The Spire
William Golding
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  • Title: The Spire
  • Author: William Golding
  • ISBN: 9780571225460
  • Page: 276
  • Format: Paperback

    • Dean Jocelin has a vision that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, andDean Jocelin has a vision that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, and on Dean Jocelin in particular.From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Spire is a dark and powerful portrait of one man s will, and the folly that he creates.
    William Golding
    Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies Golding spent two years in Oxford focusing on sciences however, he changed his educational emphasis to English literature, especially Anglo Saxon.During World War II, he was part of the Royal Navy which he left five years later His bellic experience strongly influenced his future novels.Later, he became a teacher and focused on writing.Some of his influences are classical Greek literature, such as Euripides, and The Battle of Maldon, an Anglo Saxon oeuvre whose author is unknown.The attention given to Lord of the Flies, Golding s first novel, by college students in the 1950s and 1960s drove literary critics attention to it.He was awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 and was knighted in 1988.In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.


    Commentaires:

    Kalliope
    A BALANCING ACTSecond readings are dangerous enterprises. Anything can happen. When I first read this novel, I thought the Spire, that gives the name to the title, stood defiantly by the end of the book. My attention was focused on the descriptions of how architects and builders managed to pull up the complex architectural structures that miraculously were built during the Middle Ages. I did not pay too much attention to the writing. At the time, my English did not have strong foundations, and i [...]
    Jan-Maat
    This might be the finest historical fiction that I have read to date - partly because it works through atmosphere rather than detail.The book is short and the story simple. Set in medieval England during the reign of Henry II it concerns a new Dean who seeks to have a spire built on his cathedral against advice to the contrary and what results from this. The transformation of a cathedral into a medieval building site may not sound terribly exciting but it works through atmosphere and the confusi [...]
    Ben Winch
    For some reason, four years ago when I originally wrote this review (or one like it), I chose to attach it to The Spire, not Darkness Visible or Pincher Martin or The Inheritors, all equally fine books whose influence on me was no less profound. The review, you see, was really of Golding, not of any single one of his books. It also included an ornery and unfair assessment of British writers in general, prefaced by a genteel insult of British writing by Raymond Chandler and a brief, confused argu [...]
    Paul
    I have loved Lord of the Flies since we read it in English Literature class at school and have read it again a couple of times since. It occurred to me a few days ago that, despite my love of Lord of the Flies it has never even entered my head to try any other William Golding books. With this in mind, I bought Golding’s fifth novel The Spire.Set in the twelfth century A.D. (or C.E. or whatever you want to call it), this fantastic novel tells the story of Dean Jocelin of a cathedral that I’m [...]
    Dhanaraj Rajan
    May be three and half stars.On the surface, the plot looks very simple. Nepotism plays a main role in placing a less qualified person as a Dean of a Cathedral. The Dean considers it as his Call. Later as a Dean he has a vision and wants to transform the vision into a reality by building a spire to the cathedral. This is an impossible undertaking for the Cathedral is on a marshy land and does not have the foundation necessary to hold a spire of 400 feet. Everyone is against. The Deans considers i [...]
    Rıdvan
    William Golding deyince insanın aklına hemen "Sineklerin Tanrısı" geliyor. Hadi en iyi ihtimalle "Piramit" gelsin. Ama "Kule" gelmez. Herkes Sineklerin Tanrısı 'na tapar. Amanda efenim ne de güzel kitaptır o değil mi? Şimdiden klasikleşmiştir. İşte ben Golding olsam Sineklerin Tanrısı'ndan nefret ederdim. Böyle bir şaheserle çıkmak piyasaya ve sonrasında da ömrün boyunca sadece bir kerecik tadabildiğin başarıyı yakalamaya çalışmak. Dünyanın en zor işi. O kadar ro [...]
    M.J. Johnson
    I think it's possible to measure (to some extent) a great piece of writing by how large it looms in your psyche. This book and the religious hubris of its main character seemed to take up residence in my dreams from the moment I started reading it. It is a book packed with metaphor, and although written in the third person, it is fully inhabited by the main character Jocelyn's mental landscape. He is a man obsessed by a vison and a charge, which he is convinced has been placed on him by God, to [...]
