Mutters of Life and Death

By Paul Gray

THE PAPER MEN by William Golding; Farrar, Straus & Giroux 191 pages; $13.95

New writings by Nobel laureates always cause a stir of comment, but this novel by Author William Golding arrives in the slip stream of controversy as well. The decision last fall by the Swedish Academy to confer the 1983 prize on Golding aroused unusual ire; one academy member was angered enough to make an unprecedented public complaint. Critics quickly chimed in, charging that Golding's work was not up to Nobel standards and that a number of worthier candidates had been overlooked. Defenders countered with accusations of literary elitism and sour gripes.

The Paper Men is not likely to cause defections from entrenched positions on either side. Those unmoved by Golding's work will have little trouble remaining calm once again; a large audience of devoted fans will find their author's gnomic mystifications as fascinating as ever. But no one can dispute how sharply Golding has made a break with some of his old habits. Unfortunately, he does not abandon his worst ones. At first, the customary mixture of history, allegory and determinist philosophy seems absent. Golding begins with a plausible version of the here and now, and introduces a main character who bears some teasing resemblances to Golding himself.

Wilfred Barclay is an aging, alcoholic English writer who has experienced a Golding-like stroke of good fortune; Coldharbour, his first novel, written just after World War II, became a commercial and critical success and apparently goes on selling as vigorously as Lord of the Flies, Golding's first and most famous novel. "I hit the jackpot," Barclay says. "Someone has to." In addition to fame and fortune, he has also won Rick L. Tucker, a burly young American professor with designs on Barclay's literary remains. Their relationship begins badly. Hearing what he thinks is a badger rooting through his garbage, the author investigates and finds his house guest Tucker instead. In the ensuing confusion, a discarded love letter from a former mistress is spotted by Barclay's wife, who welcomes this excuse to start divorce proceedings.

Drinking more heavily than ever, Barclay goes on the run from Tucker's persistent badgering ("I am a moving target," Golding has written in a confessional essay describing his own pursuit by eager scholars). Tucker tracks his prey to a resort in the Swiss Alps and makes his pitch: "Wilf. I want you to appoint me your official biographer." He tacitly offers his beautiful but dim-witted wife to seal the bargain. Barclay resists this awkwardly staged temptation, but he winds up indebted to Tucker all the same. During a fogbound mountain walk, the author leans on a guardrail that collapses. Pulled to safety by his nemesis, Barclay reluctantly admits: "It seems I owe you my life."

But does he owe Tucker his Life, authorized and handsomely bound between hard covers? Barclay postpones the answer by escaping once again into aimless, inebriated travel, leaving a trail of bogus forwarding addresses. By this point, Golding reaches for his old standby, the clamoring metaphysical question. Does Barclay flee because he is afraid of being saved or damned? Who is Halliday, the mysterious American billionaire who has given Tucker seven years to win Barclay upi as a trophy? Broad hints are dropped that the author and the critic have begun to exchange identities. Barclay asks the American: "How come you speak the way you do, Rick? Years and years in England I don't doubt." Tucker replies: "How come you speak the way you do, Wilf? The ^ tones, I mean. They've flattened." With their accents swapped, the two I might amount to one rather schizophrenic consciousness. Near the end, Barclay's ex-wife gives him yet another reading of the experiences he has undergone: "You know what? You and Rick have destroyed each other."

Such portentous clues will no doubt play very well in classrooms and seminars. Teachers can I extract from the novel a long list of I topics for discussion. Scholarly journals should prepare for a host of submitted articles bearing titles punctuated with the obligatory colon ("Art I vs. Life: The Self-Loathing Narrative ill of Wilfred Barclay"). All this freewheeling interpretation in depth may obscure the fact that The Paper Men implies significance through lapses rather than design. The autobiographical touches suggest that Golding wished to settle a few scores with critics and also to satirize the "paper men" of the literary life, himself included, who live and die by their words on a page. These ends could have been met by a straightforward comic novel, no exegesis required.

But Golding has never been content to leave literal enough alone. Wilfred Barclay cannot just be a talented writer and an unusually repugnant person; he must be made to stand in some inchoate manner for mankind, that abstraction imprisoned on "the crazy ball flying through space which if you care or have to think of it is an enormity verging on, no, surpassing outrage." At this level of ambition, The Paper Men invites unfortunate comparisons with Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, the best and funniest work yet on the usurpation of a creative mind. Golding's book cannot match the Nabokovian magic; it is a random collection of jigsaw pieces jumbled together from different puzzles. --By Paul Gray

Excerpt

"The childish vulnerability caught me by the heart and the throat, nowhere else, it seemed. But there was a touch of panic too. I knew that the finger was on me, I was limed by her and would have to struggle to get myself free. Only the space of one day, morning, noon, night, to bring such change! It was there, the trap I had tried to avoid--and would avoid!--the bitter sorrow of a love that is fruitless, pointless, hopeless, agonizing and ridiculous. Once more, the clown's trousers had fallen down.

I cursed myself inwardly, then protested to myself that all was not lost. The brandy was still on the table, the mature man's consolation. Then, paper man that I am, I began to think--what a story!"