AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.

Reading My Father.(William Styron's 'Sophie's Choice')

The New Yorker

| December 10, 2007 | Styron, Alexandra | COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)Copyright

In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn. , --"Sophie's Choice."

The first time I read that line, the opening of "Sophie's Choice," I was thirteen years old. My father's novel, which he had spent most of my childhood writing, had just arrived in bound-galley form. Curious and proud (the advance word on the book was, I knew from talk around the house, excellent), I took a copy to school in my book bag. During recess and study hall, I began to read "Sophie's Choice" in a conspicuously serious fashion, hoping to attract interest in me and what I believed was my father's extremely important achievement. As it turned out, no one was very interested, least of all me. I found the book unbelievably boring. The difficult vocabulary and the historical references eluded me, page after page, until, at last, I let them sail by unchallenged.

And then I got to page 45, where Stingo, the narrator, who so obviously stood in for my father, lapses into a dream he describes as "the most ferociously erotic hallucination I had ever experienced." Further on, he elaborates, in extended libidinal detail: "She wiggled toward me, a wanton nymph with moist and parted mouth, and now bending down over my bare belly . . . " If you've read the book, you probably remember this reverie, along with other interludes so vivid and numerous that I can think of few similar literary novels that compare in sheer volume of sexual documentation. If you read the book, you probably laughed. I remember leaning against a railing outside the locker room and hoping not to throw up on my Bass Weejuns. "Calm down," I told myself, furtively peering again under the mint-green paper cover. "This is fiction. Daddy didn't really do all these things."

Mortified, I put the galleys back on the kitchen sideboard. I didn't finish "Sophie's Choice" for twenty-five years.

My father, William Styron, died just over a year ago. Famous by his mid-twenties, he helped create the cliche of the gifted, hard-drinking, bellicose writer which gave so much of twentieth-century literature a muscular, glamorous aura. He was not an engaged parent: he didn't eat dinner with us or attend school plays. He never threw a ball, built a tree house, or tucked us into bed. I can't remember him teaching me how to do anything except open a wine bottle, a job that I did on my tiptoes and with great dedication each night before I went to bed.

I guess I always knew that this was eccentric. The Styrons--me, my father, my mother, Rose, and my older siblings, Susanna, Polly, and Tom--were definitely different. Not that we were special, or necessarily unique in the world, but, from a child's point of view, it was pretty clear who the statistical outliers were. Roxbury, Connecticut, where we lived, is now a hamlet of second homes and impeccably renovated Colonial manors in the southern hills of Litchfield County. But when my parents arrived, in the mid-fifties, Roxbury was still both simple and remote.

They had met in 1951, when Bill Styron, the twenty-six-year-old author of "Lie Down in Darkness," spoke to a graduate writing class that Rose Burgunder was taking at Johns Hopkins. The following autumn, Rose, travelling in Italy, dropped a note in Bill's box at the American Academy in Rome, where, as a Prix de Rome winner, he was living and writing. In May of 1953, they were married at the Campidoglio in the company of a small party of friends that included Peter Matthiessen, Irwin Shaw, and John Marquand, Jr.

Related articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and more
Sophie's Choice Author, William Styron, and Wife Poet Rose Styron to Deliver...
Press release article from: Business Wire September 26, 2002 700+ words
...Sept. 26, 2002 Well-known author William Styron and his wife, poet Rose Styron will...experiences and communication skills. Author William Styron first experienced major depression...mind, and the world around us." William Styron chronicled his crippling battle and...
William Styron's Sophie's Choice: Poland, the South, and the tragedy of...
The Southern Literary Journal Wyatt-Brown, Bertram September 22, 2001 700+ words
...can match the candidness of William Styron regarding his inclination to...most especially Sophie's Choice, show that when under artistic...decision to compose Sophie's Choice may well have stemmed from...Nazi horror?" (Sophie's Choice 235). In Sophie's Choice...
Sophie's Choice: Gordon Gietz (Stingo), Angelika Kirchschlager (Sophie) and...
Magazine article from: Opera Canada Forbes, Elizabeth March 22, 2003 700+ words
The world premiere of Sophie's Choice, an opera with music and text by Nicholas Maw, based on the novel by William Styron, scored a tremendous success for the Royal Opera House. Maw's musical style, combining rich orchestral effects with...
William Styron (1925-2006).(Biography)
Magazine article from: Bookmarks January 1, 2007 700+ words
WILLIAM STYRON, WHO DIED on November...detailed in Sophie's Choice (1979). As one...heartbreaking, haunting choice she made at Auschwitz...Sophie's Choice is a titanic effort...STATESMAN, 10/21/90 William Styron (1925-2006...
William Styron Publishes First Fiction Work in 15 Years
Transcript from: NPR Morning Edition February 1, 1994 700+ words
...racist society. Author William Styron talks about his new...music] EDWARDS: William Styron's fans have had to...next book, Sophie's Choice, told the story of...his neighborhood. WILLIAM STYRON, Author: [reading...
A tribute to William Styron (1925-2006).(Obituary)
Magazine article from: World Literature Today Cheuse, Alan March 1, 2007 700+ words
...brought with it, I wrote William Styron a letter. I can...remember it well: William Styron. Styron's Acres...Turner and Sophie's Choice, he entered the great...memory of us all. To William Styron, late of Styron...
EDITORIAL: William Styron: A writer of enviable ambition.(Editorial)
Newspaper article from: Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, OH) November 7, 2006 700+ words
Nov. 7--William Styron was 26 years old when his first novel...and the Holocaust in Sophie's Choice (1979). Each book gained national...forces almost invariably redeemed. William Styron wrote about our collective humanity...
The Novels of William Styron: From Harmony to History.(Review)
The Southern Literary Journal Cook, Sylvia J. March 22, 1999 700+ words
The Novels of William Styron: From Harmony to History. By Gavin...Ellen Glasgow, Erskine Caldwell, and William Styron, raise interesting questions about...three of these books tend to make a choice between literature and history in...
For more facts and information, see all results
©2009 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
About us | FAQs | Contact us | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions
Other Gale sites: Encyclopedia.com | HighBeam Research | Acquire Content | Books & Authors | Goliath | MovieRetriever | Smart QandA