Conversations with William Styron

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: This is a selection of interviews with William Styron published during the period 1951-1984, from the months just following publication of "Lie Down in Darkness," his first novel, to the period after publication of "Sophie's Choice." Some twenty-five interviews are reprinted here, including six that are translated from the French and published in this country for the first time. Styron is one of the most frequently interviewed writers of his generation. Unlike Faulkner, to whom he was often compared early in his career, Styron has learned to be a patient and cooperative interview subject. His comments in these interviews reveal much about the sources of his fiction and about his early life. He also reacts to attacks on his work, comments on his mission as a writer, and describes his compositional habits. This is a useful collection for those who wish to know Styron better and to be guided by his conversations to clearer insights into his writing. For scholars and for general readers alike it will have much appeal. It gives the reader a sense of being in Styron's presence, of enjoying his flashes of wit and intellect, and of realizing how remarkable his achievement has been and how universally he is admired. Review Citations:

Library Journal 11/01/1985 (EAN 9780878052608, Hardcover)

Publishers Weekly 09/27/1985 (EAN 9780878052608, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Styron, William William Styron (1925-2006), born in Newport News, Virginia, was one of the greatest American writers of his generation. Styron published his first book, "Lie Down in Darkness", at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Confessions of Nat Turner" and the international bestseller "Sophie's Choice". Contributor Bio:  West, James L West is professor of English at The Pennsylvania State University. Contributor Bio:  West, James L W, III James L. W. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at The Pennsylvania State University and general editor of Penn State Studies in the History of the Book. He has published some twenty scholarly editions--among them editions of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt; F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise and Trimalchio; and William Styron's Inheritance of Night and Letters to My Father. West's books include American Authors and the Literary Marketplace Since 1900 (1988), William Styron: A Life (1998), and The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005). He has been awarded fellowships and grants from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Academy in Rome. West has held Fulbright appointments in England at Cambridge University and in Belgium at the Universite de Liege. He is at work on a variorum edition of The Great Gatsby.