Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Golding

It seems that William Golding, author of Simspons-parodied and general literary classic The Lord of the Flies, admits to setting children against each other during his stint as a teacher at Bishop's. More shocking is his attempted rape of a 15 year old girl during his teen years. Here's a bit from The Guardian:

The attempted rape involved a Marlborough girl, named Dora, who had taken piano lessons with Golding. It happened when he was 18 and on holiday during his first year at Oxford.

Carey quotes the memoir as partially excusing the attempted rape on the grounds that Dora was "depraved by nature" and, at 14, was "already sexy as an ape".

It reveals that Golding told his wife he had been sure the girl "wanted heavy sex". She fought him off and ran away as he stood there shouting: "I'm not going to hurt you," the memoir said.

Two years later, the pair met again and had sex in a field, with Golding again introducing crudity by quoting the girl's foreplay remark: "Should I have all that rammed up my guts?"

The author was convinced her approach to his father was a deliberate attempt to discredit him and his older brother who, coincidentally, was having sex with his girlfriend in the same field.


The biography detailing all of Golding's exploits is forthcoming. I'm a total gossip-monger, so I'll clearly be buying it.

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