This Quiet Dust And Other Writings

by STYRON, WILLIAM

• ISBN13: 9780679735960
• ISBN10: 0679735968
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-01-04
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

"Styron is pre-eminent . . . in his instinct for tragedy and in his respect for the sheer force of human feeling."—Alfred Kazin
 
In an age when much American writing was either glacially noncommittal or heremetically personal, William Styron persisted in addressing great moral issues with incendiary passion. Seriousness and ardor characterize all the essays in This Quiet Dust, the first book of nonfiction by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lie Down in Darkness and Sophie's Choice.

In this edition, which has been updated with the inclusion of six previously uncollected essays, Styron covers a wide range of concerns; yet whether he is recounting his search for the historic Nat Turner, peering into the abyss of Auschwitz, navigating the battlefields of Vietnam and Chicago in 1968, or offering fresh assessments of Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, James Jones, and Robert Penn Warren, Styron is always a consummate literary stylist. One who is as engaging as he is engaged.

"[Styron is] the most accomplished craftsman, and one of the most penetrating witnesses of our life."—Associated Press

Author Biography

William Styron (1925-2006), a native of the Virginia Tidewater, was a graduate of Duke University and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. His books include Lie Down in Darkness, The Long March, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie’s Choice, This Quiet Dust, Darkness Visible, and A Tidewater Morning. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Howells Medal, the American Book Award, the Légion d’Honneur, and the Witness to Justice Award from the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation. With his wife, the poet and activist Rose Styron, he lived for most of his adult life in Roxbury, Connecticut, and in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, where he is buried.

Table of Contents

Note to the Reader
South	p. 3
Introduction	p. 3
This Quiet Dust	p. 9
A Southern Conscience	p. 31
Slave and Citizen	p. 35
In the Southern Camp	p. 39
The Oldest America	p. 48
A Voice from the South	p. 52
The Habit	p. 65
Forebears	p. 73
"O Lost!" Etc.	p. 73
An Elegy for F. Scott Fitzgerald	p. 87
A Second Flowering	p. 95
Hell Reconsidered	p. 105
Victims	p. 119
Introduction	p. 119
The Death-in-Life of Benjamin Reid	p. 122
Benjamin Reid: Aftermath	p. 137
Aftermath of "Aftermath"	p. 147
The Joint	p. 153
A Death in Canaan	p. 159
Death Row	p. 165
Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died	p. 169
Down the Nile	p. 175
Lollipops	p. 193
The Big Love	p. 193
Candy	p. 200
The Service	p. 207
Introduction	p. 207
MacArthur	p. 210
The Red Badge of Literature	p. 221
A Farewell to Arms	p. 226
Calley	p. 236
Arnheiter	p. 244
The Wreckage of an American War	p. 248
Chicago: 1968	p. 255
Portraits and Farewells	p. 267
Robert Penn Warren	p. 267
Peter Matthiessen	p. 271
William Blackburn	p. 275
William Faulkner	p. 279
Philip Rahv	p. 286
James Jones	p. 289
Bennett Cerf	p. 299
Francois Mitterrand	p. 301
Looking Back	p. 309
Christchurch	p. 309
The James	p. 313
Almost a Rhodes Scholar	p. 317
Lie Down in Darkness	p. 323
The Paris Review	p. 329
The Long March	p. 333
Auschwitz	p. 336
The MacDowell Medal	p. 340
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.