Reading My Father

PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE. In Reading My Father, William Styrons 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 Styrons parentsthe Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Sophies Choice and his political activist wife, Rosewere, for half a century, leading players on the worlds cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her fathers brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. A drinker, a carouser, and above all a high priest at the altar of fiction, 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 familys life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem. From Styrons 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 artists life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generations friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.