Black Swan S.
3 total works
The day after Peter Leverett met his old friend Mason Flagg in Italy, Mason was found dead. The hours leading up to his death were a nightmare for Peter - both in their violence and in their maddening unreality.The blaze of events which followed was, Peter soon realised, ignited by a conflict between two men: Mason Flagg himself and Cass Kinsolving, a tortured, self-destructive painter, a natural enemy and prey to the monstrous evil of Mason Flagg. Three events - murder, rape and suicide - explode in the is relentless and passionate novel, almost overwhelming in its conception of the varieties of good and evil.
"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
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
William Styron traces the betrayals and infidelities--the heritage of spite and endlessly disappointed love--that afflict the members of a Southern family and that culminate in the suicide of the beautiful Peyton Loftis.