Word: styron
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...Hence the need to bring depression, and its sufferers, out of the shadows. Not that there's any shortage of material on the subject. Alongside some noxious self-help manuals, there have been remarkable personal accounts - William Styron's Darkness Visible, A. Alvarez's A Savage God - and excellent academic texts like Kay Redfield Jamison's Night Falls Fast. But Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression (Chatto & Windus; 560 pages) is poised to become the book for a generation that, more than any other, has this "living death" at its core...
Another student commented on Styron’s use of language throughout the novel, focusing upon his use of narration and dialogue, a dialogue that changes in cadence and vocabulary depending on whom Nat addressed. Styron identified Turner’s narrating voice as the most peculiar in the novel, because it is an authoritarian voice, and one of “high literacy.” According to his research, “a slave of that time, wouldn’t have [used such language].” But the most importantly, he said, the novel...
...Styron was motivated by his Southern upbringing to write the novel; “segregation left a scar on [his] psyche.” He feels a distinct connection to the era of American slavery, because his own grandmother owned two slaves at the time of emancipation...
Obviously, the writing of a novel is a daunting task, and Styron answered one student’s question about beginning the writing process. “After mastering the material of the time period, I felt comfortable assuming the skin of a slave in the 1800s. But I would never have tried to assume the skin of a black person in the 1960s, because I wasn’t familiar with the material of the time period.” Thus, it seems that familiarity with the subject matter is a crucial, if not the most important, step...
...Although Styron avoided a question about the types of books he enjoys reading by saying, “I won’t answer because I don’t remember,” he talked enthusiastically about his writing process. “It’s agony. Pure agony. I just try to get the best language down on paper. I value language more than anything.” Though this venerable author cited difficulty in writing due to a mental impediment, he added, “I don’t let it daunt...