words; Thursday 8 July 500 words.
graveyard.
; ?>/images/arrow2.gif)
(
I’d like to be all “you have to write...