PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LASTâ A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE.
In Reading My Father, William Styronâs youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styronâs parentsâthe Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author of Sophieâs Choice and his political activist wife, Roseâwere, for half a century, leading players on the worldâs cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her fatherâs brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind.
A drinker, a carouser, and above all âa high priest at the altar of fiction,â Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his familyâs life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem.
From Styronâs Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artistâs life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generationâs friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.