At a colloquium at Emory on Oct. 30, Styron spoke about the writing process and how he came to create many of the fictional voices in his works. Taking questions from audience members, he related many personal experiences during his long career as a novelist. Styron's other books include Lie Down in Darkness, The Long March, Set This House on Fire, Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie's Choice and This Quiet Dust.
Styron wrote his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, in 1947 after he had been fired from McGraw-Hill, where he worked in a low-level editorial position. "I was actually relieved because it freed me to become a writer, which is what I wanted to do anyway," he explained.
In this novel, Styron recreates his hometown, Newport News, Va., and the story of a young girl who had committed suicide. "I wanted to take this girl's life from her early childhood to her suicide," he said. He framed the narrative of the story around social events shared by most American families. "And at each point, I pointed out the horror in her life," he noted.
Styron explained that the characters in the book were identifiable to people from his hometown. "I wanted to point to the enormous frailties in this girl's life--her father is a hopeless drunk, her mother a domineering bitch--and treat them with as much fidelity and accuracy as possible." Although there were some consequences to this portrayal, he said, "I never regretted dealing with them on that level."
At one point in the discussion, Styron addressed the autobiographical nature of some of his fiction. He recounted the real experience of his life upon which his novel, The Long March, was based. As a young marine, he was forced to go on a 40-mile continuous march under the command of "a demented colonel." Years later when living in Paris and reflecting on this experience, he began to explore notions of authoritarianism. The Long March came out of that reflection. "I was trying to understand why I was forced to walk 40 miles. No one died, but it was a type of suffering."
When asked how he creates a consciousness dissimilar to his own, such as the character of Nat Turner in his 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron explained, "The ultimate task of a writer is to accept some sort of impossible challenge and see if he can pull it off." In writing Confessions, he enters the mind of a black slave in a backwater community in 1831. Although the book was received with controversial criticism, Styron believes that it represents the "sacred task" of the writer. "A literary artist should be able to do anything he wants," he said.
Because there was virtually no detailed information about Nat Turner available, Styron built his character from the original confession taken down by the white lawyer assigned to Turner. "I don't think an historical novelist should be restricted to the facts; he should take liberties," he explained.
He explained that this process allows him to edit and revise as he writes. He noted, "My editing is relatively meager. Many writers create text in a haste, then go back and painstakingly edit and revise." He also said that on occasion he does experience a burst of creativity. He described those moments as when "suddenly you realize before you there is a river of words and all you have to do is to get in your boat and float." He explains that each day he tries to write about four hours. "I envy writers who can write all day," he said.
In many ways, the "right path" for Styron has always been associated with much cost. The writing process for Styron represents another sort of "dark woods." At the conclusion of his address, he explored the "emotional costs of completing a work." He said, "At the risk of sounding melodramatic, after everything I've written, I've had a sense of having destroyed myself. I've never finished a work without wanting to disappear and never return." The author of seven books, one a Pulitzer Prize winner and another a National Book Award winner, Styron believes he has a "work deficit." He said, "I should have several more works, but I don't because they cost too much."
--Matt Montgomery