The Colour of Light – William Goldman (1984)

The Color of Light by William Goldman was published in 1984. Known primarily for his screenwriting (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride), Goldman turns inward with this novel, blending elements of a coming-of-age story, romantic drama, and a meditation on the pursuit of artistic purpose. Set primarily in Oberlin College and later New York, the novel follows Charles “Chub” Fuller, an aspiring writer navigating the complexities of love, identity, ambition, and memory.

Plot Summary

In the late spring air of Oberlin College, Charles “Chub” Fuller ambled across campus and glimpsed B.J. Peacock, the girl who had once made him fall up the stairs in infatuation, now breaking into tears. Two years earlier, their friendship began with spilled books and shared coffee, her laughter mingling with his awkwardness. She was a red-haired, green-eyed Texas beauty, poised to become a theatre star. He was the eager freshman with an invisible hunger to become a writer. But she was engaged to Del Hilton – a Vietnam veteran, poor, disciplined, and fiercely moral. Del grounded B.J.’s emotional flights with quiet strength. They were planning their lives together: New York, acting, law, graduate schools. But always, there was Yale. It was more than a school to them. It was a dream.

One afternoon, Chub watched from the shadows as Del shook B.J. in frustration. Her tears spilled as she fled into Chub’s arms. Over coffee and silence, she recounted the argument – not about futures or failures, but pepperoni pizza. That day, Del had received his Yale Law acceptance, and B.J. had too. Yet something had broken between them, not from rejection, but from the pressure of their own expectations. They were on the verge of everything they wanted, but the fantasy was cracking under the weight of reality. Chub didn’t understand what he had seen until she said it out loud. They had both gotten into Yale, and yet all he could feel was confusion.

That night, unable to sleep, Chub remembered something buried – the day he learned to swim. In the silence underwater, all was calm. But surfacing brought noise, and the first fight between his parents. He had freed himself in the water, and in doing so, had accidentally freed them too – to face each other, to begin their unraveling. He returned to his desk, haunted by the collision of memory and moment, and wrote a story. It was about Chris and Louise, two actors auditioning for Hair, both accepted, both joyous. Until they argued, on a hot street, about pepperoni on pizza. He wrote about the slaps, the broken glasses, the shattered engagement, and a memory of a six-year-old boy in water. It was the longest thing he had ever written. He called it The Girl(s) of My Dreams.

He brought it to Stanley “Two-Brew” Kitchel, an eccentric crippled genius who wore red-and-black lumberjack shirts and carried his crutches like weapons. Kitchel was campus-famous after a failed bet to drink a shot glass of beer every minute for ninety minutes. He had quit after two shots but turned humiliation into legend by embracing it. Two-Brew read Chub’s story and declared it honest, if uneven, and told him to keep going. It was the first time Chub felt like he might be something more than a dreamer.

He fought his way into Andrew Cheyney’s prestigious writing class – the small, feared critic whose pen had sliced through young egos for decades. Cheyney wasn’t impressed with begging. He gave Chub an assignment: write a one-page description, no characters, no dialogue. Chub struggled. First, he wrote about a tree he’d planted in kindergarten, nurtured like a brother, but it felt flat. Then he remembered a man on the street from his childhood, with half a white face, walking a dog with the same marking. He wrote it clean, fast, and sharp – and knew it worked. That piece earned him a place in Cheyney’s circle.

But as the semester unfolded, Cheyney asked for more. This time, a moment of great emotion. Chub revisited the fight between B.J. and Del, refracted again through fiction. He changed names, sharpened pain, and explored the agony beneath love. The more he wrote, the more he transformed lived moments into crafted ones. He began to understand that fiction didn’t merely reflect life – it redefined it.

Through the year, Chub watched the people around him twist into stories. B.J. and Del, once larger than life, became fragile in memory. Kitchel, with his flair and loneliness, became a mentor of sorts. The campus that once felt sprawling now folded into familiar paths. In the shadows of the library, in the corners of Tappan Square, he mined his life for meaning. He learned to dig into pain, to find clarity in memory, to shape the noise of the world into silence on the page.

And then came the moment when he was asked to read aloud to Cheyney’s class. He brought The Girl(s) of My Dreams, hands trembling, voice steady. The room listened. Kitchel smirked but didn’t interrupt. Cheyney’s pencil scratched occasionally. When it ended, the silence was thick. Cheyney said little, as always. But the next week, he read Chub’s piece aloud to the new class. Without naming the author, he dissected it, praised its rhythm, challenged its choices, and declared it the real beginning of a voice.

