NYT: William Styron, Novelist, Dies at 81

[DeepModem Mom]

William Styron, Novelist, Dies at 81
By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
Published: November 2, 2006


(Kathy Willens/The Associated Press)
William Styron in 1998.

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 yesterday on 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 distinctive voice of the South and an heir to William Faulkner. In subsequent fiction, like “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and “Sophie’s Choice,” he transcended his own immediate world and moved across historical and 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 a few years ago. “No other American writer of my generation has had so omnipresent and exquisite a sense of the elegiac.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/books/02styron.html?hp&ex=1162530000&en=f6306789f9329ef1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[gauguin57]

1. I am so sad. This guy was a fabulous, fabulous writer.

He gave us Sophie's Choice -- great book made into a great movie. Lie Down in Darkness. Confessions of Nat Turner. Darkness Visible (about his own depression). So many others.

[pitohui]

2. a great loss

sorry to hear it

[Th1onein]

3. William Styron is my favorite author.

He was wonderful; absolutely and utterly wonderful.

[Shakespeare]

4. In addition to the wonderful fiction, he also wrote....

...the best essay I've ever read on depression (published as a short book called "Darkness Visible"). He was a rare man, and will be missed. :cry:

[JoFerret]

5. Yes - that was great

- shedding light on that personal darkness was a real contribution to the understanding of the mystery of depression.

[EFerrari]

7. That is a great essay. We have it around here somewhere.

My husband recognized his own depression reading it.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. RIP

The Confession of Nat Turner

[melody]

8. Styron's memoir "Darkness Visible"

Possibly the best internal piece ever written on clinical depression. Having clinical depression, I relate to it deeply.
It's a better place he goes to ... it has to be better than this place now.