William Styron Video | Book Interviews

William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work. For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, including: ⁕Lie Down in Darkness, his acclaimed first novel, published at age 26; ⁕The Confessions of Nat Turner, narrated by Nat Turner, the leader of an 1831 Virginia slave revolt; ⁕Sophie's Choice, a story "told...  MORE

William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work. For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, including: ⁕Lie Down in Darkness, his acclaimed first novel, published at age 26; ⁕The Confessions of Nat Turner, narrated by Nat Turner, the leader of an 1831 Virginia slave revolt; ⁕Sophie's Choice, a story "told through the eyes of a young aspiring writer from the South, about a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz and her brilliant but troubled Jewish lover in postwar Brooklyn". Styron's influence deepened and his readership expanded with the publication of Darkness Visible in 1990. This memoir, originally intended as a magazine article, chronicled the author's descent into depression and his near-fatal night of "despair beyond despair". It was the first, and possibly the most vivid and insightful first-hand account of a major depressive episode to date. The memoir greatly increased knowledge and decreased stigmatization of major depressive disorders and its sequelae, suicide. It increased understanding of the phenomenology of the disease among sufferers, their loved ones, and the general public as well. Earlier, in December of 1989, Styron had written an op-ed for the New York Times responding to the seeming disappointment and mystification among scholars about the apparent suicide of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian writer. Styron noted in an article for Vanity Fair "the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be bourne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time—and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases—most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer." LESS