William Styron (1925–2006)

I read this as part of my illegal books 2023 and forgot to post it in Feb.

This is a bullshit book. If you've only seen the movie, stick with that. I got nearly half-way through the book, and I know more about the main character's penis than I do about Sophie. This wasn't an illegal book because it was about Nazis. It was an illegal book because the main character goes on and on and on about masturbating while thinking about Sophie. Before he meets her. He watches her from his window. And show more masturbates. It's creepy. I do not care that it is a classic. The protagonist is a dirty creep.

Why are men like Styron praised for writing books like this? Ask yourself this question objectively.

This is one of those books Twain was referring to when he quipped:
“′Classic′ – a book which people praise and don't read.” show less

In Sophie’s Choice, William Styron does as masterful job of telling a horrific tale in bearable way. Sophie is a Polish Christian who survived 18 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Allies. Of course her story is heartbreaking. But Styron unfolds the tale in a way that allows the reader to take it all in without being crushed by the sadness of it.

First, instead of marching out the story of Sophie’s capture and imprisonment in chronological order, Styron layers it show more on, each layer building on the next. When the 22-year-old narrator, Stingo, a Southerner moved to Brooklyn to write novels, first meets Sophie in the summer of 1947, she gives him only the briefest version of her experience in the war. It is only as they grow closer as friends that Sophie, through a series of drunken encounters, provides more details to Stingo, each time admitting that she had lied to him before in earlier versions of her tale.

By presenting the horrifying particulars bit by bit, Styron seems mindful of the warning, and even quotes Stalin as saying, that a “single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The reader sees the tragedy of Sophie’s experience because, by offering just a little at a time, Styron allows the reader to digest her story, along with a great deal of information about the Holocaust in general. If Styron had presented her story in full from the beginning, the awfulness would be numbing.

Also, Styron balances Sophie’s tragic past with her tragic present in Brooklyn. In love with Nathan, a brilliant drug addict subject to violent fits of jealousy, Sophie has no chance of building a “normal” life in America. But, given her experiences in the concentration camp, it is impossible to imagine how she could. Rather than present an unbelievable fairy tale of survival, Styron uses the tortured relationship between Nathan and Sophie as the catalyst for her revelations to Stingo, as well as the vehicle of her ultimate, and well-foreshadowed, undoing.

Finally, for all its sadness, there is plenty of humor in the book. Some of Stingo’s failed romantic adventures are downright funny, as are his self-deprecating descriptions of his writing efforts. Again, without these side stories offering a respite from the main narrative, Sophie’s story would be unbearable.

Sophie’s Choice is going in my Top 10 favorite novels of all times. I don’t know yet what it is bumping off the list, but it is definitely going on. show less

Just as the holocaust was the ultimate example of cruelty that goes beyond imagining, this novel demonstrates the strength of the human spirit to survive despite having undergone the most vicious evil the world has ever known. The cruelty that Sophie has experienced is overwhelming in its magnitude, and her choice to live means a lifetime of self recrimination. Styron's own bouts with depression are obvious "drivers" of the plot and its characters. If you finish this book with your heart show more intact, read it again. There is indomitable strength and hope in Sophie that will make all of us re-examine our own darkest hours. show less

I am still suspect of Pulitzer Prize winning books, even those predating the '90s, and find it interesting that my copy of The Confessions of Nat Turner, first printed fifteen years after winning the award, bears no indication of its achievement. I suspect this is due to the subsequent controversy arising from a white man imagining what a slave would think and feel. Personally, I think fiction is doomed if we continue down the path of restricting authors to writing characters matching their show more personal backgrounds.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is William Styron's first-person narrative of the events surrounding a short-lived slave rebellion, told by the man who led it. In spite of the controversy the book caused, I found it a mostly believable depiction of what might have led to the insurrection. Nat—whose assigned surname is actually that of his owner—is an intelligent, mostly sympathetic character whose major character flaws Styron invented. There is nothing in the historical record documenting the relationships he had with any of the victims, particularly his obsession for a white woman who is, according to the real confession, the only person he personally murdered. There are also several unnecessary (ill-considered?) scenes whose homoerotic undertones and lack of clarity regarding who was doing what to whom work against what the novel was attempting to achieve. I also found the practice of writing speech in dialect distracting, but that was more prevalent (less objectionable?) when the novel was written.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is not of the same quality as Sophie's Choice, perhaps because it is told from the perspective of the main actor rather than by an observer, adding an (intentional?) element of unreliability to the novel's events rather than subjecting them to simple misinterpretation. Given the paucity of historical documents about both the events and the people involved (including significant discrepancies in the number of people murdered), Styron wrote a book worthy of reading. Buy a copy with his afterword, where he elaborates on the objections to his inventions and explains some of the choices he made as an author. show less