Lord of the Flies Scribe Once Attempted to Rape a Teenager
An upcoming biography on Nobel laureate William Golding says that the author tried to rape a 15-year-old named Dora when he was 18 and on break from his first year as a student at Oxford.
According to The Guardian, Golding's biographer, Oxford English professor John Carey, discovered the rape story in his subject's journals as well as in the manuscript of an unpublished memoir.
Carey quotes the memoir as partially excusing the attempted rape on the grounds that Dora was "depraved by nature" and, at 14, was "already sexy as an ape".
It reveals that Golding told his wife he had been sure the girl "wanted heavy sex". She fought him off and ran away as he stood there shouting: "I'm not going to hurt you," the memoir said.
Two years later, the pair met again and had sex in a field, with Golding again introducing crudity by quoting the girl's foreplay remark: "Should I have all that rammed up my guts?"
Goldman's writings also suggest that the girl he attempted to rape later tried to have his father watch the two of them having sex in a field though binoculars, and that his idea for Lord of the Flies sprung from sociological experiments he conducted students while working as a teacher.
In a somewhat related note, "you're sexy as an ape" will be my new favorite pickup line until the first time I get slapped across the face for uttering it, which probably shouldn't take very long at all.