My Generation (65 page)
Authors: William Styron
“A Friend's Farewell to James Jones,”
New York
, June 6, 1977, pp. 40-41. Memoir of Jones. Collected in the 1982 edition of
This Quiet Dust
as “James Jones.” Replaced with a different reminiscence of Jones in the 1993 expanded edition.
“A Farewell to Arms,”
New York Review of Books
, June 23, 1977, pp. 3â6. Review of Philip Caputo,
A Rumor of War
. Collected in
This Quiet Dust
(1982).
“Hell Reconsidered,”
New York Review of Books
, June 29, 1978, pp. 10â14. Review of Richard Rubenstein,
The Cunning of History
. Collected in
This Quiet Dust
(1982).
“Almost a Rhodes Scholar,”
South Atlantic Bulletin
45 (May 1980), 1â7. Memoir. Collected in
This Quiet Dust
(1982).
“Perennial Fear,”
New York Times
, June 7, 1981, p. 21. On warfare.
“Honored Virginian Honors Virginia,”
Newport News Times-Herald
, July 18, 1981, p. 7. Acceptance speech for the Virginian of the Year award.
“A Leader Who Prefers Writers to Politicians,”
Boston Globe
, July 26, 1981, pp. A21, 24. On the inauguration of Mitterrand. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008) as
“Les Amis du Président.”
“In the Southern Camp,”
New York Review of Books
, August 13, 1981, pp. 24â26. Review of C. Vann Woodward, ed.,
Mary Chesnut's Civil War
. Collected in
This Quiet Dust
(1982).
“William Styron's Nile Diary,”
Geo
3 (September 1981), 10â24. Travel. Collected in
This Quiet Dust
(1982) as “Down the Nile.”
“Recollections,”
Hartford Courant Magazine
, January 3, 1982, pp. 4â9. On the composition of
Lie Down in Darkness
. Collected in
This Quiet Dust
(1982) as
“Lie Down in Darkness.”
“The Short Classy Voyage of JFK,”
Esquire
, December 1983, pp. 124 ff. Memoir.
“Children of a Brief Sunshine,”
Architectural Digest
, March 1984, pp. 32 ff. Reflections on Shirley, the antebellum Virginia mansion on the James River. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“Historic Houses: Thomas Wolfe Remembered,”
Architectural Digest
, October 1984, pp. 194â200. On Wolfe's childhood home in Asheville, N.C.
“In Celebration of Capote,”
Vanity Fair
, December 1984, pp. 120â22. Memoir. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008) as “Celebrating Capote.”
“Cigarette Ads and the Press,”
Nation
, March 7, 1987, pp. 283 ff. On advertisements for tobacco products. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“Death Row,”
New York Times
, May 10, 1987, p. 25E. Op-ed, on Shabaka Sundiata Waglini. Reprinted
New York Times
, September 30, 1990, sect. 4A, p. 2. Collected in the expanded edition of
This Quiet Dust
(1993).
“Virginia Foster Durr,”
Esquire
, June 1987, p. 161. Appreciation.
“Jimmy in the House,”
New York Times Book Review
, December 20, 1987, p. 30. Memoir. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008).
“Family Album,”
Paris Review
, Spring 1988, pp. 269â87. Photographs with commentary.
“Farbar: The Crime and the Punishment,”
Esquire
, September 1988, p. 154. Article about Buzz Farbar.
“International Books of the Year,”
Times Literary Supplement
, December 2â8, 1988, p. 1342. Praise for Roy Gutman,
Banana Diplomacy
.
“Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died,”
New York Times
, December 19, 1988, p. A17. Op-ed. Collected in the expanded edition of
This Quiet Dust
(1993).
“A Literary Friendship,”
Esquire
, April 1989, pp. 154 ff. Memoir of James Jones. Reprinted as the foreword to
To Reach Eternity
(1989). See Section B. Collected in the 1993 expanded edition of
This Quiet Dust
as “James Jones,” where it replaces a 1977 memoir of Jones listed above.
