The Golding fashion among undergraduates has not, as yet at least, reached anything resembling the dimensions of the Salinger fashion which was operative on American campuses even five years ago, but those who like [Lord of the Flies] like it with a passionate intensity which tends to fly at the throat of adverse criticism of any sort. The spell exerted by Lord of the Flies (and, for those who have read it, by The Inheritors) seems to reside in its combination of fast-paced and violent action, all-embracing and rather facile pessimism, and heavy-handed and obvious symbolism. Both books devote much energy to telling us that they are profound, and youth has a weakness for profundity almost as fatal as its weakness for Weltschmerz…. Without too much hesitation, I would venture the prediction that the Golding craze, though certainly as silly, will prove neither as significant nor as long-lived...