reading my father by alexandra styron

7/31/2019 Reading My Father by Alexandra Styron

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Further Praise forReading My Father

Fascinating and deeply moving.

San Francisco Chronicle

By turns brilliant and shocking . . . Alexandra Styrons account

o the whole crazy-town scene in which I was raised, and o the

slow dawning o the severity o her athers condition, is handled

with great skill.James Campbell, The New York Times Book Review

Alexandra Styron is a natural writer, uid, and engaging.

Erc Lebetrau, The Boston Globe

Riveting and heart-rending.

Gal Caldell, Los Angeles Times

Alexandra Styrons beautiully honest memoir . . . gives us a

multi-dimensional, continually ascinating portrait o William

Styrons lie.

Heller McAlpn, The Washington Post

A candid, compelling account, by turns heartwarming and

heartbreaking . . . Vividly re-creates the delights o lie as the

child o a cultural icon.

NPR.rg

A harrowing and at times darkly unny tale o towering suc-cesses . . . Gallant and uninchingly honest.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Styron . . . tells this harrowing, Icarus-like tale beautiully.

The Palm Beach Post


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I came to explore the wreck.

The words are purposes.

The words are maps.

I came to see the damage that was done

and the treasures that prevail.

A D R iE NNE R iC H, D iv iNG iNT o T HE w R E C K


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O

We buRied My ather on a remarkably mild morning in No-vember 2006. From our amilys house on Marthas Vineyard to the

small graveyard is less than a quarter mile, so we walked along the

road, where, it being o-season, not a single car disturbed our quiet

ormation. Beneath the shade o a tall pin oak, we gathered around

the grave site. Joining us were a dozen or so o my parents clos-

est riends. The ceremony had been planned the way we thoughthed have liked itshort on pomp, and shorter still on religion. A

couple o people spoke; my athers riend Peter Matthiessen, a Zen

priest, perormed a simple blessing; and, as a amily, we read the

Emily Dickinson poem that my ather had quoted at the end o his

novel Sophies Choice.

Ater the uneral, walking home


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2 Aara Stro

Ample make this bed.

Make this bed with awe;

In it wait till judgment break

Excellent and air.

Be its mattress straight,

Be its pillow round;

Let no sunrise yellow noise

Interrupt this ground.

My ather had been a Marine, so the local VA oered us a ull

military uneral. Mindul o his sensibilities, we declined the chap-

lain. We also nixed the three-volley salute. But we were sure Daddy

would have been pleased by the six local honor guards who olded

the ag or my mother, and the lone bugler who played tapsbeore

we dispersed. O military service, my ather once wrote, It wasan experience I would not care to miss, i only because o the way

it tested my endurance and my capacity or sheer misery, physical

and o the spirit. The bugler, then, had honored another o my

athers quirks: his penchant or a good metaphor.

A year and a hal later, I was walking across the West Campus Quado Duke University, my athers alma mater. Passing beneath the

chapels Gothic spire, I opened the heavy doors o Perkins Library

and headed or the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections

Library. It is there that the William Styron Papers, 22,500 items

pertaining to his lie and work, are housed. I was at the end o my

third trip to North Carolina in as many months. Beore I ew hometo New York that aternoon, there were two big boxes I still hoped

to get a look through.

In 1952, when he was twenty-six, my ather published his frst

novel, Lie Down in Darkness. The book was an immediate suc-

cess, and he was soon hailed as one o the great literary voices o

his generation. Descendants o the so-called Lost Generation, my


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4 Aara Stro

It seems that my athers Get out o Jail Free card had been uncer-

emoniously revoked. And though he went about his business, hed

become a man both hunted and haunted.

* * *

One dAy when I was still a baby, not yet old enough to walk,

my mother went out, leaving me in the care o my seven-year-old

brother, Tommy, and nine-year-old sister, Polly. Beore she let, my

mother placed me in my walker. For a while, Polly, Tommy, and

the two riends they had over played on the ground oor o ourhouse while I gummed my hands and tooled around the kitchen

island. Then, one by one, the older kids drited outside. Maybe a

hal hour later, they ound themselves together at Carl Carlsons

arm stand at the bottom o our hill. On the makeshit counter o

his small shed, Carl sold penny candy; no one could resist a visit

on the couple o days a week he was open. It took a little while,scrabbling over bubble gum and freballs, beore, with a sickening

eeling, my siblings realized that nobody was watching the Baby.

