Word: barclay
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Though doctors tell him he suffered a stroke, Barclay knows differently: "I saw I was one of the, or perhaps the only, predestined damned...
...something wrong in what one becomes." Golding has used this idea to give an old genre a new lift. Where disillusionment and the loss of ideals gave force to the nineteenth century novel of education, the resurfacing of suppressed, forgotten, or missunderstood ideals gives Golding's novel its kick. Barclay, realizing that his beliefs have been Christian and his acts have not, understands that his life is past human repair. Barclay himself cannot do anything about the person he has become...
This revelation interrupts and transforms Barclay's struggle. An eminent though declining novelist, Barclay has been beseiged by a young American academic, Rick Tucker, who badly wants to be the foremost expert on Barclay. As the novel begins, Barclay discovers Tucker rooting through the dustbin looking for torn-up papers. The incident proves disastrous: after Tucker discovers a letter from an old lover of Barclay's, the novelist's wife leaves him. The scene also gives Golding the chance to satirize culture-vultures. When Barclay expresses his anger, Tucker, "out of the depths of his reverent absurdity," says "'I understand...
Repulsed by Tucker's methods and motives, Barclay flees from country to country. Through Tucker's persistence, though, Barclay learns more and more about his pursuer. Tucker, an emmisary from Astrakhan College in Nebraska, has been given a special commission by a man named Halliday, a patron of the school, to write Barclay's official biography. Halliday likes Barclay because of an admission in one of his books to "liking sex but having no capacity for love." Barclay, remembering that he wrote the sentence simply to record a stray idea, is confused and disgusted by Tucker's persistence...
...revelation that Barclay experiences drives him to take the initiative against Tucker. He had already decided that he would no longer flee from Tucker; instead, "Rick should become my prey." But when a friend recommends that Barclay overcome his "universal indifference" by cultivating his affections, even starting with a dog, Barclay adapts the suggestion by trying to reduce Tucker to the condition of a dog. Tantalizing Tucker with the prospect of being Barclay's literary executor, Barclay forces Tucker at one point to lap wine from a saucer...