“The Distant Shaw,”
Vanity Fair
, August 1989, pp. 48 ff. Memoir of Irwin Shaw. Collected in
My Generation
(2015); a shortened version of the
Vanity Fair
text follows Styron's original beginning, published for the first time.
“A Voice from the South,”
Sewanee Review
97 (Fall 1989), 512â24. Memoir of Styron's paternal grandmother. Collected in the expanded edition of
This Quiet Dust
(1993).
“Darkness Visible,”
Vanity Fair
, December 1989, pp. 212 ff. The initial version of Styron's memoir of depression, later expanded for book publication.
“In Praise of Vineyard Haven,”
New York Times Magazine
, June 15, 1990, p. 30. On Styron's summer home. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008) as “ââIn Vineyard Haven.'â”
“Presentation to E. L. Doctorow of the Howells Medal,”
Proceedings of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters
, 2nd series, no. 41 (1990). Styron's speech on presenting the medal to Doctorow for
Billy Bathgate
.
“Dear Dirty Dublin: My Joycean Trek with Philip Roth,”
New York Times Book Review
, June 9, 1991, p. 9. Remarks on presenting the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature to Roth.
“We Weren't in It for the Money,”
Washington Post
, July 16, 1991, p. A19. Styron's account of his service as a judge for the Turner Tomorrow Award. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“The Wreckage of an American War,”
New York Times Book Review
, July 16, 1991, p. 71. Review of Lewis B. Puller,
Fortunate Son
. Collected in the expanded edition of
This Quiet Dust
(1993).
“On William Blackburn and Creative Imagination,”
Duke Dialogue
, September 13, 1991. On his college mentor.
“The Little Pills That Depress,”
Newsday
, July 31, 1991. Adapted from a speech on depression.
“Nat Turner Revisited,”
American Heritage
42 (October 1992), 64â73. On the controversy over
The Confessions of Nat Turner
. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“Prozac Days, Halcion Nights,”
Nation
256 (January 4/11,1993), pp. 1 ff. On the Upjohn company. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“The Enduring Metaphors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima,”
Newsweek
, January 11, 1993, pp. 28â29. On the aftermath of World War II. A longer version, from the surviving typescript, collected in
My Generation
(2015) as “Auschwitz and Hiroshima.”
“ââAn Interior Pain That Is All but Indescribable,'â” Newsweek, April 18, 1994, pp. 52â53. On depression. Collected in
My Generation
(2015) as “Interior Pain.”
“Slavery's Pain, Disney's Gain,”
New York Times
, August 4, 1994, p. A23. Op-ed on Disney's plans for a Civil War theme park. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008).
“Too Big for Disney,”
Washington Post
, August 16, 1994, p. A19. On the proposed Disney theme park.
Untitled statement by Styron about
Brown v. Board of Education, American Heritage
45 (December 1994), 84.
“ââI'll Have to Ask Indianapolisâ'â”
Traces
(Indiana Historical Society) 7 (Spring 1995),
5â12. On the expurgation of
Lie Down in Darkness
in 1951. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008).
Untitled statement about
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, New Yorker
, June 26âJuly 3, 1995, pp. 132â33. A longer version, from the surviving typescript, is collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008) as “A Literary Forefather.”
“The Writer in a Mean and Dogmatic Time,”
Confrontation: A Literary Journal of Long Island University
56/57 (Summer/Fall 1995), 15â20. Acceptance speech for the 27th Annual Literary Award of the National Arts Club, New York City, delivered February 1, 1995.
“Last-Minute Pleas,”
New Yorker
, August 14, 1995, p. 26. Statement on Mumia Abu-Jamal.
“The Book on
Lolita
,”
New Yorker
, September 4, 1995, p. 33. On the rejection of
Lolita
at Random House. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“A Case of the Great Pox,”
New Yorker
, September 18, 1995, pp. 62â75. Memoir. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008).
