Title: Pincher Martin
Author/Editor: William Golding
Year Published: 1956
Category: Literature.
Finished this tonight, my twentieth book thus far in 2010. It happens to have been published exactly one hundred years after the last book I blogged about, Madame Bovary.
In short, this was frakkin' insane. I had some idea of what to expect because of Book #18, Terry Eagleton's On Evil. But nothing can -- nor should -- prepare one for the full sensory experience of Pincher Martin.
Brutal.
Devastating.
"A thought was forming like a piece of sculpture behind the eyes but in front of the unexamined center. He watched the thought for a timeless interim while the drops of sweat trickled down from blotch to blotch. But he knew that the thought was an enemy and so although he saw it he did not consent or allow it to become attached to him in realization. If the slow center had any activity now it brooded on its identity while the thought stayed there like an ignored monument in a park." (p. 161)
4 comments:
I had a similar reaction to this book the first time I read it, about twenty years ago. Whenever I mention it to somebody I get a blank stare.
-- Jack
I didn't know anyone else who'd read it -- until now :-)
> "the first time I read it"
How many times have you returned to it in the interim? Has it stood up to multiple re-readings?
I've read a number of other Golding novels and novellas, but his technique here left me stunned.
This was the first book by Golding that I ever read. I stole it from mom's shelves. The picture on the cover (a wrecking ship) suggested something julesvernian. It turned out to be the book I remember most intensely from my entire childhood. A remarkable experience.
rreugen,
Stealing books from parent's shelves often leads to great discoveries. That was how, for instance, I first encountered Philip Roth -- with The Breast, no less.
I just got a hold of John Carey's biography of Golding and look forward to gaining more insight into the creator's life.
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