WILLIAM STYRON, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose skillful explorations of evil, domination and redemption made him one of the finest writers of his generation, died Wednesday afternoon. He was 81.
The author of "The Confessions of Nat Turner," "Sophie's Choice" and "Lie Down in Darkness," Styron died of pneumonia at Martha's Vineyard Hospital, according to his daughter Alexandra Styron.
He had been in generally failing health over the last several years, she said, with a variety of ailments.
In addition to his literary skills, Styron became well known because of his public battle with severe depression. His open, searching, personal accounts did much to heighten awareness of the often misunderstood condition.
Styron's novels were imbued with a tragic sense of history and were usually set in his native South or at least featured a central Southern character.
A painstakingly methodical writer who wrote at most a page-and-a-half a day on yellow legal pads, Styron produced fewer than a dozen novels, far fewer than his postwar contemporaries. His modest output, however, won him the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award and the Howells Medal and thrust him to the forefront of modern American literature.
"He was very much in the Faulkner tradition," novelist Tom Wolfe told The Times on Wednesday. "He very much had Faulkner's ability to create a mood. You could read 10 pages of Styron and find yourself, without even knowing it, in very deep water. Even his short things were awfully good in that way."
Shortly after he graduated from Duke University, Styron's literary career took off with the 1951 publication of "Lie Down in Darkness." The book borrowed heavily from his experiences of growing up in the South. It followed Peyton Loftis, a young woman who commits suicide after being overcome by the pressures of a middle-class Virginia family.
Critics embraced the work and its author, comparing him favorably to other Southern writers, particularly William Faulkner. Styron also enjoyed critical success with his next two novels, "The Long March" (1957) and "Set This House on Fire" (1960).
A force established
But it was "The Confessions of Nat Turner" that established him as a force in American literature. His fourth novel garnered the Pulitzer and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