“A Horrid Little Racist,”
New York Times Magazine
, October 8, 1995, pp. 80â81. Memoir. Styron's title in the surviving MS is “A Youthful Transgression.”
“Transcontinental with Tex,”
Paris Review
, Spring 1996, pp. 215â26. Memoir of Terry Southern. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008).
“Havanas in Camelot,”
Vanity Fair
, July 1996, pp. 32â41. Memoir of John F. Kennedy. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008).
“Nat Turner Turns 30,”
Boston Globe
, April 13, 1997, p. D1. On the novel and its history of controversy.
“Fifty Years of Literary Friendship,”
At Random
, no. 17 (Spring/Summer 1997), 3. Memoir of his friendship with Robert Loomis, his editor at Random House. Collected in
My Generation
(2015) as “Bob Loomis.”
“A Wheel of Evil Come Full Circle: The Making of
Sophie's Choice
,”
Sewanee Review
105 (Summer 1997), 395â400. Account of a friendship with Hannah Arendt and of the composition of the novel. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“A Modern Library Juror Fesses Up,”
New Yorker
, August 17, 1998, pp. 29â30. On an end-of-the-century literary contest. Collected in
Havanas in Camelot
(2008) as “Fessing Up.”
“American Dreamers,”
George
, August 1998, p. 76. Introduction by Styron: statements by others about various American citizens.
Untitled comment on the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal,
New Yorker
, October 12, 1998, p. 10. Collected in
My Generation
(2015) in a longer version, from the manuscript, titled “Clinton and the Puritans.”
“It Cannot Be Long: Remembering a Friend,”
Oxford American
, September/October 1999, p. 111. Memoir of Willie Morris. Collected in
My Generation
(2015).
“C. Vann Woodward: 1908â1999,”
Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
51 (2000), 92â95. Memoir. Collected in My
Generation
(2015).
“Why Great Fiction Will Never Die,”
MacDowell Colony Newsletter
30 (Winter/Spring 2002), 3â7. Speech on the occasion of presenting the MacDowell Medal to Philip Roth. Collected in
My Generation
(2015) as “The Contumacious Mr. Roth.”
APPRENTICESHIP
The Prevalence of Wonders
1.
The essay appears in Bell's Art (London: Chatto & Windus, 1914).
2.
T. S. Eliot, “Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar” (1920).
RACE AND SLAVERY
A Southern Conscience
1.
Whitney Balliett, “Books: Finis,”
New Yorker
, March 30, 1963, pp. 174â77.
Overcome
1.
The essay by Baldwin is “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” published in
The New Yorker
for November 17, 1962; collected as “Down at the Cross” in Baldwin's
The Fire Next Time
.
2.
Ulrich B. Phillips,
Life and Labor in the Old South
(1929); Gunnar Myrdal,
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
(1944).
Our Common History
1.
Quoted in Raymond A. Sokolov, “Into the Mind of Nat Turner,”
Newsweek
, October 16, 1967, p. 69.
In the Southern Camp
1.
Kenneth S. Lynn, “The Masterpiece That Became a Hoax,”
New York Times Book Review
, April 26, 1981, p. 9.
Nat Turner Revisited
1.
C. Vann Woodward, “Confessions of a Rebel: 1831,”
New Republic
, October 7, 1967, pp. 25â28.
2.
American Quarterly
23 (October 1971), 486â518.
3.
New York Times Book Review
, June 3, 1984, sec. 7, p. 47.
4.
Martin Duberman, “Historical Fictions,
New York Times Book Review
, August 11, 1968, pp. 1, 26â27. Eliot Fremont-Smith, “Nat Turner I: The Controversy,” and “Nat Turner II: What Myth Will Serve?”
New York Times
, August 1 and 2, 1968, pp. 29, 31.
5.
Genovese, “The Nat Turner Case,”
New York Review of Books
, September 12, 1968, pp. 34â37.
6.
