A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth

by William Styron William Styron

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ISBN-13:

9781936317257

Publisher: Open Road Media
Publication date: 05/04/2010
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 160
Sales rank: 132,236
File size: 3 MB

William Styron (1925–2006), born in Newport News, Virginia, was one of the greatest American writers of his generation. Styron published his first book, Lie Down in Darkness, at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the international bestseller Sophie’s Choice.

Brief Biography

Hometown:: Roxbury, Connecticut, and Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:: June 11, 1925
Date of Death:: November 1, 2006

Place of Birth:: Newport News, Virginia
Place of Death:: Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

Education:: Davidson College and Duke University, both in North Carolina; courses at the New School for Social Research in New York

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Three autobiographically inspired novellas by Styron that tell the story of a young writer’s journey to adulthood

William Styron’s A Tidewater Morning features three novellas centered around budding novelist Paul Whitehurst’s coming of age during the Great Depression and Second World War. They convey Whitehurst’s struggle to cope with his mother’s terminal cancer, his view of the strained racial relations in the pre-war American South, and his anxiety as a marine preparing to land on the beaches of Okinawa. Each novella weaves together the transformative experiences of Whitehurst’s early life with Styron’s signature deep historical insight, underscoring how the significance of the past informs the present. This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.

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Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The publisher bills this as Styron's first book of fiction in more than a decade. Sophie's Choice was published in 1979--but that is misleading: the most recent of these three Esquire stories collected here was published in 1987, and the other two appeared in 1978 and 1985. As one would expect, there are patches of startling writing here, particularly in the title story, in which Styron's evocation of the Virginia landscape of his youth is achingly beautiful. But on the evidence of these unremarkable pieces, Styron does not seem to be a natural short-story writer; his lush prose needs the breathing room of a long novel, space enough for his narrative to gather momentum before lifting off. The three tales are united by their single narrator, one Paul Whitehurst, and his search for ``light refracted within a flashing moment of remembered childhood.'' They take up the issues Styron has grappled with in previous fiction--the legacy of slavery and racism in the South, the constricting ties of family relationships, the tragedy of war--but with neither a refreshing new perspective nor the tremendous oratorical potency that Styron's readers expect from him. This is well-crafted magazine fiction that is satisfying only for as long as it lasts. (Sept.)

Library Journal

In each of these three stories, which orignally appeared in Esquire magazine in the Seventies and Eighties, narrator Paul Whitehurst recalls significant episodes from his childhood in Virginia during the Depression and the Second World War. In ``Love Day,'' Paul remembers his father's analysis of the economic benefits the war has brought to the South, as he himself sails to Japan with the invasion fleet. In ``Shadrach,'' a dying former slave returns to the rundown plantation where he was born. In the title story, Paul commemorates his mother's agonizing death from cancer. The narratives, as Styron says in a preface, ``reflect the experiences of the author,'' as well as recapitulate, in luminous prose, most of the major themes of his longer fiction, from Set This House on Fire (1951) to Sophie's Choice (1981). For all its brevity, this collection is arguably the best single-volume introduction to this important author. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.-- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Brad Hooper

From the author of, among other novels, the classic "Lie Down in Darkness" (1952), the controversial "Confessions of Nat Turner" (1968), and the monumental "Sophie's Choice" (1979), comes a book less a peak in Styron's career than perhaps a lovely, serene valley. Three long short stories (each previously published in "Esquire") form a triptych capturing as if in amber a trio of moments in Paul Whitehurst's youth and early manhood. In "Love Day," he's a Marine preparing to participate in the assault on Okinawa in the last days of World War II. "I felt as helpless and as vulnerable as I had at any time since I had gone to war," says Paul; it's a time of poignant introspection, cast here in Styron's trademark mellifluous style. "Shadrach" features a younger Paul's reactions (he's 10 that summer) to an ancient black man who returns to the local plantation where he was born in slavery, to die and be buried. The issue brings out residual racist attitudes still grounded in the soil of the Virginia Tidewater in those Depression days. The triptych's final panel, "A Tidewater Morning," is actually situated chronologically between its predecessors, and it's the most affecting of the three. With a pungency that keenly pierces the reader's heart by use of a blade devoid of sentimentality, Paul recalls his father's disgust with a God that would take in such an excruciating manner the life of his wife, Paul's mother. Back in the second story, Paul mentions that something "caused me to shiver with their splendor," and the reader will indeed have the same reactions to the words, sentences, and perceptions offered here.

A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales from Youth

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