William Styron
William Styron | |
---|---|
Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, U.S. | |
Occupation | Novelist, essayist |
Education | Davidson College Duke University (BA) |
Period | 1951–2006 |
Notable works | Lie Down in Darkness The Confessions of Nat Turner Sophie's Choice Darkness Visible |
Spouse |
Rose Burgunder (m. 1953) |
Children | 4, including Alexandra |
Signature | |
William Clark Styron Jr. (June 11, 1925 – November 1, 2006) was an American
Early life
Styron was born in the
Styron's
Styron attended public school in Warwick County, first at
Upon graduation, Styron enrolled in Davidson College[5] and joined Phi Delta Theta. By the age of eighteen he was reading the writers who would have a lasting influence on his vocation as a novelist and writer, especially Thomas Wolfe.[5] Styron transferred to Duke University in 1943 as a part of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps V-12 program aimed at fast-tracking officer candidates by enrolling them simultaneously in basic training and bachelor's degree programs. There he published his first fiction, a short story heavily influenced by William Faulkner, in an anthology of student work [citation needed]. Styron published several short stories in the university literary magazine, The Archive, between 1944 and 1946.[6] Though Styron was made a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, the Japanese surrendered before his ship left San Francisco. After the war, he returned to full-time studies at Duke and completed his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in English in 1947.[6]
Career
After graduation, Styron took an editing position with
Military service
His recall into the military due to the
Travels in Europe
Styron spent an extended period in Europe. In
The year 1953 was eventful for Styron in another way. Finally able to take advantage of his Rome Prize, he traveled to Italy, where he became friends with Truman Capote. At the American Academy, he renewed an acquaintance with a young Baltimore poet, Rose Burgunder, to whom he had been introduced the previous fall at Johns Hopkins University. They were married in Rome in the spring of 1953.
Some of Styron's experiences during this period inspired his third published book Set This House on Fire (1960), a novel about intellectual American expatriates on the Amalfi coast of Italy. The novel received mixed reviews in the United States, although its publisher considered it successful in terms of sales. In Europe its translation into French achieved best-seller status, far outselling the American edition.
Nat Turner controversy
Styron's next two novels, published between 1967 and 1979, sparked much controversy. Feeling wounded by his first truly harsh reviews [citation needed] for Set This House on Fire, Styron spent the years after its publication researching and writing his next novel, the fictitious memoirs of the historical Nathaniel "Nat" Turner, a slave who led a slave rebellion in 1831.
During the 1960s, Styron became an eyewitness to another time of rebellion in the United States, living and writing at the heart of that turbulent decade, a time highlighted by the
In this atmosphere of dissent, many[who?] had criticized Styron's friend James Baldwin for his novel Another Country, published in 1962. Among the criticisms was outrage over a black author choosing a white woman as the protagonist in a story that tells of her involvement with a black man. Baldwin was Styron's house guest for several months following the critical storm generated by Another Country. During that time, he read early drafts of Styron's new novel, and predicted that Styron's book would face even harsher scrutiny than Another Country. "Bill's going to catch it from both sides," he told an interviewer immediately following the 1967 publication of The Confessions of Nat Turner.
Baldwin's prediction was correct, and despite public defenses of Styron by leading artists of the time, including Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, numerous other black critics reviled Styron's portrayal of Turner as racist stereotyping. The historian and critic John Henrik Clarke edited and contributed to a polemical anthology, William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, published in 1968 by Beacon Press. Particularly controversial was a passage in which Turner fantasizes about raping a white woman. Several critics pointed to this as a dangerous perpetuation of a traditional Southern justification for lynching. Styron also writes of a situation where Turner and another slave boy have a homosexual encounter while alone in the woods. Despite the controversy, the novel was a runaway critical and financial success, and won both the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction[8] and the William Dean Howells Medal in 1970.
Sophie's Choice
Styron's next novel, Sophie's Choice (1979), also generated significant controversy, in part due to Styron's decision to portray a non-
The novel tells the story of Sophie (a Polish
Darkness Visible
Styron's readership expanded with the publication of
Later work and acclaim
Styron was awarded the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates.[14][15]
Styron was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca in 1985.
His short story "Shadrach" was filmed in 1998, under the same title. It was co-directed by his daughter Susanna Styron.
Other works published during his lifetime include the play In the Clap Shack (1973), and a collection of his nonfiction, This Quiet Dust (1982).
French President
In 2002 an opera by
A collection of Styron's papers and records is housed at the Rubenstein Library, Duke University.[6]
In 1996 William Styron received the 1st Fitzgerald Award on the centenary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's birth. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature award is given annually in Rockville Maryland, the city where Fitzgerald, his wife, and his daughter are buried, as part of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival. In 1988 he was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal.[19]
He was a Charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Port Warwick street names
The
Personal life and death
In 1985, he had his first serious bout with depression. Once he recovered from his illness, Styron was able to write the memoir Darkness Visible (1990), the work for which he became best known during the last two decades of his life.
While doing a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Styron renewed a passing acquaintance with young Baltimore poet Rose Burgunder. They married in Rome in the spring of 1953. Together, they had four children: daughter Susanna Styron is a film director; daughter Paola is an internationally acclaimed modern dancer; daughter Alexandra is a writer, known for the 2001 novel All The Finest Girls and 2011 memoir Reading My Father: A Memoir; son Thomas is a professor of clinical psychology at Yale University.