Racing back up the hill, Polly burst into the kitchen but couldnt

fnd me. Ater a minute or so, she heard a small moaning sound and

ollowed it to the basement door. I was still strapped in my walker,

but upside down on the concrete oor at the bottom o the ricketywood stairs. My orehead had swelled into a grotesque mound. My

eyes were glassy and still. Cradling me, Polly and Tommy passed

another stricken, terrifed hour beore my mother got home and

rushed me to the hospital.

Ive known this amous amily story or as long as I can re-

member. But I was in my thirties beore Polly conessed a detailId never known: our ather was upstairs napping the whole time.

Araid or her own lie as much as or mine, she couldnt bring

hersel to wake him.

Until 1985, my athers tempestuous spirit ruled our amilys pri-

vate lie as surely as his eminence defned the more public one.


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At times querulous and taciturn, cutting and remote, melancholy

when he was sober and rageul when in his cups, he inspired ear

and loathing in us a good deal more oten than it eels comortable

to admit. But the same malaise that so decimated my athers equa-

nimity when he was depressed also quelled his inner storm when

he recovered. In my adult years, he became remarkably mellow. A

lion in winter, he drank less and relaxed more. He showed some

patience, was mild, and expressed ashes o great tenderness or his

children, his growing tribe o grandchildren, and, most especially,

his wie.He also managed, or the frst time, to access some o his child-

hoods unexamined but corrosive sorrows. In 1987 my ather wrote

A Tidewater Morning, a short story in which he delivered a poi-

gnant chronicle o his mothers death rom cancer when he was

thirteen. The story would become the title o a collection o short

fction, published in 1993, that centered on the most signifcantthemes o his youth. During these years he also wrote several essays

or The New Yorker, Esquire, The New York Times, Newsweek,

and other magazines. He published a clutch o editorials; wrote

thirty some odd speeches, commencement addresses, eulogies, and

tributes; and traveled requently to speak on the subject o mental

illness.As or long fction, it was less clear what he was doing. (I there

was a golden rule in our house when I was growing up, it was,

unequivocally, Dont ask Daddy about his work.) First and

oremost, my ather was a novelist. A high priest at the altar o

fction, as Carlos Fuentes describes him, he consecrated himsel

to the Novel. He wrote in order to explore the sorts o grand andsometimes existential themes whose complexity and scope are best

served by long fction. With a kind o sacred devotion, he kept at it,

maintaining his belie in the narrative powers o a great storyand

he suered accordingly in the process. His prose, laid down in an

elegant hand on yellow legal pads with Venus Velvet No. 2 pencils,

came at a trickle. He labored over every word, editing as he went, to


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produce manuscripts that, when he placed the fnal period, needed

very little in the way o revision. But, even at the height o his pow-

ers, this meant sometimes a decade or more between major works.

Like that o a marathoner running in the dark, my athers path was

sometimes as murky as it was long.

* * *

The AiR-cOndiTiOned huSh o the Duke library was, as

always, a relie to me. Zach, my avorite student employee, gave

me his amiliar smile and nod, then passed a small lock across thecirculation desk. I youve ever spent time in a rare book library,

you know that the system or protecting its contents can be a little

intimidating. You may not bring coats or hats, purses or bags o

any kind into the reading room. No snacks or drinks, including

water. Pencils only. And notebooks, but preerably without the

complicated pockets or linings that might abet an act o smug-gling, were you so inclined. White cotton gloves are provided or

handling photographs. And at Duke, anyway, theyll give you a

sheet o laminated paper to use as a place marker, plus a older or

transerring documents up to the copier. When you leave, youre

subject to inspection. Notebooks are ried, papers are stamped.

Its a polite but mandatory ritual, necessary or the saekeeping oall that is unique and ragile under the institutions custodial care.

When I started spending time at the library, I was struck by how

curiously amiliar it all was to me. Then I had a good laugh when

I realized why: its a lot like the routines o a psychiatric hospital.