    Issicratea
    Golding’s The Spire is an extraordinary novel—though uneven, I felt, in the same way as his Rites of Passage. The first two thirds or three quarters, while the spire is thrusting its improbable way to the heavens, is startlingly good: a poem of a novel, almost Blake-like in its fierce, odd, visionary, lyric language. The ending, for me, came untuned rather, but in a way that helped illustrate what a remarkable balancing act Golding pulls off in that great, prolonged opening sequence. Golding [...]
    Jeffrey
    After going to see Salisbury Cathedral and learning that Golding lived just down the street from it, near St. Anne's Gate, I was compelled to read this book in which Golding imagines the creation of the enormous spire atop the cathedral. In it, he has created is a brilliant, densely woven, intensely introspective study of obsession and faith, which pushes everyone around him to the very edge of endurance. Golding did a brilliant job showing us as the readers how the gigantic phallic spire in the [...]
    Hugo Emanuel
    Golding's "The Spire" concerns Dean Jocelin's attempt to crown his parish's cathedral with a vast spire, despite the cathedral not having the foundations to support its weight and length. He is opposed my many, learned man and layman alike, who claim that such attempt is a folly that will only end in disaster. Jocelyn’s will remains unshaken however, for he firmly believes that he is doing God's work, resorting to coercion and manipulation to force the unwilling collaboration of others in orde [...]
    Peter
    A priest builds a spire on a cathedral according to a spiritual vision, believing it to be the calling of God and dependant upon his will and faith to bring it to completion, destroying his congregation, vocation and sanity in the process.The prose is dense and disorientated, flashing between coherent thought, delirium, reality, reverie and nightmare. Certain themes and motifs are repeated throughout some of which hints at an understated, repressed sexuality. There is often reference in the narr [...]
    Cyndi
    Pretty good book. I would probably listen to it again just so I can hear Benedict Cumberbatch whisper in my ear. Yum!This is the story of a clergyman who thinks he was given a divine message to build a spire on his church even though the builder warns against it. Soon the clergyman thinks he also hears the devil talking to him, too.As he slips further into madness and the spire grows, we see how the actions of his congregation change without his guidance and how that effects him.
    Feliks
    What you can notice immediately about a novel like this is that it has nothing to do with today's shabby 'historical fiction' trend. Such books merely transpose today's sensationalism to a remote timeperiod; but deliver nothing more than the same tawdry potboiler intrigues we're familiar with from TV.'The Spire' is, in fact, literature; in that Golding exposes a forgotten way of life which heretofore has had little light shed upon it. He makes his scenario as authentic as possible, and (most imp [...]
    Gary Lawrence
    This is the only Golding book I have read since "The Lord off the Flies" as a teenager and I am glad I made the trip with the author back to medieval England and this story of a man and an unfinished Cathedral. Jocelyn is the Dean of the Cathedral - a young political appointment of the old King with aristocratic connections, now out of favour with the new King. The Cathedral, possible based on Salisbury, since Golding lived close by, lacks a Spire, for good reason, being built on marshy ground w [...]
    Colin Powell
    As I read this story I felt as though the author was reaching inside of me and tearing out something that is flawed or blinded by what I want to believe. William Golding unsettles me yet this is his most compelling story I have read so far. Brilliant!C.A. Powell Saxon Quest
    Jule
    The worst! I challenge everybody out there to read it and find something to like about it!
    James
    William Golding's The Spire is another of those 'improving' books that my father bought me years ago. This edition claims to have been published in 1983, but that feels a little to early – 1989 sounds more likely. That said taking 'only' 14 years to read a gift still feels woefully inadequate. Luckily he doesn't have a account, so he'll never know.The Spire is the story of Dean Jocelin and his spire. He is a man who has been touched by a vision; a man who God has charged with the task to buil [...]
    Rachel
    3.5 stars. Typically of a Golding novel, 'The Spire' is a real uphill struggle to get through, but equally typically there is great reward to be found in and at the end of your labours. At times it shares a mad, hallucinatory quality with 'Pincher Martin', which a mind can only take so much of in one sitting. My reading of 'The Spire' had ground to almost a halt when I went to see Roger Spottiswoode's adapted play at Salisbury Playhouse, having originally intended to finish the book beforehand. [...]
    Bettie☯
    Description: Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral. His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations. Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims. Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, and on Dean Jocelin in particular.Opening: He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head. God the Father was explo [...]
