The human race thrives on agreeable surprises, particularly spectacular reverses of fortune. When the underdog triumphs our moral fervor is engaged: out there, we feel, a merciful Providence is keeping an eye on things; virtue will out. When William Golding won the Nobel Prize for literature last year—the first British writer to do so in more than 30 years—the British reaction was agreeable surprise at the honor paid to English letters but little moral fervor. Someone said sourly, "There is no consensus that Golding is a terrible writer." There was no consensus, either, among the Swedish jury that he was a good one.

The official citation praised Golding's fiction as somber moralities and dark myths about evil and treacherous, destructive forces. "They are also colourful tales of adventure which can be read as such, full of narrative joy, inventiveness and excitement."

This Swedish praise caught the reading public, in the United States as well as in Britain, on the hop. The majority had decided, over a period of 20 years, that Golding was a one-shot writer who had never equaled his first novel, Lord of the Flies. A minority was still coming to terms with Golding's later novels, a powerful flowering in old age. To most people, Golding was a mystery, a part genius, part sublime silly-billy, a man of exceptional imaginative powers working too often on tasks not worthy of the effort; uneven and never predictable.