I may as well begin with a flat proposition: I think William Golding is the most interesting English novelist now writing…. I'd be rather surprised if [that proposition] were widely accepted; my impression is that Golding tends to be overlooked when the Novelists' League Standings are made up, as though he was known to be good, but at some other game. The rankordering of artists is, of course, unimportant—it's only a book reviewer's parlor game; but it is important to ask why a novelist of such extraordinary originality and power has somehow reached old age without having become an acknowledged classic. (p. 36)
[Golding's] interest has always been in finding possible forms for his moral vision, and not in the forms themselves. The forms have changed from novel to novel because the vision demanded new paradigms, but the vision has remained constant: man is fallen, evil is actual, suffering is certain, redemption is necessary but unlikely. It is a bleak reality that Golding goes on reimagining, but not an empty one; and better a bleak world containing good and evil than a cheerful one containing neither.
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