William Styron
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, William Styron — perhaps half-a-dozen others approaching or just past thirty — have numerous admirers, but it is clear that their impact on young intellectuals has not been remotely comparable to that made on a previous generation by Fitzgerald." -- "Born 1930: The Unlost Generation" by Caroline Bird, Harper's Bazaar, Feb. 1957 |
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William Clark Styron, Jr. (June 11 1925 – November 1 2006) was an eminent American novelist and essayist.
Before the publication of his memoir Darkness Visible in 1990, Styron was best known for his novels which included
- Lie Down in Darkness (1951), which he wrote at age 25;
- The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), narrated by Nat Turner, the leader of an 1831 Virginia slave revolt; and
- Sophie's Choice (1979), about Holocaust survivor Sophie "and her two men: Nathan, brilliant and dangerous, and Stingo, the loneliest, horniest would-be writer in New York."
Styron's influence deepened and his readership expanded with the publication of Darkness Visible. This memoir was a description of the author's devastating descent into depression, the "despair beyond despair." By examining an illness that affects millions but is still widely misunderstood, Styron offered an intimate and very personal portrait of the agony of this ordeal, revealing the anguish of a mind "desperate unto death".
