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Author: Daniel Ross
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
William Styron has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity with the publication of Darkness Visible (1990), his account of his struggle with near-suicidal depression. His works are known for discussing psychological conflicts within families, religious doubt, existentialism, racial tension, and the role of history in fiction. Often compared with William Faulkner, Styron has emerged as one of the most important figures in contemporary American literature and is best known for his continuation of the Southern gothic tradition. Through original essays, reprints of previously published criticism, and excerpts from reviews, this volume traces the critical reception of Styron's writings over the last 40 years. All of Styron's novels are covered, but the majority of the selections focus on his three most important works: Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice. The pieces reflect a variety of critical perspectives, and the introduction overviews significant trends and omissions in Styron criticism. A bibliography lists Styron's writings, along with critical studies of his work.
Author: Daniel Ross
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
William Styron has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity with the publication of Darkness Visible (1990), his account of his struggle with near-suicidal depression. His works are known for discussing psychological conflicts within families, religious doubt, existentialism, racial tension, and the role of history in fiction. Often compared with William Faulkner, Styron has emerged as one of the most important figures in contemporary American literature and is best known for his continuation of the Southern gothic tradition. Through original essays, reprints of previously published criticism, and excerpts from reviews, this volume traces the critical reception of Styron's writings over the last 40 years. All of Styron's novels are covered, but the majority of the selections focus on his three most important works: Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice. The pieces reflect a variety of critical perspectives, and the introduction overviews significant trends and omissions in Styron criticism. A bibliography lists Styron's writings, along with critical studies of his work.
Author: William Styron
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997069
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 657
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Book Description
A vital, illuminating collection of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner’s elegant, passionately engaged nonfiction My Generation is the definitive gathering of William Styron’s nonfiction, exposing the core of this greatly gifted, highly convivial, and profoundly serious artist from his literary emergence in the 1950s to his death in 2006. Here are fifty years of Styron’s essays, memoirs, reviews, op-eds, articles, eulogies, and speeches, reflecting the same brilliant style and informed thinking that he brought to his towering fiction and to a deeply committed public life. Including many newly collected and never-before-published items, this compendium ranges from the original mission statement of The Paris Review, which Styron helped found in 1953, to a 2001 tribute to his friend Philip Roth—creating an essential overview of arts and letters during the post–World War II years. In these pages, Styron writes vividly of childhood days in Tidewater Virginia spent going to movies, not reading books. (“It does not mean the death of literacy or creativity if one is drenched in popular culture at an early age.”) He recalls being among the group of soldiers who would have been sent to invade Japan and were saved by Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb, which Styron feels was the right choice, “even though its absolute rightness can never be proved.” And he writes as few others have about midlife battles with clinical depression, “a pain that is all but indescribable, and therefore to everyone but the sufferer almost meaningless.” Here, too, are Styron’s personal encounters with world leaders, fellow authors, and friends, each of whom comes memorably to life. Styron recalls sharing contraband Cuban cigars with JFK (“a naughty memento, a conversation piece with a touch of scandal”), getting lost in the snow with Robert Penn Warren, and party-hopping with the young James Jones (an experience he likens to “keeping company with a Roman emperor”). The beginnings of his masterpieces The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice are chronicled here, along with the controversy that greeted the former upon its 1967 publication. Throughout, Styron celebrates the men and women of his generation, whose lives were forged in the crucible of World War II. Whether he’s recounting a walk with his dog, musing on the Modern Library’s list of the hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century, or contemplating America’s fraught racial legacy from his point of view as the grandson of a woman who owned slaves, William Styron writes always in urgent, finely calibrated prose. These fascinating pieces bring readers closer to this great writer and the world he observed, interacted with, and changed. Praise for My Generation “William Styron’s My Generation: Collected Nonfiction is both unsurpassably charming and unflinchingly honest, whether recounting the fallout from The Confessions of Nat Turner or reminiscing about the slave-owning grandmother who warned him never to forget he was a Southerner.”—Vogue “At its most accomplished, Styron’s non-fiction mixes a conscientious, richly traditional prose style with a strong current of fellow feeling, a certain awe at the human condition, which is what gives power to his best fiction. . . . Styron stood tall in his generation, and the best of him will stand up over time.”—USA Today “A must for every Styron fan’s library.”—BBC
Author: James L. W. West
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453202862
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
A “mesmerizing” biography of the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Sophie’s Choice, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Darkness Visible (Entertainment Weekly). William Styron was one of the most highly regarded and controversial authors of his generation. In this illuminating biography, James L. W. West III draws upon letters, papers, and manuscripts as well as interviews with Styron’s friends and family to recount in rich detail the experiences that shaped each of his groundbreaking books. From Styron’s Southern upbringing, which deeply influenced the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and National Book Award–winning Sophie’s Choice, to his feud with Norman Mailer and the clinical depression that led to his acclaimed memoir Darkness Visible, West’s remarkable biography provides invaluable insight into the life and works of a giant of American literature.
Author: Alexandra Styron
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416595066
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST— A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE. In Reading My Father, William Styron’s youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron’s parents—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. A drinker, a carouser, and above all “a high priest at the altar of fiction,” Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family’s life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem. From Styron’s Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation’s friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.