Taking a spot at one o the long wood tables, I ipped through

the inventory list or the call numbers o the boxes I would needthat morning. Up until then, Id spent most o my time at Duke

reading my athers correspondence, trying to shake loose some

memories o this man Id rather impetuously agreed to write a book

about. Somehow, in the time since his death, Id mentally misplaced

him. I thought i I heard his voice, sited through his epistolary

remains, hed resuracewhich he did, and then some. Not only


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had I begun to remember the ather Id known but I became ac-

quainted with the son, mentor, and riend he was to others. In addi-

tion to the letters, Id trolled through scrapbooks, magazine essays,

interview transcripts, journals, audiocassettes, and all sorts o other

ephemera. Being neither a scholar nor a critic, Id written o my list

the enormous cache o typescripts, proos, and ragmentary mono-

graphic work that had been published beore. Ater several months

o work, there were only a couple more boxes o curiosity to me:

WS16: Speeches Subseries, 19421996, and WS17: Unfnished

Work Subseries, 19701990s and undated.

* * *

in The eARly 1970s, shortly ater the publication oThe Cones-

sions o Nat Turner, my ather began work on a new novel. The

Way o the Warrior, its title taken rom the Japanese Bushido, or

samurai code o conduct, was a World War II story. In it he hopedto explore the military mind-set, and his own ambivalence about

the glory and honor associated with patriotic service. Just as the

civil rights movement echoed in the themes oNat Turner, my

athers new book, conceived during the Vietnam conict, would,

he hoped, gather orce rom the timeliness o its subject. But the

central elements o the story ailed to coalesce, and Daddy grewdiscouraged. Then, in 1973, he awoke rom a powerul dream about

a woman, a Holocaust survivor, hed encountered while living in

Brooklyn as a young man. Putting aside The Way o the Warrior,

he quicklybegan work on his new idea. Six years later, Random

House published Sophies Choice.

Just as some people can tag a amily event by remembering whatbank Dad was indentured to that year or which shit Mom worked,

each phase o my youth is joined in my mind to the novel my a-

ther was writing at the time. I was twelve years old when Sophies

Choice came out. Newly arrived on the shores o adolescence, I was

acutely conscious o mysel and my amilys place in the world. It

seemed Id been waiting my entire lie or my ather tonish what-


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ever he was doing. With only the vaguest memory oNat Turner,

Id begun to seriously doubt my ather did anything really except

sleep all morning and spend the rest o the day stomping in and out

through his study door. So it was a huge personal relie to me when

Sophies Choice was completed at last, validating my athers years

o work and, in the process, me.

I the story o Sophieplayed in the background o my schoolgirl

years, my athers book about the Marines set the mood through

my teens. In the early eighties, ater the hullabaloo surrounding

Sophie had died down, he returned to The Way o the Warriorwithrenewed vigor. The project, his Next Big Book, took on a kind o

stolid permanence in our home, like a soa around which we were

subconsciously arrayed. About this time, I let home, as my sib-

lings had beore me, or boarding school. And though I knew little

about what my ather was writing, it was useul to have the title.

For the part o mysel defned by his proessionand or anyonewho askedit was enough.

In its 1985 summer reading issue, Esquire magazine published

Love Day, billing it as an excerpt rom his long-awaited novel.

My ather was showered with mail, rom riends and ans alike,

the reaction immediate and overwhelmingly positive. The world

had been put on alert. Bill Styron was at it again; great Americanliterature would live to see another day.

And then he cracked up.

These days, the characterization o my athers illness would be

readily identifable. But this was back in the Stone Age o clinical

depression. The mid-eighties was not only a pre-Prozac world but

one without any o the ediying voices that would cry out romthe wilderness in the years ahead. There was no Kay Jamison, no

Andrew Solomon, and, o course, no Bill Styronno one yet back

rom the resh hell o depression with any cogent feld notes. So,

like everybody else around my ather, our amily was mystifed by

his sudden spiral. By his paralytic anxiety, his numb aect, his ram-

bling, suicidal ideation. He had everything going or him, didnt


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he? Loving amily, towering talent, money, riends. When, just be-

ore Christmas, my mother admitted him with his consent to the

psychiatric ward o YaleNew Haven Hospital, we had absolutely

no idea what would become o him. When he emerged two months

later, declaring himsel cured, we were just as quick as he was to

embrace the diagnosis.

For the third time, he returned to The Way o the Warrior. I

dont know or how long he worked at it this go-round. Away at

college by then, I was not only uninterested in my ather but de-

terminedly on the run rom him, rom my mother, rom the wholecrazy-town scene in which I was raised. Fulflling my long-standing

eorts to grow up as ast as I could, Id moved with my much older

boyriend into a stodgy building where I lived like someone three

times my age. Like someone who neither had, nor needed, parents,

especially ones as nutty as mine.