Styron died from
Bibliography
Note – the following is a list of the first American editions of Styron's books
- Lie Down in Darkness. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951.
- The Long March. New York: Random House, 1956.[n 2]
- Set This House on Fire. New York: Random House, 1960
- The Confessions of Nat Turner. New York: Random House, 1967.
- In the Clap Shack. New York: Random House, 1973.
- Sophie's Choice. New York: Random House, 1979.
- Shadrach. Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1979.
- This Quiet Dust and Other Writings. New York: Random House, 1982. Expanded edition, New York: Vintage, 1993.
- Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. New York: Random House, 1990.
- A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth. New York: Random House, 1993
- Inheritance of Night: Early Drafts of Lie Down in Darkness. Preface by William Styron. Ed. James L. W. West III. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993.
- Havanas in Camelot: Personal Essays. New York: Random House, 2008.
- The Suicide Run: Fives Tales of the Marine Corps. New York: Random House, 2009.
- Selected Letters of William Styron. Edited by Rose Styron, with R. Blakeslee Gilpin. New York: Random House, 2012.
- My Generation: Collected Nonfiction. Edited by James L.W. I West III. New York: Random House, 2015.
Notes
- National Book Awards history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and multiple fiction categories, especially in 1980. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including the 1980 general Fiction.
- ^ 1952 (serial), 1956 (book)
References
- ^ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (November 2, 2006). "William Styron, Novelist, Dies at 81". The New York Times.
- ^ The Return of a Village Histon'S Boosters See Potential In Its Quaint Wwi Structures
- ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (November 2, 2006). "William Styron, Novelist, Dies at 81". The New York Times.
- ^ "Daily Press: Hampton Roads News, Virginia News & Videos". Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved September 4, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Eric Homberger (November 3, 2006). "Obituary: William Styron". The Guardian. Retrieved November 19, 2014.
- ^ a b c "William Styron Papers, 1855–2007 and undated". Rubenstein Library, Duke University.
- ^ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post
- ^ Confessions of Nat Turner, Amazon.com
- ^ Sirlin, Rhoda and West III, James L. W. Sophie's Choice: A Contemporary Casebook. Newcastle UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. p. ix. http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/60485 Archived July 28, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. Accessed January 5, 2013.
- ^ Helfand, Duke. "Students Fight for 'Sophie's Choice" Los Angeles Times. December 22, 2001. Accessed January 5, 2013.
- ^ "National Book Awards – 1980". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
With essay by Robert Weil from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog. - ^ Michiko Kakutani (November 3, 2006). "Styron Visible: Naming the Evils That Humans Do". The New York Times.
- ^ Styron, William (December 1989). "Darkness Visible". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on April 13, 2013. Retrieved April 11, 2013.
- ^ "Website of St. Louis Literary Award". Archived from the original on August 23, 2016. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
- ^ Saint Louis University Library Associates. "Recipients of the Saint Louis Literary Award". Archived from the original on July 31, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
- ^ "William Styron, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author". ShopHiltonVillage.com. Archived from the original on June 2, 2015. Retrieved December 20, 2010.
- ^ "Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts". Nea.gov. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved June 18, 2011.
- ^ Kozinn, Allan (May 19, 2009). "Nicholas Maw, British Composer, Is Dead at 73". The New York Times. Retrieved December 28, 2010.
- ^ "MacDowell Medal winners — 1960–2011". The Telegraph. Retrieved December 6, 2019.
- ^ "William Styron". Portwarwick.com. Retrieved January 29, 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-8078-3190-8.
External links and further reading
- Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton (Spring 1954). "William Styron, The Art of Fiction No. 5". The Paris Review. Spring 1954 (5).
- George Plimpton (Spring 1999). "William Styron, The Art of Fiction No. 156". The Paris Review. Spring 1999 (150).
- James Campbell, "Tidewater traumas", The Guardian Unlimited website
- William Styron at IMDb
- Kenneth S. Greenberg, ed. Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. xix + 289 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-517756-5(paper).
- James L. W. West III [editor], Conversations with William Styron, Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1985. ISBN 0-87805-260-7.
- James L. W. West III, William Styron: A Life, New York: Random House, 1998. ISBN 0-679-41054-6
- Charlie Rose with William Styron, A discussion about mental illness, 50-minute interview
- William Styron interview with William Waterway Marks on "The Vineyard Voice"/1989/covers a range of topics.
- "An Appreciation of William Styron", Charlie Rose, – 55-minute-long video
- A Conversation with William Styron Archived September 7, 2015, at the Wayback Machine on-line reprint of interview published in Humanities, 18,3 (1997),
- William Styron interview on Martha's Vineyard, William Styron interview by author and TV host William Waterway Marks with rare photo of Styron sitting at desk in his island writing studio.
- Michael Lackey, "The Theology of Nazi Anti-Semitism in William Styron's Sophie's Choice," Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 22,4 (2011), 277–300.
- KCRW Bookworm Interview
- A memoir of life with Styron by his writer daughter, Alexandra Styron.
- Stuart Wright Collection: William Styron Papers (#1169-011), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University
- William Styron: An Author's Life and Career, a comprehensive website maintained by James L. W. West III, Styron's biographer.