When William Golding won
the Nobel literature prize in 1983 there was much debate as to whether
the award should have gone instead to Graham Greene, a writer whose
reputation seemed to outrank all his contemporaries. With the benefit
of hindsight the decision of the Nobel judges looks ever more sound:
Greene was a towering figure in his time, but perhaps also too much of
his time for them. Golding, on the other hand, wrote novels which have
a more timeless character, rooted in the primal struggles of
men’s souls.
His most famous book is
Lord of the Flies, the story of schoolboys regressing into savagery
deservedly bringing him to public attention, but for me his masterpiece
is Free Fall. Written in 1959, it tells the story of Sammy Mountjoy
from his humble prewar beginnings in the Dickensian sounding Rotten Row
to his postwar status as an established artist. Along the way he
experiences love, loss and all manner of reversals of fortune, and in
the process of describing this Golding gives us a vivid portrait of
England in the middle of the twentieth century. The key to the story,
though, is Mountjoy’s belief that somewhere in his past lay
an event which brought about a metamorphosis in which he changed from
being an innocent child, graced with the gift of free will, to an adult
constrained by the burden of his past.
To support and develop the
narrative, the novel is given a structure which is essentially a
brilliantly conceived prose poem, repeatedly striking out into new
facets of Mountjoy’s life, and then circling obsessively back
to the central question of when the fateful event occurred and he lost
his existential freedom. And when we finally discover the truth we
realise the premise on which the novel is based has a positively
mythological resonance: the young Sammy carelessly scribbles a pencil
sketch for his friend in a school art lesson and, without realising it
at the time, is touched by the Muses. Only later, when he appreciates
the scale of his achievement and is mortified by his art
teacher’s stubborn – and knowing –
refusal to credit him as the originator, does the reaction set in. He
wants the glory due to the artist, the acknowledgement that he has
created something which transcends the moment, and in due course he
wants the girl who modelled for the portrait. He tries over and over to
recapture the casual brilliance of that first drawing, but none of his
subsequent efforts matches up to it. This is the moment when his
childhood freedom disappears.
The scene has a
mythological resonance: the infant Sammy exists in the sort of golden
age in which the Greeks believed men and gods mingled freely, and in
due course he receives a gift from them – the gift of art.
But, as with all gifts from the gods, it inevitably turns sour: in
pursuit of his destiny he eventually casts aside Beatrice, the girl in
the picture, and robs her of her happiness. Far from opening up
boundless possibilities, he finds himself trapped on the course he has
set.
Many people have described
Golding’s writing as pessimistic, but it was a label he
disputed and he would probably have argued that he was simply a
realist. The moral imperative which rules Sammy Mountjoy’s
universe is the Greek notion of suffering into knowledge: without going
through the fire there can be no true self knowledge, and without that
knowledge we cannot see the world as it really is. The culmination of
Mountjoy’s voyage of self discovery comes at the hands of the
Gestapo’s Dr Halde where, in an experience which sadly seems
rather tame compared with recent horrors inflicted by so-called
civilised nations, his old self is swept away and a new being emerges.
Stripped of all illusions he now finds that he can see with intense
clarity, and what before was hidden is now revealed. It is a useful
gift for an artist, of course, and in many ways he goes out into the
world like an ancient prophet or seer, with the difference that his
prophecies are delivered as drawings and paintings rather than words.
At the end of the novel we
see where Mountjoy’s journey has led him – into a
postwar England which is determined that the world will be a better
place, free of the horrors of the recent past (though still haunted by
them). Mountjoy’s personal circumstances match those of the
country: he is now a successful artist, living a bohemian life far
removed from his humble origins, and which mirrors the increased social
mobility which followed the second world war. But he too is haunted by
the past: very directly in his case when he visits Beatrice in a mental
hospital, and is forced to acknowledge the part his actions played in
her illness.
Free Fall has many of the
attributes of a Greek tragedy, and in some ways it can be seen as an
investigation built upon a tragic plotline. First we are presented with
the tragic outcome – Sammy Mountjoy’s fall from
innocence and freedom – and then we are asked to consider
when it became inevitable that this would indeed be a tragedy. Unlike a
classical tragedy, though, Mountjoy survives through to the end, and in
fact enjoys what many would consider to be a somewhat enviable
lifestyle. In this Golding is simply reflecting the reality of postwar
Britain: the world really did become a better place – for
people in the affluent West, at least – and for a while it
looked as though it might just be the onset of a new golden age.
Golding, though, knows
better – and this is where I think he has gained his
reputation for pessimism, because he makes sure we understand the
darker side to this world. Mountjoy, and all the others like him who
came through the war and built a better life, have earned their
new-found happiness through their past sufferings. They know this is no
golden age and will hang on tightly to what they have because they
understand the alternative. Later generations, however, born into this
better world will treat it as a given, and in their carelessness will
be in danger of seeing it slip through their fingers. Free Fall does
not take the story into these later times, but other novels by Golding
do, and one can see where he felt things were heading. Does that make
him a pessimist or a realist?
Whatever one’s
view of that question, and whether the mythological underpinnings of
Free Fall are of interest or not, it is still worth reading for its own
sake. It is a brilliant novel, perfectly paced and plotted, and with
every phrase crafted with poetic skill. And, on top of that, it is
superbly evocative of the times in which it is set. By
anyone’s standards it is a masterpiece.