William Styron Libri

Exploring personal reflections and memories, this collection features fourteen essays that delve into William Styron's life and thoughts. Notable topics include his friendship with John F. Kennedy, insights on literary figures like Truman Capote and James Baldwin, and a meditation on Mark Twain. Styron also shares anecdotes about his daily walks with his dog and his summer home on Martha's Vineyard. The essays showcase his introspective and humorous nature, offering a deeper understanding of this complex figure in American literature.

Three stories are told: a young Southerner wants to become a writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman's past--one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.

"Mr. Styron's description of his climactic night of 'despair beyond despair' moved me (a healthy, nondepressive personality) to the point that I felt I was facing my own death. Here is an example of art refined in the fire of experience: the writing is so pure one is hardly aware of the ink on the page." —Edmund Morris In the summer of 1985, William Styron was overtaken by persistent insomnia and a troubling sense of malaise—the first signs of a deep depression that would engulf his life and leave him on the brink of suicide. In Darkness Visible a great novelist describes his devastating descent into depression, taking us on an unprecedented journey into the realm of madness. Expanded from his celebrated Vanity Fair piece, this moving memoir is an intimate portrait of the agony of Styron's ordeal, as well as a probing look at an illness that affects millions but is still widely misunderstood. "To most of those who have experienced it," Styron writes, "the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression." Through Styron's remarkable candor and powers of description, we come truly to understand the anguish of a mind desperate unto death. We are moved yet not depressed by his account: with him, we feel uplifted by a sense of catharsis and can at last begin to fathom depression's dark reality.

In a letter to his mentor in 1950, twenty-four-year-old William Styron expresses his anxieties about his debut novel, "Lie Down in Darkness." He reflects on the challenges of writing and his aspiration to elevate language in his work. Styron emphasizes the importance of personal expression in writing, aiming to use evocative and powerful words that resonate with his unique voice. This glimpse into his early struggles reveals his dedication to the craft and foreshadows his literary ambitions.

Darkness Visible describes the author's devastating descent into depression. It is an intimate portrait of the agony of his ordeal as well as a probing look at an illness that affects millions but is still widely misunderstood.

In 1831 Nat Turner awaits death in a Virginia jail cell. He is a slave, a preacher, and the leader of the only effective slave revolt in the history of 'that peculiar institution'. William Styron's ambitious and stunningly accomplished novel is Turner's confession, made to his jailers under the duress of his God. Encompasses the betrayals, cruelties and humiliations that made up slavery - and that still sear the collective psyches of both races.

This collection showcases the elegant and passionately engaged nonfiction of a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner. It offers vital insights and reflections on various subjects, highlighting the author's unique perspective and mastery of prose. Through a selection of essays, readers are invited to explore profound themes and the intricacies of the human experience, making it a significant addition to contemporary literature.

How does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist William Styron had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, Styron describes an illness that reduced him from a successful writer to a man arranging his own destruction. He lived to give us this gripping description of his descent into mental anguish, and his eventual success in overcoming a little-understood yet very common condition.The unabridged text of Darkness Visibleby William StyronVINTAGE MINIS- GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series-Swimming by Roger DeakinBabiesby Anne EnrightCalm by Tim ParksWork by Joseph Heller