The Paper Men
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st us pr.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
A darkly comic and psychologically intense novel, The Paper Men chronicles the bitter, globe-trotting battle of wills between Wilf Barclay, a dissolute and self-destructive English novelist, and Rick L. Tucker, an ambitious American academic desperate to become his official biographer. Golding presents this pursuit as a kind of existential nightmare, stripping away the glamour of literary celebrity to expose the hollow vanity beneath fame and the predatory nature of obsession. The narrative unfolds with savage wit and mounting dread as Barclay, fleeing Tucker across Europe and beyond, finds that he cannot escape either his pursuer or his own profound spiritual emptiness. Golding illustrates how the hunter and the hunted are ultimately mirror images of each other — both men defined by ego, desperation, and a hunger for meaning they cannot name. Published in 1984, this late-career work carries the same unflinching moral seriousness that distinguishes all of Golding's fiction, making it a provocative and unsettling meditation on identity, authorship, and the soul.
Author: William Golding
Format: Hardback
Published: 1984, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Genre: Modern fiction
Edition: 1st us pr.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
A darkly comic and psychologically intense novel, The Paper Men chronicles the bitter, globe-trotting battle of wills between Wilf Barclay, a dissolute and self-destructive English novelist, and Rick L. Tucker, an ambitious American academic desperate to become his official biographer. Golding presents this pursuit as a kind of existential nightmare, stripping away the glamour of literary celebrity to expose the hollow vanity beneath fame and the predatory nature of obsession. The narrative unfolds with savage wit and mounting dread as Barclay, fleeing Tucker across Europe and beyond, finds that he cannot escape either his pursuer or his own profound spiritual emptiness. Golding illustrates how the hunter and the hunted are ultimately mirror images of each other — both men defined by ego, desperation, and a hunger for meaning they cannot name. Published in 1984, this late-career work carries the same unflinching moral seriousness that distinguishes all of Golding's fiction, making it a provocative and unsettling meditation on identity, authorship, and the soul.