Product Description

Before writing his memoir of madness, Darkness Visible, William Styron was best known for his ambitious works of fiction–including The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice. Styron also created personal but no less powerful tales based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine. The Suicide Run collects five of these meticulously rendered narratives. One of them–“Elobey, Annobón, and Corisco”–is published here for the first time.

In “Blankenship,” written in 1953, Styron draws on his stint as a guard at a stateside military prison at the end of World War II. “Marriott, the Marine” and “The Suicide Run”–which Styron composed in the early 1970s as part of an intended novel that he set aside to write Sophie’s Choice–depict the surreal experience of being conscripted a second time, after World War II, to serve in the Korean War. “My Father’s House” captures the isolation and frustration of a soldier trying to become a civilian again. In “Elobey, Annobón, and Corisco,” written late in Styron’s life, a soldier attempts to exorcise the dread of an approaching battle by daydreaming about far-off islands, visited vicariously through his childhood stamp collection.

Perhaps the last volume from one of literature’s greatest voices, The Suicide Run brings to life the drama, inhumanity, absurdity, and heroism that forever changed the men who served in the Marine Corps.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195161 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-06
• Released on: 2009-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400068227
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
This posthumous collection from Pulitzer and National Book Award–winner Styron (Sophie's Choice) is a mishmash of early stories and unfinished novel excerpts that, while interesting as an artifact, adds little to his esteemed oeuvre. A former marine, Styron shows the horrors of war not through battle but through vignettes of men on leave (such as the title story) or in their quarters, struggling with their fate. Blankenship follows a young warrant officer as he investigates the escape of two Marines from a military prison island. Through interrogating another prisoner, McFee, Blankenship learns how deep soldierly ennui can run. Marriot, the Marine is about a writer recalled to duty as a reservist on the eve of his first novel's publication. He finds solace in a superior's love of literature and begins to believe that not all Marines are as brash as his roommate (he of the wet, protuberant lower lip and an exceptionally meager forehead), but the illusion doesn't last long. Styron's prose is as assured as ever and his knack for character is masterful, but the overall moralizing tone—war is debasement—is both too simple and too political to work in these character-driven stories. (Oct.)
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Review
"Short fiction from a Southern master of the sweeping, ambitiously themed, epic novel.. . . Taken as a whole, these fragments illuminate their author's obsessions and make the reader wish Styron had completed at least two more novels. Essential reading for the writer's fans; a revelatory footnote for others."—Kirkus Reviews

"Styron's prose is as assured as ever and his knack for character is masterful."—Publishers Weekly

"Styron has always been drawn to moral and emotional complexity, and in these three stories we see him at work skillfully exploring that rich and provocative terrain again."—Library Journal


From the Hardcover edition.

Review
"Short fiction from a Southern master of the sweeping, ambitiously themed, epic novel.. . . Taken as a whole, these fragments illuminate their author's obsessions and make the reader wish Styron had completed at least two more novels. Essential reading for the writer's fans; a revelatory footnote for others."—Kirkus Reviews

"Styron's prose is as assured as ever and his knack for character is masterful."—Publishers Weekly

"Styron has always been drawn to moral and emotional complexity, and in these three stories we see him at work skillfully exploring that rich and provocative terrain again."—Library Journal

Customer Reviews

Remembrance of War
I finished these "five tales of the Marine Corps" wishing that Willam Styron had written more, specifically that he had finished the section called "My Father's House," which he wrote in 1985 and was the opening section of a novel never finished. As always with this great writer, these stories convey the complexity of that animal known as a human. The narrator of "My Father's House" is Paul Whitehurst, recently returned to Virginia-- the time is 1946-- from a three year stint in the Marine Corps fighting in "the Good War, that is, the second War to End All Wars" who can see the awful contradiction that, in order to be a good soldier, he has to hate the Japanese enemy, described by his commander as "subhuman," while feeling guilty over his memento of the war, an exquisite gold locket obviously taken from a dead Japanese soldier Paul won from a tipsy warrant officer in a poker game in Saipan. At first Paul thinks the locket is solid gold but then discovers a photograph inside of two little girls "who appeared to be sisters" on a ferryboat. "So I kept the picture in the locket and from time to time stole a peek at the ferryboat children, always making my mind an absolute blank whenever my thoughts began to stray toward the father from whose dead neck my trophy had been torn."