Ascension Day
, play by Michael Henry Brown, reviewed by Mel Gussow in
New York Times
, March 4, 1992, p. C19.
7.
Baldwin, from “Here Be Dragons” (1985), in
The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948â1985
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), p. 690.
FINAL SOLUTIONS
Auschwitz
1.
The symposium was held on June 3â6, 1974, with much coverage in newspapers and other media. The proceedings, edited by Eva Fleischner, were later published by Ktav Publishing House as
Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? Reflections on the Holocaust
(1977).
Auschwitz and Hiroshima
1.
Judgment at the Smithsonian
, ed. Philip Nobile, afterword by Barton J. Bernstein (New York: Marlowe, n.d.).
2.
“Hiroshima: Why the Bomb Was Dropped,” ABC broadcast, July 27, 1995.
3.
McGeorge Bundy,
Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years
(New York: Random House, 1988), p. 64.
4.
Buruma's essay is collected in
The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West
(New York: Random House, 2000).
5.
Gavan Daws,
Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific
(New York: William Morrow, 1994).
A Wheel of Evil Come Full Circle
1.
“Trivializing Memory,” in Elie Wiesel,
From the Kingdom of Memony: Reminiscences
(New York: Summit, 1990), 166.
DISORDERS OF THE MIND
Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died
1.
Stewart Kellerman, “Shadow of Auschwitz on Primo Levi's Life,”
New York Times
, November 26, 1988, pp. 1â4.
2.
New Yorker
, May 11, 1987, p. 2.
Prozac Days, Halcion Nights
1.
“Jury Partly Blames Sleeping Pill in a Murder,”
New York Times
, November 13, 1992, p. A20.
2.
See Roth's “Roth on the Record” (letter to the editor),
Atlantic
, June 2012, p. 14.
PRISONERS
The Death-in-Life of Benjamin Reid
1.
Chessman (b. 1921) was convicted of robbery, kidnapping, and rape in 1948 and was sentenced to death. Acting as his own attorney, he avoided eight execution deadlines; in published letters, essays, and books he argued for his innocence and sparked a national debate about capital punishment. He died in the gas chamber at San Quentin on May 2, 1960.
A Death in Canaan
1.
Joan Barthel, “Did Peter Reilly Murder His Mother?”
New Times
, February 8, 1974, p. 20.
2.
John Corry, “Arthur Miller Turns Detective in Murder,”
New York Times
, December 15, 1975, p. 46.
PRESIDENTIAL
Havanas in Camelot
1.
Alfred Kazin, “The President and Other Intellectuals,”
American Scholar
30 (Autumn 1961), 498â516.
Clinton and the Puritans
1.
Wall Street Journal
, September 14, 1998.
LITERARY
We Weren't in It for the Money
1.
Jonathan Yardley, “Literary Lions and the Tame Turner Award,”
Washington Post
(Style section), June 17, 1991.
2.
Daniel Quinn,
Ishmael
(New York: Bantam/Turner, 1992).
3.
See Edwin McDowell, “Judges in Turner Award Dispute Merits of Novel Given a $500,000 Prize,”
New York Times
, June 5, 1991.
ANTECEDENTS
“O Lost!” Etc.
1.
Bernard DeVoto, “Genius Is Not Enough,”
Saturday Review of Literature
, April 25, 1936, pp. 3â4, 14â15.
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES
My Generation
1.
Hollander,
Poems of Our Moment
(New York: Pegasus, 1968), p. 20.
Big Jim
1.
Dickey's eulogy for Capote was published in the
Proceedings of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
, 2nd series, no. 35 (May 16, 1984).
CRUSADES, COMPLAINTS, GRIPES
If You Write for Televisionâ¦
1.
Pierson, “The Censorship of Television,” 2 parts,
New Republic
, March 23 and 30, 1959.
Cigarette Ads and the Press
1.
Smoking and Health
(1964), and
The Health Consequences of Smoking
(1967).