Tom Bissell at VQR:
William Goldman wasn’t a great writer, at least not according to traditional standards. His prose, at its best, was like a milkshake: fast and tasty, with the occasional clog. At its worst, his prose could be both chatty and flat, which, like being interestingly dull, is hard to pull off. Goldman was famous for his writing speed, knocking out novels in just weeks. He was equally famous—or, rather, infamous—for his aversion to rewriting. But there has never been another writer quite like him.
He began his career with a bildungsroman called The Temple of Gold, which, at twenty-four, he wrote with what he later described as “wild desperation” over three weeks in 1956. It was published the following year by Knopf, a firm looking to capitalize on the Salinger-spawned craze for young, disaffected (and, needless to say, exclusively male) voices. In other words, a more-or-less normal beginning to a mid-century literary career. Goldman did, in fact, write more literary novels—a book a year, for some stretches—including one, Boys and Girls Together, that sold a million copies in paperback. Later, in the 1970s, he began to publish a variety of high-concept thrillers, some stylish and gripping and others, well, dreadful.
more here.
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