Happy Birthday, Mr Golding

William Golding, had he not passed away in 1993, would have turned 100 years of age this Monday. Raising a glass or two to his good name left me feeling somewhat nostalgic and prompted this belated post-birthday post.

Lord of the Flies is the book that did it, the book that hooked me on literature. It first came into my life when I was 10, when the onset of puberty forced me to declare myself 'bored' on a routine family holiday in the South of France. Pity me not. I was a spoilt child. I had no good reason to be bored. There was a pool. There were people. But it was the same pool, the same people, and on my flat chest two breasts were growing that I was unprepared for and disgruntled to show, having up to then believed I was a boy. So sulk I did, with hunched shoulders and an extra large T on, responding only in monosyllables for effect.

Mother was having none of it. 'Read a book', she said. And then, 'Read this. It is one of mine'. Up to this point, I was already an avid reader, but not a 'proper' reader per se. I had read books, many many of them, but never truly engaged, never shut one speechless, or with tears in my eyes. Little wonder. Up until the summer of '86, my life in books had progressed from Hans Christian Anderson and The Brothers Grimm to the likes of The Exorcist, Amityville Horror and Sweet Valley High (I had well over 100), which once read I would toss into the corner atop of countless Nancy Drews, my cousin's Mills and Boons, and Judy Blume's Forever... 

Having nothing better to do, I read Lord of the Flies cover to cover. I spoke to no one, ate not, slept not. And when I came to the end, I read it over again, this time slower, to be sure I had read it right. The island, the glamour, the friendships, the rivalries, the violence, the deaths. Forget Ballantyne or The Beach. This was the first time I had read a book that had, for want of a better word, changed me somehow. 

My mother read it first when 16 years of age. She had come to London from Tehran in the 70s and enrolled into a private college on Shaftesbury Avenue for foreigners to study English Literature. It was on her syllabus and she purchased the text in Kilburn where she was renting a flat at the time. Her handwritten notes, indecipherable to me, make this beaten paperback priceless. It is well thumbed and tentatively held together by yellowing, brittle selloptape. It has its own smell and has travelled across continents. It has also been underlined throughout in various coloured biro, so I can retrace my mother's steps, and seek out the passages she once paused at.

So it is not just Golding's story, so simply told, that has hold of me. The allure also lies in the physical copy of the faded Faber edition that was passed on that day. It is a relic. I cherish it and reread parts of it every year now. I am 35 years old and don't intend to give up the habit.

I can't pretend to have a favourite passage, but I do chuckle when I read chapter 3, which, after 10 years of marriage, I have privately renamed 'The Divorce'. On a recent pilgrimage across its pages, I went not to the 3rd chapter, but the 9th: A View to a Death. It contains a fascinating moment in the story where Ralph and Piggy, 'under the threat of the sky' find themselves 'eager to take a place' in Jack's 'demented but partly secure society'. It got me thinking that of all the opinions bandied about on the recent London riots, I would have given more than a penny for Golding's thoughts. Those regretful events would not have baffled him at all. As Golding admits in his essay What Turns Children Into Savages?, '[o]ld men perhaps are hard to surprise'. But had he lived to receive a letter from the Queen, he would have been perfectly placed to comment on the chaos and terror that coloured those August nights, understanding, as he modestly put it, 'certain things about cruelty' and the 'conditions in which cruelty flourishes'. It is a fascinating essay. Do find it on the internet. Do.

On the subject of whether we are born with cruelty as a 'deep component' of our nature, or as a 'blank slate' upon which 'the harshness of experience soon prints its indelible and frightening patterns', Golding doesn't pretend to have the answer. Only his 'truth': that both components are equally important. He imagines, in this essay, that many 'modern childhoods must be sheer horror'. And, sadly, I believe him. He also states; 'I believe all attempts to answer these great questions are doomed to end in doubt and confusion. I leave them to psychologists and prophets. I can only speak as a man who has lived long'.

O what I would give to get my hands on those unpublished novels, two autobiographical works and two million-word journal that are archived away.

O had he lived longer.

Happy Birthday Mr Golding.
Happy Birthday to you.