My generation - SFBA Book Club

No cover — William Styron: My generation (2015)

630 pages

English language

Published 2015

ISBN:: 978-0-8129-9705-7
OCLC Number:: 893557762

(1 review)

"Including significant previously uncollected material, My Generation is the definitive gathering of the fruits of this beloved writer's five decades of public life. Here is the William Styron unafraid to peer into the darkest corners of the 20th century or to take on the complex racial legacy of the United States. But here too is Styron writing about his daily walk with his dog, musing on the Modern Library's "100 Greatest Books," and offering personal insight into the extraordinary array of noted contemporary figures he interacted with over the course of an illustrious career. These are the people and events, tragic and joyful, historical and intimate, that aroused Styron's unrivalled curiosity"--

2 editions

technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed My generation by William Styron

I learned a bit of history, but my favorite parts are the stories about his fellow writers of that literary generation

4 stars

This is not the type of book I would have picked up had it not been in the dollar section of the neighborhood used record store, but it was a bargain, a 550-page hardcover collection of short nonfiction by William Styron, a noted American writer I was not familiar with, except that he wrote Sophie's Choice, and I saw the adaptation in college (or most of it, even back then I did not have a movie-strength bladder and the movie was so depressing I didn't feel like returning from the restroom). He is also a white male writer of an older generation ("the greatest generation" as forward-writer Tom Brokaw would say, as Styron joined the Marines to fight in WWII) and many of the essays are decades old so they would not pass MeToo or woke muster, plus the language reads like George Plimpton talking (not a surprise, they were …

This is not the type of book I would have picked up had it not been in the dollar section of the neighborhood used record store, but it was a bargain, a 550-page hardcover collection of short nonfiction by William Styron, a noted American writer I was not familiar with, except that he wrote Sophie's Choice, and I saw the adaptation in college (or most of it, even back then I did not have a movie-strength bladder and the movie was so depressing I didn't feel like returning from the restroom). He is also a white male writer of an older generation ("the greatest generation" as forward-writer Tom Brokaw would say, as Styron joined the Marines to fight in WWII) and many of the essays are decades old so they would not pass MeToo or woke muster, plus the language reads like George Plimpton talking (not a surprise, they were friends among a group of friends who founded The Paris Review which for some reason was in Paris). All that said, this collection of essays, introductions, speeches, and eulogies for friends form a fascinating autobiography of a son of the south and grandson of a slaveowner who joined the Marines to fight in WWII and then ended up as an upcoming writer in the postwar literary circles. The complaints about the criticisms of his work come off as a bit whiny, particularly the complaints about his depiction of Nat Turner who led a slave revolt, but I understand, no one likes a critic. More interesting are his reminiscences of his contemporaries such as James Baldwin, Philip Roth, and others who I now want to read. And this book is a vocabulary builder, e.g. philoprogenitive? Look it up.