{"id":1750,"date":"2006-11-02T14:35:44","date_gmt":"2006-11-02T14:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/02\/wonderful_willi\/"},"modified":"2014-08-04T05:07:22","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T05:07:22","slug":"wonderful_willi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/02\/wonderful_willi\/","title":{"rendered":"WONDERFUL WILLIAM STYRON"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Styron\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1968 I was a volunteer in the Eugene McCarthy anti-war presidential campaign.\u00a0 Most of the time I took care of the press, riding on the press bus and handling logistics for filing stories and getting to the plane on time.\u00a0 Frequently, when celebrities were campaigning with the Senator they’d ride for a while on the press bus, so I got to meet some pretty amazing people, from Robert Lowell to Tony Randall to William Styron, who died this week.<\/p>\n

\"Nat_turner_1\"<\/a>I had just read The Confessions of Nat Turner<\/a>, his 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning book about a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, which I had loved.\u00a0 I knew of his close friendship with James Baldwin<\/a>, whom I really admired, and imagined that the book was written partly as a cry for justice for his friend and other black Americans. (OK I was 20, what do you want?)\u00a0 I sat down beside him on the bus and was able to let him know how much I admired him and his work.<\/p>\n

The next day, literally, there was a horrible piece about the book and Styron’s “racism” in some lefty publication (can’t remember which one)\u00a0 He walked down the aisle of the bus and dropped it in my lap – “see — see what they’re doing to me?” he said sadly.\u00a0 I have never forgotten that day – the punishment he took for imagining the rage and longing for justice on the part of a charismatic slave — and the sweetness of the man himself.\u00a0 Only later did I learn of his battles with depression.\u00a0 I don’t know if it’s true that one must suffer for one’s art, but he certainly did.<\/p>\n

Of course, people know him better for Sophie’s Choice<\/a> and the Meryl Streep film — again about the unimaginable persecution of a minority.\u00a0 I guess it’s no accident that his wife Rose was so closely tied to Amnesty International for so long.<\/p>\n

Anyway I am thinking of him today — of his deep moral sense so well communicated in his work – and of the amazing privilege of knowing him, if only for a little while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1968 I was a volunteer in the Eugene McCarthy anti-war presidential campaign.\u00a0 Most of the time I took care of the press, riding on the press bus and handling logistics for filing stories and getting to the plane on time.\u00a0 Frequently, when celebrities were campaigning with the Senator they’d ride for a while on … Continue reading WONDERFUL WILLIAM STYRON<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5,6,2764,9],"tags":[3413,295,2480,251,1304,953,2478,561,2481,2479,2477],"class_list":["post-1750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-books","category-culture","category-i-seem-to-write-a-lot-of-obits","category-politics","tag-3413","tag-arts","tag-authors","tag-books-2","tag-eugene-mccarthy","tag-james-baldwin","tag-nat-turner","tag-obit","tag-pulitzer-prize","tag-sophies-choice","tag-william-styron"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-se","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions\/2470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}