By William Goldman

Three-Word Summary: Nothing Really Matters

Rating: 5/5

Goldman may be better known for writing The Princess Bride or the screenplay to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but The Temple of Gold was his first book and helped to launch a prolific writing career.

The Temple of Gold is about a young man named Ray Trevitt, who floats listlessly through life, bouncing from one crazy scheme to the next without much thought or care of the consequences of his actions.

He coasts through high school while drunk, fails out of college because of girls, accidentally kills his best friend, runs away to the Army, is discharged from the service after a few weeks, gets married to a girl he barely knows and then leaves her.

Many have compared the book to The Catcher in the Rye primarily because of the similarities between Trevitt and Holden Caufield. Both characters either seem to care too much or too little about the people around them. And neither seem to be willing to grow up because that would mean facing reality.

As a fan of Salinger’s masterpiece, I largely agree with the comparison. Caufield and Trevitt are almost equally empathetic and pathetic. They whine and sulk their way into our hearts and subconscious.

Much like most of Goldman’s later works, the book is written with an effortless and simple beauty. It’s does a convincing job of mirroring the troubled mind of a youth from his own first-person perspective.

The Temple of Gold enters into the genre of absurdism because it questions the meaning of life. In this way, it can be almost depressing, but is nevertheless important and significant for the same reason.