It takes a peculiar, remarkable talent to write a novel quite as unsuccessful as "Darkness Visible". Unquestionably, William Golding was that peculiar, remarkable talent.
It wasn't genius. Not quite that: his truly great work carries the mark of a different persona. It strains every sinew in a quest for understanding, for first-hand experience...and that's not the flighty impetuousity of genius. Still, that searching did take him to some strange, unlikely places. After a couple of lazy fizzles - "The Pyramid" and "The Scorpion God", both in the archives - "Darkness Visible" is perhaps strangest of all.
He's trying again. There is a fresh sense of purpose here, a vision to convey. In itself, that's thrilling, a reminder that this is a writer still to win the Nobel Prize, still to be lauded for that very distinctive not-genius.
But he's trying too hard. Far too hard. "Darkness Visible" is over-written to the point of absurdity, its pages strewn with ideas like an untidy office. Somewhere, perhaps inside Golding's mind, there's a unique, serious novel to match his finest. What's found its way into print, however, is a completely impenetrable muddle, lost in translation.
For other writers, it might still succeed. I have no idea at all, for example, what much of Haruki Murakami's work is about. But I don't need to know: I understand it instinctively, emotionally. It affects me, goes through me as music more than fiction. For Golding, a writer in search of physical, dense, tangible understanding, instinct is not enough. It just leaves cold bewilderment, and a novel that rises to the challenge and fails, bravely but somewhat foolishly.
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