This Day in Literary History (William Styron, Chronicler of Slavery, Holocaust, and Despair, Born)

June 11, 1925— Novelist and essayist William Styron, who wrote powerful fiction about slavery, the military, and the Holocaust—as well as a searing memoir of his own struggle with suicidal depression—was born in Newport News, Va.

Lie Down in Darkness brought the 26-year-old Styron notice as a novelist of abundant narrative gifts and deep moral seriousness, working in Faulkner’s tradition of Southern storytelling. He did not realize until his first bout of mental illness in the mid-1980s that even the heroine of this early effort suffered from this affliction.

As part of a cohort of writers who served in World War II and briefly spent time abroad after its conclusion, he—as well as friends James Jones, Irwin Shaw, Norman Mailer, and Peter Matthiessen—took cues from the “Lost Generation.”

They were, Styron’s youngest daughter Alexandra wrote in her memoir Reading My Father, “Big Male Writers…[who] perpetuated, without apology, the cliché of the gifted, hard drinking, bellicose writer that gave so much of twentieth-century literature a muscular, glamorous aura."

Even as Styron played the bon vivant during summer parties at Martha’s Vineyard, his poet-activist wife Rose and their four children endured his moodiness, angry outbursts, and frequent frustration over his inability to bring his work to as quick and successful conclusion.

In middle age, that age of homage, masking their own attempts to obliterate the shock of their war, proved increasingly unsuccessful and counterproductive. Though Styron’s career lasted four decades, his output was not that extensive—four full-length novels, a book of short stories, a memoir, a play, and an essay collection—finding, at the age of 65, that the “senior partner” to his writing, his drinking, no longer satisfied or spurred his writing.

A childhood in Tidewater region of Virginia was overshadowed by his mother’s decline and death from breast cancer, a struggle that only worsened his father’s melancholy. W.C. Styron’s second marriage left his son with a stepmother he found chilly and unsympathetic.

I briefly described in this post from 14 years ago the controversy surrounding Styron’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the bloodiest slave uprising in antebellum America, The Confessions of Nat Turner.

Many admirers like myself of his forays into the darkest chapters of American life attributed the long gaps between books to perfectionism, a tendency common among authors.

But with Darkness Visible, he described, in shattering detail, how his writer’s block was bound up with a psychic condition that he likened to a storm in his brain.

This memoir provided knowledge and help to others similarly afflicted. But, aside from the trio of novellas collected in Tidewater Morning (1993), Styron was never able to complete his World War II novel, The Way of the Warrior, after Sophie’s Choice in 1979, because his depression returned with a vengeance in the spring of 2000, troubling him till his death six years later.

Song Lyric of the Day (Donny Hathaway, Hoping That ‘Brighter Days Will Soon Be Here’)

“Never mind your fears
Brighter days will soon be here
Take it from me:
Someday we'll all be free.”— “Someday We'll All Be Free,” written by Donny Hathaway and Edward Howard, performed by Donny Hathaway on his LP Extension of a Man (1973)

Last night, a beautiful cover version of this song by Hanka G reminded me of the stunning original by Hathaway. Edward Howard wrote the lyrics to encourage Hathaway, who was already suffering from the mental illness that would claim his life six years later.

A half century later, the song remains a powerful balm to the spirit for anyone experiencing anxiety, depression, or just simply the blues—especially with the holidays over and the bleakness of winter setting in.

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on ‘The Leisured Rich’ and the Poor)

“The leisured rich, who are not paid to do anything, themselves pay for the privilege of filling their vacuum with active occupations or passive diversions. Sport in all its varieties, alcohol and elaborate eating, love-making, theater-going, card-playing—these are some of the activities and diversions with which the rich can afford to fill up the aching void of their leisure. By means of such distractions they contrive to keep boredom and melancholia at bay….To the onlooker, the leisures of the rich may not provide a particularly uplifting spectacle; but for the rich themselves unemployment is not intolerable. A poor man, living at subsistence level, can buy no opiates or stimulants. Foe him, the vacuum of leisure is complete. He is exposed to the full force of boredom and depression. He is never able to forget, as the rich man can forget in the whirl of his distractions, the futility of a life deprived of sense or purpose and contributing nothing to the greater life of society at large. The effects of prolonged and unmitigated leisure are appalling. Slowly and insidiously it tends to reduce its victims to a kind of living death.”  — English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), “The Man Without a Job,” December 20, 1936, in Aldous Huxley, Between the Wars: Essays and Letters, edited by David Bradshaw (1994)

These days, addiction rates are twice as high among the jobless as among those with a job, according to the information web guide Addiction Center. So Huxley’s contention about the poor man being unable to buy “opiates or stimulants” does not hold true today, no matter what may have happened when he wrote this during the Great Depression that gripped both side sides of the Atlantic.

