Styron, William (Clark)

Styron, William [Clark] (1925– ),born in Newport News, Va., served in the marine corps before his graduation from Duke (1947). His first novel, which won great critical praise, was Lie Down in Darkness (1951), revealing the tragic life and suicide of a girl whose rich Virginia family was unable to provide her or themselves love, understanding, and security. The Long March (1953) is a short novel about a forced training march of marines that results in the deaths of eight men. Set This House on Fire (1960) presents the hectic, finally violent, lives of some drifting, decadent American expatriates in Italy, exploring the mysteries of their complex relations. Styron's next novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), won him his greatest critical acclaim (including a Pulitzer Prize) while stirring strong protests, mainly from black critics, of the way in which he conceived the protagonist and his followers in the fictive first‐person rendering of the historical Nat Turner, leader of a slave rebellion in Virginia during 1831. Thirteen years passed before Styron published another novel, Sophie's Choice (1979), which had comparably great sales and critical approval and denunciation, as he this time dealt with another subject alien to his background: experiences in a Nazi concentration death camp. In the Clap Shack (1972) is a comic play set in a venereal disease ward of the World War II navy. This Quiet Dust (1982) collects essays, reviews, and reminiscences. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990) is a narrative of Styron's struggle to understand and overcome clinical depression. Three long stories are collected in A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth (1993).