Fringe parties could save us from failed leadership

In his introduction to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Stephen King envies the reader who is experiencing Golding’s dystopia for the first time. He recalls his own first encounter with Lord of the Flies and Golding’s subsequent testimony on the origins of this disturbing story.

In an audio recording that you can find online, Golding says, “One day I was sitting (on) one side of the fireplace...my wife was sitting on the other... and I suddenly said to her, ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books?’”