William Styron dies

[brownie]

From BBC News:

US NOVELIST WILLIAM STYRON DIES

The American writer, William Styron, has died of pneumonia in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, aged 81.

His novels included Sophie's Choice, the story of a Holocaust survivor from Poland, which was filmed with Meryl Streep and also became an opera.

He also wrote The Confessions of Nat Turner, which won him a Pulitzer prize.

William Styron's other work included a best-selling memoir, Darkness Visible, which told of his battle with near-suicidal depression.

Styron had been in bad health for some time and had published no full-length novels for over 25 years.

"This is terrible," novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a longtime friend, told the Associated Press news agency.

"He was dramatic, he was fun. He was strong and proud and he was awfully good with the language. I hated to see him end this way."

Mother's death

Styron was born in 1925 in Newport News, Virginia, the son of a shipbuilder, and lost his mother when he was 13.

During World War II, he served in the Marines, and ended a conflict he did not expect to survive stationed in Okinawa.

"Some of my problems I think came from a continuing anguish over my mother's death and if I had gotten shot it would have been, I suppose, some kind of completion," he said in a 1990 interview.

Returning to the US, he studied at Duke University and moved to New York.

In 1951, he completed his first novel, Lay Down in Darkness, a Southern family saga of alcoholism, mental anguish and suicide.

After The Long March and Set this House on Fire, he made his name in 1967 with The Confession of Nat Turner, the story of a slave who led a bloody and failed revolt before the American Civil War.

It won him a Pulitzer Prize, but the furore which followed fulfilled James Baldwin's prediction that "Bill's going catch it from black and white".

Styron was accused of racism and historical inaccuracy, but he defended himself, saying writers had a duty to "meditate" on history.

Fall into depression

In 1979, he published Sophie's Choice about a Southerner who meets a Polish concentration camp survivor in New York.

The novel was filmed starring Meryl Streep, and in 2002 Nicholas Maw's opera had its premiere.

Again, Styron came under fire for his treatment of a difficult historical subject.

By the mid-1980s, he was suffering from severe depression and spend some time in hospital after coming near to suicide.

"Death was now a daily presence, blowing over me in cold gusts," he wrote in Darkness Visible.

Politically liberal, he counted former President Bill Clinton and the playwright Arthur Miller in his social circle.

[connoisseur series500]

Styron was an excellent writer. I read his complete essays and also "The Confessions of Nat Turner." I think I've got "Darkness Visible" somewhere as well.

[Dmitry]

Books are nice, but his real claim to fame was inventing the styrofoam.

[ghost of miles]

Styron was a favorite when I was a teenager--I wrote him when I was 18 and actually got a very nice postcard back, which is still stuck in my copy of SOPHIE'S CHOICE. He was one of the last of that generation that grew up worshipping Thomas Wolfe, and his language was always sensually pleasing to read. THE LONG MARCH is a novella that often gets overlooked when people talk about his books, but it's worth checking out. I reread SOPHIE'S CHOICE a few years ago, and came away thinking, "Botched masterpiece." Great story--the kind of story an author waits a lifetime for--but undermined by self-indulgence IMO when it comes to the young, would-be writer/narrator. (Too often I feel that the authorial voice is buying what it's supposed to be satirizing.) Still, it had such a powerful impact on me when I was younger that I'll probably return to it at some point. Sorry that he never finished his WWII/Vietnam novel... had long looked forward to reading that.

[7/4]

Styron was a favorite when I was a teenager--I wrote him when I was 18 and actually got a very nice postcard back, which is still stuck in my copy of SOPHIE'S CHOICE. He was one of the last of that generation that grew up worshipping Thomas Wolfe, and his language was always sensually pleasing to read.

Thomas Wolfe, a distant relative. A big influence on Jack Kerouac, someday I'll go to Ashville and visit my roots.

[ghost of miles]

Wow, that's cool, 7/4. Does Wolfe get read much these days? I read LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL around the same time I read Styron. I've always been curious to dip into some of Wolfe's shorter pieces (hmm, what is a "short" Thomas Wolfe piece? ) that appeared in the early 1930s when he was working on OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Styron's portrait of Wolfe's last editor (a thinly disguised Edward Aswell) in SOPHIE'S CHOICE is pretty funny. No Maxwell Perkins he.

[connoisseur series500]

Styron was a favorite when I was a teenager--I wrote him when I was 18 and actually got a very nice postcard back, which is still stuck in my copy of SOPHIE'S CHOICE. He was one of the last of that generation that grew up worshipping Thomas Wolfe, and his language was always sensually pleasing to read.

Thomas Wolfe, a distant relative. A big influence on Jack Kerouac, someday I'll go to Ashville and visit my roots.

That is cool.

Wolfe holds a pretty important place in 20th century American literature. Somehow I went through a Master's degree in literature without having read any of his books, but I am aware of his influence, which is large.

[7/4]

Wow, that's cool, 7/4. Does Wolfe get read much these days?

I don't think so. 20 years ago when I was in high school they were not teaching or even mentioning him.

Edited November 3, 2006 by 7/4

[7/4]

Recently a string quartet that I wrote was included on an audio only dvd tribute to Morton Feldman. Long after it was recorded, I found this on the blog of the New Yorkers music critic Alex Ross.

Edited November 3, 2006 by 7/4

[Brad]

I think I first read Nat Turner when I was a teenager (or if my memory fails me as to when it came out, in my early 20s) and later read Sophie's Choice. I haven't read his other books but Sophie's Choice was one of the best books I've ever read.