    Özgür Daş
    Aşırı sıkıcı bir konu sayfalarca ilgi çekiciliği olmayan kuru bir anlatım, yarım bırakma huyum olmadığı için ite kaka bitirdim.Golding'in okuduğum ilk kitabıydı kendinden soğuttu diyebilirim, uzun bir süre Golding kitaplarının kapağını açmam sanıyorum.
    Peter
    Nothing William Golding wrote about is what Golding wrote about—he was a master of metaphor, and his 1964 novel The Spire is a good example (as was his masterful Lord of the Flies, still on many reading lists). This is not an easy book, and reviews are all over the place. It is stream-of-consciousness filtered through the mind of its main character, a style filled with ambiguation. And it is an allegory, speaking of things unspoken. On its surface, The Spire is about a medieval cathedral in an [...]
    Neslihan
    Sineklerin Tanrısı'nı okumuş ve çok sevmiş biri olarak kitaptan beklentim büyüktü. Konu da ilgimi çekmişti. Ama kitabı çok zor okudum. Sorun çeviriden mi kaynaklanıyor acaba diye düşündüm ve buradaki bazı yorumlara göz atınca aynı sıkıntıları orjinal dilden okuyanların da belirtmiş olduğunu gördüm.Zemini çok da sağlam olmayan bir kiliseye transept kulesi inşa etmek isteyen bir rahip üzerinden insana dair birçok zaafın din ve inşaat ekseninde anlatılması [...]
    Laurel Hicks
    An amazing tale !
    Glen
    I found this a difficult read I enjoyed it I did think Pillars of the Earth was lent something by this
    Rob Manwaring
    I really like William Golding's novels - or at least the number of them I've read. And this was no exception. He has a really interesting style - straightforward on one level, but really gnarly and hard to follow on another. And, I confess, I read this quite quickly, so missed a few key parts of the plot, which actually makes me want to re-read it again. It was such a clever interplay of allegory, fable, and realism, too. It reminded me a lot of Pincher Martin, and that line that most novelists [...]
    Burak
    Okuması kolay olmayan bir kitap. Hızlı okunursa da gayet akar fakat bir şey anlaşılamaz, o yüzden yavaş ilerlemek çok daha faydalı. Çok fazla sembolizm barındırıyor ve eş zamanlı araştırma gerektiriyor bence. Öyle kapsamlı bir eser yazmış ki Golding, sayfalarca tez yazılabilir bence bu kitap üzerine. Ben de normal bir okur olarak bir kere okumayla hakkını tam veremediğimi düşünüyorum, belki ilerideki bir okumada başarabilirim. Şimdilik 3,5 puan veriyorum.
    Leena
    I read and listened to this book at the same time, so this review will cover both the work itself, and the narration done of it. I read this book after reading some Proust, so it honestly seemed accessible to me, despite being a story told via stream-of-consciousness thoughts from an increasingly crazy man. It's a short book, so if the style is bothering you, I'd suggest trying to power through it. Do this because this is one of those books that have a bunch of different themes and viewpoints an [...]
    MN
    I first read Golding’s *The Spire when I was about 15. I was completely astonished by it, and read it twice without stopping. It was the first time I realised that (and perhaps something of how) a contemporary writer can represent a cultural worldview which is, of necessity, very different from my own in a way which enabled me to not merely appreciate the differences in conceptualisation but in some way to understand the differences. It brought about a paradigm shift in the way I thought about [...]
    Etna
    всё началось гордыни одного отца-настоятеля Джослина, которому якобы было видение о том, что Богу угодно дабы шпиль увенчал церковь. Джослин (сначала я читала его имя как Ослин, ведь есть в нем что-то от ослиного упрямства и глупости относительно того, в чем он не разбираетс [...]
    Peter
    “He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head. God the Father was exploding in his face with a glory of sunlight through painted glass”Wonderful writing. William Golding makes the English language sing in this compelling study of a mediaeval churchman obsessed by the building of an impossible spire that thrusts upwards from the pit and pierces the very heavens. Seen from below, the spire is like “an upward waterfallat broke all the way to infinity in cascades of exultation that nothing c [...]
    • [PDF] Download ✓ The Spire | by ✓ William Golding
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      Posted by:William Golding
      Published :2020-06-06T19:16:37+00:00