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William Styron

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William Clark Styron, Jr. (born June 11, 1925) is an American novelist. He is best known for two controversial novels: the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), narrated by Nat Turner, the leader of an 1831 Virginia slave revolt, and Sophie's Choice (1979), which deals with the Holocaust.

Contents

Early years

William Styron was born in Newport News, Virginia, not far from the site of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, later the source for his most famous and controversial novel. Though Styron’s paternal grandparents had been slave owners, his Northern mother and liberal Southern father gave him a broad perspective on race relations unusual for his generation. Styron’s childhood was a difficult one: his father, a shipyard engineer, suffered from the clinical depression Styron himself would later inherit, and his mother died of cancer before Styron’s fourteenth birthday.

His father soon sent the increasingly rebellious Styron to Christchurch School, an Episcopal University-preparatory school in the Tidewater region of Virginia--and the first of several. On graduation, Styron enrolled in Davidson College, but eventually dropped out to join the Marines toward the end of World War II. Though Styron was made a lieutenant, the Japanese surrendered before Styron’s ship even left San Francisco. Styron then enrolled in Duke University, which would later grant him a B.A. in English; here Styron also published his first fiction, a short story heavily influenced by William Faulkner, in an anthology of student work.

First novels

After his 1947 graduation, Styron took an editing position with McGraw-Hill in New York City. Styron later recalled the misery of this work in an autobiographical passage of Sophie’s Choice, and after provoking his employers into firing him, he set about his first novel in earnest. Three years later, he published the novel, the story of a dysfunctional Virginia family culminating in a young woman’s suicide, as Lie Down in Darkness (1951). The novel received overwhelming critical acclaim, including the prestigious Prix de Rome, but Styron’s recall into the Korean War prevented him from immediately following it. After his 1952 discharge for eye problems, Styron transformed the experience into his short novel, The Long March published serially the following year.

Styron then sojourned in Paris, befriending Romain Gary, George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, James Baldwin, James Jones, and Irwin Shaw, among others; the group would found the famous Paris Review in 1953. The same year, Styron married poet and activist Rose Styron, to whom he remains married to this day. Styron’s experiences of this period would later be recalled in Set This House on Fire (1960), a novel about intellectual American expatriates on the Riviera. The novel received at best mixed reviews, with several critics savaging the novel for what they called its melodrama and undisciplined structure.

The Nat Turner controversy

Wounded by his first truly harsh reviews, Styron spent years researching and composing his next novel, the fictitious memoirs of the historical Nat Turner. During this period, James Baldwin was his guest for several months, composing his novel Another Country. Ironically, Another Country would be criticized by some African-American groups for black author Baldwin’s choice of a white protagonist, leading Baldwin to foresee even greater problems ahead for Styron; “Bill’s going to catch it from both sides” he told an interviewer immediately following the novel’s 1967 publication.

Baldwin’s words proved prophetic. Despite public defenses of Styron by both Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, a large group of African-American critics reviled Styron’s portrayal of Turner as racist stereotyping, or to be writing about things of which he was not obligated to write. Particularly controversial was a passage in which Turner fantasizes about raping a white woman, which several critics pointed to as a dangerous perpetuation of a traditional Southern justification for lynching. On the other hand, many critics have argued that despite his flaws, Turner remains a strong, sympathetic, and heroic figure throughout Styron’s novel. Despite the controversy, the novel became a runaway critical and financial success, eventually winning the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Later works

Though Styron's next novel, Sophie's Choice (1979), could hardly match the fervor that followed Confessions of Nat Turner, his decision to portray a non-Jewish victim of the Holocaust sparked a minor debate of its own. The novel, which tells the story of the Polish-Catholic Auschwitz survivor Sophie, her brilliant but menacing Jewish lover Nathan, and her young admirer Stingo, was a nationwide bestseller. A 1982 film version was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Meryl Streep winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Sophie.

In 1985, Styron suffered from a serious clinical depression which he would later recall in his popular memoir Darkness Visible (1990). His other works include a play, In the Clap Shack (1973) and a collection of his nonfiction pieces, This Quiet Dust (1982).

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Bibliography

External links

 

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