William Styron was born in 1925 in Virginia. This was a former slave state, and themes of violence, slavery and bondage (literal and metaphorical) recur in Styron’s writing. His best-known novel is undoubtedly his final one, ‘Sophie’s Choice’, a best seller which became a notable film in 1982, winning Meryl Streep an Oscar. This is one of the rare cases where a good novel became a better film: Alvin Sargent’s screenplay adaptation fixes many of the novel’s flaws. When the novel concentrates on Sophie’s past in Auschwitz and her present-day (late 1940s) turbulent relationship with the equally troubled Nathan, it’s a compelling and frequently very powerful novel – the choice of the title is one no-one should ever have to make. The novel is so powerful that one can easily overlook its problems, mostly to do with the third major character, Stingo, who relates the novel.

Stingo is clearly an autobiographical figure: many of his biographical details match Styron’s own. During the course of the novel he is writing one of his own, which bears a close resemblance to Styron’s debut, ‘Lie Down in Darkness’, written in 1948 and published in 1951. Stingo’s failure as a character is largely a failure in authorial distance. He’s simply far less compelling than Sophie or Nathan, and the narrative stalls for long episodes from Stingo’s diary relating his sexual misadventures with various young women, which are tedious in the extreme. (The film adaptation wisely reduces these several episodes into just one short sequence.) It’s easy to see why these are there: Stingo goes through several sexual failures before he attains a success, when he gets to fuck a concentration camp survivor, namely Sophie. What this says about the character’s self-absorption is plain enough, and it’s true that Stingo’s lack of perceptiveness is fully intended by Styron. But the line between character self-unawareness and authorial self-indulgence is a very thin one: the novel has been accused of misogyny by some writers, notably Joan Smith. Ultimately, ‘Sophie’s Choice’, while it is of considerable merit, is too flawed to be Styron’s best.

A better candidate are ‘The Confessions of Nat Turner’, which won Styron a Pulitzer Prize for its account of a real-life slave rebellion, but which attracted controversy because this first-person novel about a major black historical figure was written by a white author. A lifelong liberal, but still a white man. This must have taken some courage nearly forty years ago; nowadays, this would be so politically incorrect as to be unimaginable. I can’t vouch for its authenticity or accuracy, but the novel is a compulsive read.

Personally, I would give the nod to that first novel, ‘Lie Down in Darkness’, which is all the more remarkable for being the work of a twenty-five-year-old. It traces the decline of a formerly wealthy Southern family, the Loftises, brought into focus by the suicide of Peyton, a young woman, who is ultimately unable to break away from the family’s influence. An intricate novel, showing early on Styron’s gift for vivid scene-painting and his ability to sympathetically characterise a variety of characters (black as well as white). The novel culminates in Peyton’s final day, written as a fifty-page interior monologue.

‘The Long March’, a book-length novella published the following year, follows a group of soldiers on a forced march brought about to cover failures in command. The novella concentrates on the conflict between the rebellious Mannix and the commanding officer. Displaying most of Styron’s strong points in concentrated form, and restraining any tendency to overlength, it ranks amongst his best work.

The remaining novel, ‘Set This House on Fire’, was something of a disappointment, but like all of Styron’s work it has its merits. Set in Italy, it tells the story of Peter Leverett (who narrates), an expatriate American and his longtime friend Mason Flagg, and their relationship with a troubled artist, Cass. Many scenes are vivid, but the novel is markedly overlong and frequently heavy-handed. (Incidentally, the UK edition was censored.)

After 1979, Styron fell silent. For much of the time this was due to struggles with profound depression, which he related in his memoir ‘Darkness Visible’, one of the finest first-person accounts of mental illness. For many years he was working on a novel set during the Korean War, and it is not yet known how much of this he had completed, and if it will be published. William Styron died of pneumonia at the age of eighty-one.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOVELS

1951 Lie Down in Darkness
1952 The Long March [novella]
1960 Set This House on Fire
1967 The Confessions of Nat Turner
1979 Sophie’s Choice

OTHER WORKS

1973 In the Clap Shack [play]
1982 The Quiet Dust, and Other Writings [non-fiction]
1990 Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness [non-fiction]
1993 A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth [short stories]

Gary Couzens was born in 1964 and lives and works in Aldershot. He has had twenty short stories accepted by F&SF, Interzone, The Third Alternative, Peeping Tom and other magazines, plus a large number of articles and reviews in The British Fantasy Society Newsletter, Zene and elsewhere. He has three novels in varying stages of completeness and has just started his fourth.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.