Posted on 11/01/2006 5:23:48 PM PST by lunarbicep
William Styron, the novelist from the American South whose explorations of difficult historical and moral questions earned him a place among the leading literary figures of the post-World War II generation, died today in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where he had a home. He was 81.
The cause was pneumonia, coming after many years of illness, his daughter Alexandra Styron said.
Mr. Styron’s early work, including “Lie Down in Darkness,” won him wide recognition as a voice of the South and the heir to William Faulkner. In subsequent fiction, like the critical and commercial success “Sophie’s Choice,” he transcended his background and moved across cultural lines.
Critics and readers alike ranked him among the best of the generation that succeeded Hemingway and Faulkner. His peers included James Jones, Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer.
“I think for years to come his work will be seen for its unique power,” Mr. Mailer said of Mr. Styron in a telephone interview. “No other American writer of my generation has had so omnipresent and exquisite a sense of the elegiac. That is no mean virtue in these years of oxymoronic uproar.”
For Mr. Styron, success came early. He was 26 when “Lie Down in Darkness,” his first novel, was published, in 1951. It was a brooding, lyrical meditation on a young Southern girl’s suicide, as viewed during her funeral by various members of her family and their friends. In the narrative, language played as important a role as characterization, and the debt to Faulkner in general and “The Sound and the Fury” in particular was obvious. A
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Whatever his no-doubt-liberal politics, one of the few giants of contemporary American novelists, though he didn't do much since Sophie's Choice.
Sophie's Choice was a bummer of a book. I mean, it was a good book, as I remember... but not a happy book. I was about 16 when I read it and I remember thinking, "Well... THAT would suck!"
Lie Down in Darkness was a total rip-off of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
Lousy, overwrought writer of purple prose, and too much "borrowing". Sorry.
It doesn't take much to pass for a "literary giant" in this country as long as you keep the liberal book reviewers happy.
The location where he died also says a lot about the man.
He was a powerful voice for awareness of major depression, being a sufferer himself.
I appreciated his writing and 'Sophie's Choice' blew me away because I read it in my teens and at a time when I was finally realizing that "man's inhumanity to man" was something that needed to be stopped in it's tracks from my lifetime forward.
And we've done good. No more Hollocausts, we're deleting dictators where we find them in this world, people are finally getting a clue about Islamofascists, etc.
In fact, my Basset Hound is a registered AKC hound and his "fancy" name is "Sophie's Choice."
And Mr. Styron looks a little "Basset" in the face, from your posted pix, don't you agree? ;)
All right. Before anyone jumps down my throat...we've had a few UNREPORTED Hallocausts thanks to the MSM. (Ruwanda, Darfur, etc.) I never said I was perfect. ;)
Rest in peace.
Who's being overlooked then?
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