Chub kept writing. He wrote about his father’s decline, about his mother’s sadness, about being a child who watched instead of acted. He wrote about being a boy in Illinois, a student in Ohio, a ghost in his own memories. And he came to understand that storytelling wasn’t about invention. It was about recognition. Knowing what hurt, and being willing to press on it. Truth didn’t come from the facts. It came from the shape memory took when you looked at it long enough.

He didn’t know if he would succeed, if his words would ever leave the safety of pages tucked into drawers. But he had found something, a current beneath the surface, a voice pushing upward. He had once been a boy who learned to swim to escape the shouting above the water. Now he was a man who dove into noise and came back up with meaning.

And in that small space between silence and sound, he found the color of light.

Main Characters

• Charles “Chub” Fuller: Chub is the novel’s protagonist and narrative anchor. A bright but emotionally hesitant young man, he harbors dreams of becoming a writer. Much of the novel charts his psychological and creative development as he reflects on past relationships and confronts the limitations and possibilities of storytelling. His introspective nature often isolates him, but his deep curiosity about human behavior and memory fuels his literary ambition.

• B.J. Peacock: A captivating and ambitious drama student from Texas, B.J. is the “girl of Chub’s dreams.” Gifted with stage presence but lacking deep artistic fire, she is both muse and mystery to Chub. Her complex relationship with her fiancé, Del, and her own desires for theatrical success form a key emotional and thematic axis in the novel.

• Del Hilton: A Vietnam veteran and law student with a quiet strength, Del is grounded, stoic, and deeply moral. His disciplined, frugal lifestyle and loyalty to B.J. make him a compelling contrast to Chub. The emotional friction between Del and B.J., particularly around their diverging ambitions and socioeconomic backgrounds, adds tension to the story.

• Stanley “Two-Brew” Kitchel: A brilliant, loud, and eccentric fellow student, Kitchel becomes a surprising ally and a symbol of the unpredictable paths artistic lives may take. His legendary (and failed) bar bet adds comedic flair, but also highlights the interplay of perception, failure, and mythmaking.

• Andrew Cheyney: A feared and revered creative writing professor, Cheyney represents both the gatekeeping and the guidance inherent in the literary world. His sharp expectations challenge Chub to refine his talent and confront the emotional depths of his work.

Theme

• The Struggle for Artistic Identity: Chub’s journey is marked by a constant interrogation of what it means to be a writer. From his amateurish early efforts to his transformative realization of memory’s power, the novel explores the emotional cost and moral ambiguity of shaping reality into art.

• Memory and Truth: A recurring motif is the fallibility and reconstruction of memory. Chub’s vivid recollections – particularly of his parents’ fighting while he learned to swim – reveal how personal trauma and nostalgia intertwine to shape one’s creative voice.

• Love, Idealization, and Disillusionment: Chub’s infatuation with B.J. is tinged with longing, fantasy, and eventual clarity. The novel probes the difference between romantic idealization and the often painful truth of human relationships.

• Failure and Mythmaking: Through characters like Kitchel and even Chub himself, the book examines how personal failures can be recontextualized as legend, or even inspiration, depending on the narrative spun around them.

• Class and Ambition: The socioeconomic tensions between characters – especially Del’s poverty, B.J.’s ambitions, and Chub’s middle-class self-consciousness – underscore the costs and compromises inherent in chasing elite aspirations like Yale or artistic success.

Writing Style and Tone

Goldman’s prose is deceptively simple but emotionally resonant. He blends clean, cinematic dialogue with introspective interiority, often shifting between past and present seamlessly. This creates a rhythm that mirrors memory itself – fragmented, vivid, and sometimes contradictory. The narrative voice, though filtered through Chub’s perspective, is laced with irony, nostalgia, and raw vulnerability.

His stylistic hallmark lies in the interplay of realism and metafiction. Goldman doesn’t just tell a story; he reflects on how stories are told, why they’re told, and what emotional truths they reveal or conceal. The inclusion of Chub’s fictional story within the narrative – mirroring his lived experiences – is a masterstroke in self-referential storytelling.

The tone of the novel swings between bittersweet introspection and sharp wit. There is humor, especially in college antics and dialogue, but it is often undercut by a melancholic awareness of time, change, and personal limitation. Goldman is unafraid to dive into pain – the failure of dreams, the fissures in families, the loneliness of ambition – yet he never descends into melodrama. His restraint gives the emotional moments a haunting gravity.