Huxley—who, later in life, experimented with mescaline and LSD—recognized, in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World, that “psychotropic drugs were not just toys for recreational purposes but had the power to fuel political and religious change,” according to this Oxford University Press blogpost by pharmacology professor Richard J. Miller of Northwestern University.

Huxley's other point, about the poor being exposed to “the full force of boredom and depression,” remains true, as does his warning about “prolonged and unmitigated leisure” among what used to be called the “idle rich.” The impact of the current COVID-induced recession will take a long time to sort out, but the psychological effects cannot be discounted.

Quote of the Day (John Predmore, Praying for Physical and Spiritual Healing)

“For continuing or renewed health for all those I love,

         Strengthen them in your mercy, Lord.

For all struggling with life-threatening illness,

         Be their source of comfort, O Good Shepherd.

For all weakened by age or infirmity,

         Strengthen both their limbs and their spirit, O God.

For all suffering from mental or nervous afflictions,

         Be their calming presence, Lord Jesus.

For all with disabling handicaps,

         Give them courage and patience, O Lord.

For all struggling with spiritual anxiety, depression or addiction,

         Shower them with your love and mercy, O God.

For all who feel alone, for the lonely, the marginalized, the homebound, the shunned, and those who feel on the edge of society,

         Let them feel your comforting presence.

For all close to death,

         Ease their pain and grant them your peace, O Sacred Heart

For doctors, nurses, hospice workers, and caregivers,

        Guide their healing actions and inspire their words and spirit,

        most Loving Lord.”—Jesuit priest John Predmore, “Prayer: Petitions for Healing,” Prayer: Petitions for Healing (blog), Aug. 23, 2012

As I age, I have watched in dismay as more and more people fall victim to physical and mental illness—an experience that I am sure many other Baby Boomers can identify with. I hope those who read this will join me in praying for all those afflicted in these ways.

 

Quote of the Day (Theodore Roethke, on Madness)

“What's madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance?"—American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), “In a Dark Time,” in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1963) 

Quote of the Day (Edward Abbey, on Melancholy and Action)

“As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.” —Western essayist, novelist, and environmental advocate  Edward Abbey (1927-1989), A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal (1989)

Quote of the Day (James Taylor, on How Addiction ‘Freezes You’)

“A big part of my story is recovery from addiction…One thing that addiction does is, it freezes you. You don’t develop, you don’t learn the skills by trial and error of having experiences and learning from them, and finding out what it is you want, and how to go about getting it, by relating with other people. You short-circuit all of that stuff and just go for the button that says this feels good over and over again. So you can wake up, as I did, at the age of 36, feeling like you’re still 17. One of the things you learn as you get older is that you’re just the same.”—Singer-songwriter James Taylor quoted in Paul Sexton, “James Taylor: ‘A Big Part of My Story is Recovery From Addiction',’” The Telegraph (U.K.), June 20, 2015

I have thought of Taylor’s quote a great deal in thinking of the current opiod crisis and its origins. The first indication of massive U.S. drug addiction came early in the late 19th and early 20^th century, when Civil War veterans turned to a variety of “medicines” for pain management. James Taylor’s form of “pain management,” however, was of a different sort: to ward off the depression that continually afflicted him in his youth (a trauma recorded in his harrowing "Fire and Rain").

The recent manifestation of the opiod crisis really came out of left field, as far as I am concerned, but I doubt if it would have surprised Taylor in the slightest. He has spoken for a whole generation in enduring and getting through all manner of pain. I hope that many others in the U.S. now find the kind of help he was eventually able to do.