Author: Daniel Ross
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN: 0313280002
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
William Styron has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity with the publication of Darkness Visible (1990), his account of his struggle with near-suicidal depression. His works are known for discussing psychological conflicts within families, religious doubt, existentialism, racial tension, and the role of history in fiction. Often compared with William Faulkner, Styron has emerged as one of the most important figures in contemporary American literature and is best known for his continuation of the Southern gothic tradition. Through original essays, reprints of previously published criticism, and excerpts from reviews, this volume traces the critical reception of Styron's writings over the last 40 years. All of Styron's novels are covered, but the majority of the selections focus on his three most important works: Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice. The pieces reflect a variety of critical perspectives, and the introduction overviews significant trends and omissions in Styron criticism. A bibliography lists Styron's writings, along with critical studies of his work.
Author: Gavin Cologne-Brookes
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807152897
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
The first critical study of William Styron since his death in 2006, Rereading William Styron offers an eloquent reflection on the writer's works, world, and character. Bringing an innovative approach to literary criticism, Gavin Cologne-Brookes combines personal anecdote, scholarly research, travel writing, and primary material to provide fresh perspectives on Styron's achievements. For Cologne-Brookes, rereading unfolds in two ways: through close analysis of texts, and through remembrance. He begins with reminiscences about the man behind the books and then, giving due consideration to Styron's stories, incidental writings, and posthumous publications, interprets anew all his significant work -- from the nonfiction, including his acclaimed memoir of depression, Darkness Visible, to the novels Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice. Defining the relevance of Styron's writing in terms of everyday life, Cologne-Brookes explores the intricate relationships between an author, his work, and his readership, and between history and fiction, and writing and place. The book's emphasis on subjectivity and dynamic interaction makes it unique in Styron criticism and a striking contribution to the debate about what it means to study literature.
Author: William Styron
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 193631729X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 64
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Book Description
The New York Times–bestselling memoir of crippling depression and the struggle for recovery by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice. In the summer of 1985, William Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him. Darkness Visible tells the story of Styron’s recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and “once again behold the stars.” This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.
Author: Kirk Curnutt
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
From her early classic Three Lives to her best-selling Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas to Brewsie and Willie, a loving tribute to the G.I.s who adored her, Gertrude Stein's work was among the most controversial of the modernist movement. Alternately praised and derided, emulated and ridiculed, Stein was as unique a celebrity as the mass media of the early 20th century ever produced. As her influence spread through the lost generation she nurtured, critics from Edmund Wilson to confidant Carl Van Vechten defended her experimentation against the slings and arrows of the literary establishment. At the same time, Stein found herself parodied and caricatured from the pages of the New York Sun to the New Yorker. Her reputation solidified only after her 1946 death from cancer prompted a series of reminiscences and reestimations from the Chicago Tribune to the Saturday Review. While previous collections of Stein criticism typically reprint commentary by her most ardent supporters, this study reconstructs her precarious position in the eyes of American newspaper and magazine columnists and is thus a guide to her critical reception. While including quintessential pieces on Stein by Carl Van Vechten, William Carlos Williams, and Katherine Anne Porter, this collection also includes previously obscure estimations from contemporaries such as H. L. Mencken, Mina Loy, and Conrad Aiken. The book borrows from a range of sources—from leading literary outlets such as the New Yorker to a number of regional newspapers. Some 75% of the material in the volume has never before been reprinted.
Author: Douglas Robillard
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
With an emphasis on examining Flannery O'Connor's literary reputation during her lifetime, and the growth of that reputation after her death, this collection brings together fifty years of critical reactions to her work.
Author: Cathleen C. Andonian
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
Best known as the author of Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett was one of the most distinguished writers of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969, and his works have secured him a lasting place in the literary canon. The critical response to his fiction has been overwhelming. Numerous books and thousands of articles have been published on Beckett, primarily in Europe, the United States, and Canada. Since he wrote most of his works in French, and then translated them himself into English, critics responded to different versions of his works. This reference book documents the critical response to Beckett from his earliest prose and poetry to the public reaction to his death in 1989. Reviews and scholarly articles representing the response to Beckett's creative works are included. Selections are arranged chronologically, so that the reader may trace the reception of Beckett's works over time. An introduction summarizes Beckett's enormous contribution to literature, and a bibliography lists works for further reading. Winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature, Irish-born author Samuel Beckett earned a solid reputation for being one of the most important authors of the 20th century. Best known as the author of Waiting for Godot, Beckett wrote other dramatic works, such as Endgame and Krapp's Last Tape. He wrote several novels, including Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, and a number of poems and short stories. His innovative approach to language, character, plot, and narrative style was appreciated but sometimes criticized, and his nontraditional concepts of time and space taught readers to approach literature in a new way. Though he experimented with literary forms, his works are within the 20th century intellectual tradition of alienation, isolation, and pessimism. Through essays and reviews, this reference book documents the critical response to Beckett's poetry, fiction, and drama from his earliest works to the public reaction to his death in 1989. Because Beckett often wrote in French and then translated his works into English, scholars responded to several versions of the same work. Because Beckett also had an exceptional knowledge of world literature, philosophy, mathematics, and the sciences, his works are dense with meaning and have invited a broad range of critical approaches. This reference is divided into several sections that roughly correspond with the different genres Beckett utilized. Within each section, reviews and seminal articles are arranged chronologically, so that the reader may trace the response to Beckett over time. An introductory essay discusses the overall response to Beckett, and a bibliography lists works for further reading.
