The pyramid - Hardcover

Golding, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571080111 ISBN 13: 9780571080113

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1967

Synopsis

Set in the superficially placid English village of Stillbourne, this is the sixth novel by Nobel Prize winner William Golding. It depicts three episodes from the life of one young man -- exploring the painful awkwardness of youth, the sharp emergence into maturity, and the sobering view of one's life from the peak. 183 pages.

About this title

About the Author

William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before he became a schoolmaster he was an actor, a lecturer, a small-boat sailor and a musician. A now rare volume, Poems, appeared in 1934. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and saw action against battleships, and also took part in the pursuit of the Bismarck. He finished the war as a Lieutenant in command of a rocket ship, which was off the French coast for the D-Day invasion, and later at the island of Walcheren. After the war he returned to Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury and was there when his first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954. He gave up teaching in 1961. Lord of the Flies was filmed by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding listed his hobbies as music, chess, sailing, archaeology and classical Greek (which he taught himself). Many of these subjects appear in his essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target. He won the Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died at his home in the summer of 1993. The Double Tongue, a novel left in draft at his death, was published in June 1995., William Golding (1911-1993) was a Booker and Nobel Prize winning author, best known for his first novel, Lord of the Flies, published originally in 1954 and adapted for film in 1963. His other works include The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), Rites of Passage (1980), The Double Tongue (published posthumously in 1995) a now rare volume, Poems (1934) and the essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target.
Golding was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before his writing career, Golding was a schoolmaster. He was also a keen actor, musician and small-boat sailor.
In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Review

Yet once more, o ye laurels? No, not from dissertation writers and literary quarterlies, who may not know quite what to make of Golding's latest. A careful, subdued story of one young man's passage from adolescence to reminiscence, from the 20's through the 40's, from the village of Stillbourne to Oxford and back, The Pyramid builds itself with dogged detachment and gradual accretions of meaning. Oliver, son of a limp pharmacist, has a few initiatory bouts with a bitter young town sexpot; an unwilling romp in the town musical show; and (the best part of the three) violin lessons from Miss Dawlish, a town eccentric beguiled by her driving teacher. Demands are made on this unresponsive, not terribly interesting hero, who tells it all in a first person sometimes arch, sometimes fine. If there's an allegory here, it's less cut and dried and ready for exegesis than is usual with Golding. Way of All Flesh rendered by Updike, the labellers might say...meanwhile, it can and will be read at face value, no great shakes but a pleasant climb. (Kirkus Reviews)

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company
• Publication date: 1967
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571080111
• ISBN 13: 9780571080113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1