This posting will launch a series of reviews of books I have
read, books that in large part will concentrate on that pantheon of writers considered
great and from whom lesser-known writers have much to learn. I begin with the
book I just finished reading this evening: Lie Down
in Darkness by William Styron
American author William Styron was a world-class wordsmith
in league with F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner. But unlike Fitzgerald
and Faulkner, his love affair with words often over-shadowed his story in Lie Down in Darkness, his critically
acclaimed first novel, published in 1952 when he was 27, the work that launched
him as a major American author.
I found the story to be so abstract,
wearying and needlessly drawn out that I had to force myself to stay with it—I
persisted only because this is the author of Sophie’s Choice (which I have read and loved) and The Confessions of Nat Turner (which I
plan to read soon), for which he won
the Pulitzer Prize. I also stuck with it because Styron was a devotee of
complexity of thoughts and feelings, and a master of unique and creative metaphors
and descriptions. This book qualifies as a good primer for writers who wish to
study how magnificent the English language can be at the hand of a genius of
its usage.
I don’t always see eye to eye with professional
literary critics, and this is just another case where I differ in my opinion as
to the worth of a book. The way I see it, this book deserves five stars for the
majesty of its prose, but no more than three stars for its story.
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