What remained between my ather and me was our enduringcommon ground, and practically the only place we ever met: our

shared sense o humor. The youngest o my parents our children

by a wide margin, I was known, long past the time it was seemly,

as the Baby. As a girl, I oten ound mysel home alone with him.

My sisters and brother were all gone by the time I was in ourth

grade; my mother, escaping the tinderbox her marriage had be-come, had begun traveling constantly by the time I was fve. The

house where we spent most o the year, a creaky old Connecticut

armhouse bound by woods, was scary. My ather was scarier. I

survived by employing a childs best instinct or getting what she

needs. I didnt whine, I didnt demand, and I hid my multiple ail-

ings and ears behind a smooth and careully cultivated mask osel-sufciency. But, above all, I soothed my athers savage breast

by making him laughand standing up to even the most extreme

o his humor in kind.

Ater Darkness Visible, my ather was inundated by mail. Not

simple an letters but the raw outpourings o depressions many


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victimsbreathless ellow escapees; those still in its clutches; the

grie-struck mothers, husbands, and daughters o the countless

suicides who simply could not live with the pain one more day.

Occasionally, his readers breached the boundaries o letter writ-

ing. People accosted him on the street, at parties, when he lectured.

They spoke to him as though he were, at the very least, a supremely

trained doctor, i not some divine medium who might heal them

with empathy. More than once, he got a late-night call rom the

police. Someone somewhere was intent on committing suicide, but

they kept mentioning Bill Styron. Was it possible he might try talk-ing the poor ellow down?

My ather devoted an enormous amount o time, time that might

otherwise have been spent on his own work, reacting to his readers.

He talked and wrote, listened and opined. O course, not everyone

who reached out to him was a an. The days post oten included

missives rom disgruntled readers who didnt think much o hisopinions on mental health, or who urged him to consider their own

protocols or recovery and happy living. And some were just plain

bananas (which came as no surprise to himmy ather was the frst

to admit he himsel had, during his depressive episode, been totally

o his rocker). Hed always received mail rom cranks and kooks

writing about slavery and the Holocaust willbring them out o thewoodworkbut never as many as ater Darkness Visible.

During my visits to Duke, I read through scores o these letters.

Most o them are intimate, conessional, harrowing, and occasion-

ally inspiring. Taken collectively, they are a stunning testament

to the power o my athers memoir. But theyre also completely

overwhelming, a kind o paper Babel rom which even the mostpatient psychiatrist might ee in search o quiet and sanity. As I

ipped through them, I began to imagine all this material peck-

peck-pecking away at my athers still ragile psyche. Every day,

year ater year. I also thought, not or the frst time, o the exquisite

irony embedded in my athers relationship with his readers, an

irony I was still trying to reconcile as I worked to make sense o


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the man ater his death: how could a guy whose thoughts elicit this

much pathos have been, or so many years, such a monumental

asshole to the people closest to him?

I elt like picking the letters up by the fstul and shouting into

the silence o the library, PEOPLE! Do you have ANY idea who

you are dealing with here?

In the spring o 2000, fteen years ater his frst depression, my a-

ther once again heard the wind o the wing o madness.* Switly,

he succumbed to a depression easily as ferce as his 1985 episode. InJune, Mum admitted him to the Yale Psychiatric Institute. Thrown

again into triage mode, all o us gathered around. We took turns sit-

ting with him, monitoring his bouts o psychosis, consulting with

his doctors, and walking him along the uorescent-lit corridors o

the ward. When the our kidsSusanna, Polly, Tom, and me, now

adultswere alone together, we retted and laughed and tradedyou wont believe what happened today stories. And each o us,

pushing the mute button on our ambivalent eelings, willed our

ather onward in the hope that hed achieve the same kind o recov-

ery hed had beore. Not this time. Our ather let YPI later that

summer, sprung by our mother ater a rightul and chaotic two

months, in which any improvement in his mood was entirely un-done by his physical deterioration. He came home to the Vineyard,

ragged, out o his mind, patched together with psychopharmaco-

logical tape and thread. And then the shit really hit the an. Though

he would live another six years, the summer o 2000 undisputedly

marked the beginning o the end.

* * *

A cOuple OF years beore my athers death, I caught a glimpse

o his last manuscript. It was September, and my husband and I

*William Styron, Darkness Visible (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 46,quoting Baudelaire.