Then there is the specter of race. In "Marriott, the Marine," it is rumored that half dozen or so black people had committed suicide rather than be uprooted from their homes to make way for what would eventually be called Camp Lejeune. And Paul in "My Father's House" has a heated argument with his stepmother Isabel over whether or not a black man convicted of raping a white woman should be executed. He, a liberal for the times who carried a copy of POCKET BOOK OF VERSE with him throughout the war, weighs in on a prison sentence since the rapist had not killed anyone. In the eyes of Isabel, however, he is a "monster," who has committed a crime worse than murder and moreover is represented by a New York "little Jew" lawyer. Finally Paul runs into the family cook Florence, who had been fired by his stepmother over a clash of personalities and whom he loves. She is thrilled to see that he has returned from the war unscathed. "'My my, you is some big boy now.'" Paul's character surely is on some level autobiographical as he says that since boyhood "the whole conundrum of color and slavery's cruel bequest--had begun to absorb me." Readers of Styron know that he went on to write the controversial CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER.

No writer comes to mind better than Mr. Styron at character development, often extended but sometimes by a few deft sentences artfully constructed: Blankenkenship from the first story; Marriott, the Marine who speaks fluent French, reads Flaubert but in the end is a Marine to the core; Darling (Dee) Jeeter, Jr., the country boy from South Carolina who cannot wait to kill the first enemy soldier; his father, "Daddy" Jeeter dying from lung cancer, a "boozer, brawler," but also a decorated war hero; Mamie Eubanks, the twenty-year-old Baptist girl, with whom Paul is smitten-- at least for carnal reasons. She reads THE ROBE (a novel I had not thought about since high school) and ends phone conversations with "God bless."

Styron is a master of metaphor. A character has eyes with irises "like thin blue flakes of splintered glass, twinkly with scorn." Fallen soldiers have "pureed brains." On a more pleasant note, the "afternoon sacrament of ice cream." In a parade on Fifth Avenue in New York, the narrator of "Marriott, the Marine" sees General Douglas MacArthur, just having been removed by President Truman from his post as commander of United Nations and Amerian forces in the Far East. He glances straight at the narrator and "behind the raspberry-tinted sunglasses his eyes appeared as glassily opaque and mysterious as those of an old, sated lion pensively digesting a wildebeest." Finally the same narrator says "Flaubert's enormous craft, his monkish dedication, his irony, his painstaking regard for the nuances of language--all of these commanded my passionate admiration." These very words could be used to describe the genius of Styron, himself.

Deathly Boring, Full of Itself
Whether or not you will enjoy this book will probably come down to how you like a wordy style of writing. Let me say that I came by an audio CD version of the book for free and I found the author's descriptive style so overblown and full of haughty adjectives that I stopped listening halfway through. Note that this was after two complete stories of the collection of five, so I feel I got a fair taste of the book; I am not judging by the cover.

I see that another reviewer thinks that Styron is some sort of literary master. Maybe. And if you like reading the "great novelists," with their slow, drawn out, meaningless sad little stories where at the end you can have tea with someone and celebrate Styron's "character development," then perhaps this is a good book. But if you actually want something fun or engaging to read, no thanks. This is high school English class "literary" stuff and in my opinion the title is misleading. The "Suicide Run" in the title? It is about a marine driving too fast to go see his mistress over a weekend. Tales of the Marine Corp? Hardly. The Marines just happen to be the backdrop; the stories would work equally well in most other settings, so if you are led to expect that a "Tale of the Marine Corp" involving a "Suicide Run" might be vaguely martial in character, you'd be complete off. It would be like renaming "The Scarlet Letter" "Lust and Abuse Among the Puritans" in order to spice it up a bit.

If you miss the days of writing essays about the books you have read; if you long to return to college English classes and the overly serious discussions in campus coffee shops, this book is for you. Everyone else, this book will make you want to go on your very own Suicide Run as your ears (or eyes) bleed from the stuffy, pointless style.