Customer Reviews

The Paper Men

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book whiled away a couple of days of a very rainy holiday in France. Normally I admire Golding more than I like him, but I greatly enjoyed this book although it's one of his lesser efforts. The hard-drinking, egotistical, talented and successful narrator (a novelist -- I have no idea whether there is any element of Golding himself in the character) is someone I found oddly sympathetic from a safe distance. Other characters in the book had every justification for taking another view of him -- other characters except one, that is, the one being his unspeakable would-be Sancho Panza Rick L. Tucker. Really Golding, like H. G. Wells, had just about every gift a novelist can have, even when he was only exercising it at half-power.

The other thing this book did for me was to introduce me to what has become one of my very favourite wines. If that aspect interests you, but not to the extent of actually reading the book, exercise your arrowy mind on the title I have given this little review.

Picked this one up at a used-book store after finishing LORD OF THE FLIES. Certainly a different voice and a very different direction - but still - a deep look at the nature of men - and how quickly roles and relationships devolve without rules. Watching Barclay's moves as he first attempts to flee and then turns and engages his tormenter & would-be biographer was great fun: "We were about as warm-hearted as scorpions." Watching his tormenter realize his complete loss of control over the situation and the final stroke of fun as the story just snaps to a stop - priceless.

I picked up this book (audio version) on a whim. I don't know much about W. Golding except that I had read Lord of the Flies 20 years ago in school. Each of the main characters in this book is so very detestable that you simply wish for terrible things to happen to all of them. Fortunately, Golding does not disappoint in this respect. If you a writer who hates writers you'll probably love this book.

One other comment...it may have one of the best last lines of a book ever.

Golding has a way with words; there is no denying it. At his best, he can really deliver a hard blow to the mind.

He is not at his best here.

There are some lovely snips--Cry! Cry! What shall I cry?--but they are buried in a story that manages to be both pretentious and pedestrian. The novelist, who may-or-may-not be Golding-esque (I don't know the man and am not reading to guess whether or not this is autobiographical), is a stereotype of a drunken writer dithering around Europe and having a nervous breakdown. There's nothing either sympathetic or interesting about him. His surrounding circle is equally vacuous, and the plot, regarding a biographer chasing him around to get a story is... well, dreary. It's not a complex story and I understand the things Golding means to say, but all in all, he does not say them very well.

A pity--the words really are quite nice.