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had taken our son up to the house in Connecticut, which had or

months been uninhabitable. The prior spring, in a perect meta-

phoric act, a prolonged stretch o rain had caused the living room

oor to collapse. Inspections revealed not only water damage but

termites, a dodgy oundation, and a freplace hearth o highly ques-

tionable integrity. My mother relocated to the Vineyard place, rom

which my ather came and went on what had become a merry-go-

round o hospital stays. A crew spent the summer propping up and

patching the Connecticut house, while in Massachusetts our amily

continued a similar project on Daddy. No one, except maybe ourunrestrainedly optimistic mother, expected him to write again.

Id been wandering around the house, checking on the state o

things, when I walked into my sister Pollys old bedroom, where,

when all the kids had grown, my ather had chosen to write. A thin

layer o dust covered his tilt-top desk. But everything else was laid

out just so, as i hed stepped out or lunch and might come back towork any minute. On the right side o the desk lay a thick wedge o

yellow legal paper, flled with my athers script. And on top o that

was a shea o yellowing stationery with an envelope paper-clipped

to it, postmarked 1914.

Dear Eunice, it began. I scanned the letter, picking up phrases.

I went down to Goldsboro that Sunday expecting to see you and tohear your voice or old times sake . . . my mind and soul tortured

by the ghosts o ormer days, my conscience tortured by the might

have beens . . . I can hardly say the wordsyour approaching wed-

ding. . . . I can only hold your riendship in the shrine o memory.

The letter, which struck me as unbearably poignant, had been

written by my grandather William Clark Styron, Sr. Though Idnever read it, I knew what it was and why it was on my athers

desk. For a while, he had worked on a novel loosely based on the

lie o his ather, a marine engineer whose singular character had

done more than anything else to mold my athers own. I knew o

this book only vaguely, having heard my mother talk about it once

and maybe having read something o it in an interview my ather


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had given some years beore. As always, it was to be a Big Book,

about the skeins o troubled history running through the American

South in which he was raised. It was about War and Race. And, at

its heart, it was to be a love story. I remember, when I frst heard the

idea, thinking o Garca Mrquezs Love in the Time o Cholera, and

how much more I would enjoy a tale o romance than the war story

Daddy seemed orever bent on. That day in his study, I leaned in

and began to read the manuscripts opening paragraph, my guilt or

snooping so deeply ingrained I didnt allow mysel even to ollow

the last sentence onto the next page. Somewhere in the basement, Icould hear drills and nail guns. And suddenly I thought, This thing

is just sitting here. What i someone steals it? What i the house goes

up in fames? Someone ought to take better care o this stu.

Several days later, on a fercely rainy day, I carried the manu-

script in a pink Jill Stuart shopping bag up to the ofces o Random

House and my athers editor, Bob Loomis. I deposited the bag onBobs desk, wiping the edges with the sleeve o my shirt. We chatted

or a bit about my athers health, about our amilies, and about the

upcoming tribute to my ather being hosted by The Paris Review.

Getting him there was going to be a challenge. Wed probably have

to spring him rom Mass General, his residence o the moment, and

hire a car or something to bring him down. But then again, I said,who knew where hed be several weeks on? He might be fne by

November.

Well, not fne. Or I wouldnt have been standing there. For what

Bob and I were tacitly acknowledging, with that bag on the table,

was that my ather would never be fne again.

* * *

The bOx OF speeches in the Duke library turned out to be much

more interesting than Id expected. There were nearly fty com-

positions inside, including the commencement address my ather

had given at my high school graduation, a great recounting o how

he missed out on a Rhodes scholarship, and a college address that


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ascinated me because, rom its date, I knew he was in the midst o

a depression when he delivered it. With no more than a hal hour

beore I had to leave to catch my ight home, I fnally opened the

last box, that o his unfnished work.

Several at olders dominated the box. Flipping them open, I

ound that the contents o each one was preaced by an explanatory

note rom the man who had been my athers Boswell o sorts, James

West. Having spent a decade on his 1998 authorized biography,

William Styron: A Lie, Jim had gone on to become a crucial fgure

in the preservation o my athers legacy. He requently served as aconduit or the donations to Duke. And, in my athers fnal years,

he had begun the complex task o organizing and editing material

that my ather no longer had the strength or and that would, more

than likely, be published ater he was gone.

THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR, began the frst note, in

caps. And then it continued, The Material in this older appearsto be part o the frst eort Styron made to write a novel under this

title. Jim added some inormation about the material in general,

concluding with qualiying testimony. I cannot absolutely vouch

or the act that these materials are part o the frst eort on War-

rior, he wrote, but I think Ive made the identifcations correctly.

I looked at the manuscript but ound that the frst page waspage 5 and began in the middle o a sentence. The second page was

page 11, ater which the manuscript moved on sequentially till page

33. The page ater that was 39, and then the numbers began to run

backward, then orward again. 22, 199, 68 twice. Four dierent

pages numbered 74. 77, 70, 1, 3, 173.

On and on it went like this. Hundreds o pages jumbled, othersomitted entirely. In the order they were in, the manuscript made no

sense at all, though I had little doubt that Jim and everyone at Duke

had taken exquisite care o these documents, as they had with all

the archives. I opened the second Warriorolder. It was much the

same, except biggermaybe 90,000 or 100,000 words o prose

and, i possible, even more disorganized. The frst page was 105,


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the last 211. The third older was, blessedly, organized, pages 1 to

159, and included a short note rom Daddy to the librarys curator

o manuscripts. It was dated February 2, 1985.

I sat or a while, trying to understand what I was looking at.

What the hell had happened? Looking through the olders again, I

could see it wasnt just a matter o putting the pages in order. Even

when I held up two pages so the numbers ollowed sequentially,

the sentence ragments didnt ow. It was like someone had taken a

cabinet ull o puzzles, tossed a bunch o pieces into two boxes, and

thrown the rest out. Nothing ft. More unnerving still was the sheervolume. This World War II story, whatever it was, he ran at it again

and again. Two hundred fty thousand, maybe 300,000 words.

Crated sentences, polished, honed. Avenues o thought, narrative

built on mountains o research. Great, long loops o memory and

emotion. The edifce o a story, constructed, deconstructed, and

constructed again and again over the course o years. Images oDaddy clicked through my head, a slide show cascading suddenly

as urgent and disordered as the pile o prose beore me. My head

reeled. Was it any wonder he was depressed?

I turned back to the box, which contained several more olders.

My eyesight telescoped as I began ipping through the material, a

kind o uzziness taking over the outer edges o my vision. I couldactually eel all my other body unctions slowing down in the ser-

vice o my brain and its need to absorb the inormation beore me.

Could it be? There was not one, as I had thought, butourother

books my ather had started on over the years. The older tabs,

marked Father, Grandather, Nicaragua, Hospital, hinted

at the contents. Some o the manuscripts were thick, some thin,all o them produced on Daddys signature legal-length paper, his

careully wrought hand covering the pages rom margin to margin.

These, too, were disordered, flled with stops and starts, the page

numbers suggestive o chunks missing, or thrown away. The whole

huge pile vibrated with the strength o his eort. And with a certain

madness.


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16 Aara Stro

I went outside to get some air. Under practically every willow

oak lining the quad stood ocks o prospective students and their

parents. Their young guides gestured animatedly, mouths shaping

words I couldnt hear. The sun was blazing. I wandered around the

corner to the shelter o a magnolia and called Susanna on my cell

phone. Though she is the eldest o my siblings, and there are twelve

years between us, it is Susanna to whom Ive grown closest over the

years. We speak requently; on that day, she knew where I was and

what I was doing.

Hi, she answered, seeing my number on her screen.Holy shit, I said.

What?

I dont know, I replied, pacing, sucking in the dense South-

ern heat. Its like A Beautiul Mind in there. There are all these

manuscripts. A whole bunch o them. And none o the pages ol-

low each other. Its bizarre. And kind o horrible. Did you knowabout them?

She did not. But, in talking to me, she put words to what I was

thinking.

Wow, she said, ater a bit. Perect metaphor, huh?

Yeah, I replied. But was he depressed, and thenhe couldnt

write? Or was he unable to write? And it drove him completelymad.


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Copyright 2011 by Alexandra Styron

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ISBN 978-1-4165-9179-5ISBN 978-1-4165-9181-8 (pbk)

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Correspondence and other manuscript materials and photographs from theWilliam Styron Papers are used with the permission of the Rare Book, Manuscript,

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The lines from Diving into the Wreck copyright 2002 by Adrienne Rich.Copyright 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., from The Fact of a

Doorframe: Selected Poems 19502001 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission ofthe author and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Photo credits appear on page 289.

reading my father by alexandra styron

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