William Styron

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William Clark Styron Jr. (1925) - an American novelist and essayist who received major literary accolades for his writing; Sophie's Choice (1979), a book about a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz and her devoted but psychotic Jewish lover in postwar Brooklyn, which was released in 1985; Lie Down in Darkness (1951), his first book published in 1928, a novel by Nat Turner (1961), a novel by a young aspiring writer

Styron was able to write the memoir Darkness Visible (1990), the book he became best known for during the last two decades of his life, after recovering from his illness.

Early years

Styron was born in Newport News, Virginia, the son of Pauline Margaret (Abraham) and William Clark Styron. He grew up in the South and was steeped in the region's history. His birthplace was less than a hundred miles from the site of Nat Turner's slave revolt, later becoming the source for Styron's most famous and controversial book.

Styron's Northern mother and liberal Southern father gave him a broad view of race relations. Styron's childhood was painful. Styron would later experience clinical depression in his father, a shipyard engineer. When Styron was a boy and not a teenager, she died of breast cancer in 1939.

Styron attended public school in Warwick County, first at Hilton School and then at Warwick High School (now called Warwick High School) for two years before his father took him to Christchurch School, an Episcopal college-preparatory academy in Virginia's Tidewater area. "But of all the schools I attended, only Christchurch ever demanded more than mere admiration," Styron said.

Styron joined Davidson College and later Phi Delta Theta. By the age of eighteen, he was reading the writers who would have a lasting influence on his career as a novelist and writer, especially Thomas Wolfe. In 1943, Styron joined Duke University as part of the US 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. In an anthology of student work, he published his first fiction, a short story heavily inspired by William Faulkner. Between 1944 and 1946, Styron published several short stories in The Archive, the university literary journal. Despite the fact that Styron was commissioned as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, the Japanese surrendered before his ship left San Francisco. He returned to full-time studies at Duke University and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree (B.A.) after the war. In 1947, the first English speakers had arrived in England.

Personal life

Styron revived a passing acquaintance with young Baltimore poet Rose Burgunder while doing a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. In the spring of 1953, the two were married in Rome. Susanna Styron is a film producer; daughter Paola is a writer; and 2011 is a memoir of a father's son Thomas, a Yale University professor of clinical psychology.

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Career

Styron earned a degree in editing with McGraw-Hill in New York City. In an autobiographical passage of Sophie's Choice, Styron related the misery of this work. Since being provoked by his employers into firing him, he set about writing his first book in earnest. He published Lie Down in Shadow (1951), the story of a dysfunctional Virginia family three years ago. The novel received brisk critical acclaim. Styron was given the Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his latest book.

He was unable to accept the Rome Prize immediately after being recalled into the military due to the Korean War. Styron joined the Marine Corps but was later discharged in 1952 due to eye injuries. However, he'd turn his experience at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, into his short story The Long March, which would be published serially the following year. This was an adaptation of the Playhouse 90 episode "The Long March" in 1958.

Styron stayed in Europe for a long time. Among others, he became friends with writers Romain Gary, George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, James Baldwin, James Jones, and Irwin Shaw. The magazine, which became a well-known literary journal, was founded in 1953.

In another way, 1953 was a momentous for Styron. He returned to Italy, where he became friends with Truman Capote, finally able to enjoy his Rome Prize. He returned to the American Academy from an acquaintance with Rose Burgunder, a young Baltimore poet to whom he had been admitted the previous fall at Johns Hopkins University. They were married in Rome in 1953.

Styron's experiences during this period inspired his third published book Set This House on Fire (1960), a book about intellectual American expatriates on the Amalfi coast of Italy. The novel received mixed reviews in the United States, but its publisher said it was profitable in terms of sales. In Europe, its translation into French achieved best-seller status, far outselling the American version.

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