Customer Reviews

Lie Down in Darkness

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Lie Down In Darkness, Styron's first novel, published when he was just 22, is a masterpiece of psychological realism and storytelling in the Southern Gothic tradition of Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Conner. That it was created by such a young mind is testament to the author's genius; that it has yet to be rivaled as a stirring, oftentimes painful and disturbing portrait of a doomed family, is testament to the writing. Composed with thick, purposeful prose, heavy on similie, metaphor and description, the novel charts the rise and fall of the Loftis Family, an archetypal rendering of the Soutnern Gentry. We follow the tragic downfall of Milton, the drunken patriarch, Ellen, the frigid mother, and the two Loftis daughters, one born perfect, one born crippled. It is a novel of abundant ontological truth, which will reach in and strangle the unconscious sensibilities of almost any reader, regardless of background or predispotition. The novel's beauty ranks with the prose of Lawrence, the passion of Rimbaud and Kundera, the depth and spiritual metaphysics of Doestoyevsky; It is both story and case study. And ultimately we are shepherded through tragedy after tragedy into the climax--the suicide of the immeasurably beautiful and desired Peyton Loftis--as we walk moment to moment with her, peering inside the poisoned stream of consciousness that overwhelms and eventually claims her. Lie Down In Darkness belongs in the canon of Great American Masterpieces. It's significance has only begun to be understood.

William Styron, in Lie Down in Darkness, tells the story of Peyton Loftis, the beautiful daughter of Helen and Milton Loftis, her ultimate suicide, and her family's contribution to her fate. Sad, yet compelling. As I read, my revulsion for the characters grew line by line, for they are wasted, empty, and they drown themselves in a swamp of despair and impotency. Helen is a vindictive, jealous mother who takes painful jabs at anyone in her path; Milton is an incestuous alcoholic who can't own up to his failures and who is stuck in a sort of paralyzed stupor; and Peyton, well, she is a genetic carryover of her parents-from her mother she learns revenge, and from her father, alcoholism.

The story is one of severe despondency, a portrait of lives that have lost their savor and are headed toward destruction. Of all the characters in the story, the Negro house servants come forth as the strongest. They have a spiritual strength that contrasts strongly with that of the Loftis.' The overwhelmingly best quality of the book, I believe, is the beauty of the prose. It's like an epic poem, lyrical and dramatic and sweepingly colorful. And, believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Peyton's stream-of-consciousness marathon just before she killed herself. Styron made it enjoyable and I will always remember the flightless birds and how they follow Peyton all over New York and also the $39.95 clock that Peyton perceives as her refuge from the evil world. Is this what mental illness is really like? This book is certainly one to be read again.

William Styron is likely the greatest novelist no one has ever heard of. His name is even less recognizable than Faulkner's, or other great American writers: Steinbeck, Hemingway, etc. And yet, in my opinion, his works are far superior. With only four novels to choose from out of his career he has made it very difficult for himself to be regarded in those terms, but he has still achieved a wide amount of critical acclaim, with a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award to his credit.

His novels are not light novels. They are not coffee table books, but a rather serious discussions on moral issues written with an eloquence that is unmatched in modern writing.

Lie Down in Darkness is his first novel, and is much like what I have just said. As a first novel it is necessarily experimental, although the effect of this experimentation is at times hard to tell.

Following through flashback the trials of one Virginia family on the day of their daughter's funeral, Lie Down in Darkness leads up to the present, describing in tragic terms how the family has come apart and where it is now.

This is great writing, some of the best writing I have ever read, as realistic as any Dickens novel, and as engaging as anything by Baldwin.

It is not a happy book, but it is the best book I have read about the American family, far greater and relevant than anything I have read by Morrison.

Before I read the novel Lie Down in Darkess, I read commentary which said that Merle Miller, a noted critic of the time, could not finish the last eighty pages because of beautiful and doomed tragedy of it all. The day I finished Styron's Lie Down in Darkess, it occurred to me that I should stop writing because none of my prose would ever be this amazingly poetic.

Lie Down in Darkess is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Milton Loftis, the main character, is not a protagonist because he is not our hero, although we certainly spend time hoping that he might find a middle ground between his shrewish wife, his alcoholic excesses and the heartbreak of his feelings for his oldest daughter Peyton. Milton Loftis is a man trapped in a Greek tragedy who blunders on every day, balancing his illusions and hoping for the best, although he, and we, the readers, see the foreboding clouds which spell certain doom from the beginning of the book.

Helen, the bitter, hypocritical wife, clothes herself in the self righteous delusions of religiosity and spends most of her energy with the mentally incapacitated daughter Maudie. She pretends that Milton is a profligate sinner and adulterer who has made it his life's work to torture her, ignoring that her icy civility and the obvious hatred of her own daughter has been the prod to his loveless and licentious life style. Milton Loftis finds some modicum of hope in his sad affair with Dolly Bonner, but that and whisky are only ways to escape an insufferable existence he cannot escape and cannot understand. He is not weak enough to die, and he is not strong enough to flee.

Admittedly, I am a stylist of the Faulknerian, Reynolds Price persuasion, so I found the haunting beauty of this novel enough to recommend it to other readers. I understand that is my bias, but I stand by that verdict. The more people who read this great book, the more awareness of life's inexorable twists, and, hopefully, the more aware we become of the pain of others, and the more committed we become to tolerance and forgiveness.

Never have I wanted to pound some sense into fictional characters as when I read William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness. The Loftiss family saga is sometimes hard to read because they hurt each other so easily and so often. But Styron's language is beautiful, and his understanding of the characters is deep. The account of Peyton's last day is especially heartbreaking and revealing. In short, this novel is one of my favorites simply because of its account of human frailty and the amazing way in which the story is told. Styron is one of the best.

Reading Lie Down in Darkness fifty years after its publication, it still resonates with narrative power and graceful prose. But now with such distance one sees so clearly how much it owes to, among others, The Sound and the Fury and Ulysses--and by that comparison, how it has fails to renew itself with time, unlike those two books. Styron's book, while beautiful and wonderful, has not made the short-list of immortality, because it belongs to a fixed time. It is a work of amazing grace, fluidity, and power; it is a classic of a time when the bomb had just dropped, and when humanity was emerging from two wars with a great hope of solving its woes. The narrative struggles to make sense of all the madness and nihilism, the faith and sanity of that time, and as such Lie Down in Darkness's ambition and grace make it worthwhile reading for those dedicated to literature and beauty and understanding--understanding, that is, where we come from and, perhaps, where we are going. Will this work endure forever? No; it has its limits and its bounds, and already perhaps there are books that better capture the pervasive spiritus mundi, sorrow. But what does endure forever, after all? Daddy Faith might say belief. The example of Peyton Loftis seems to disagree.

This long, wending, fatiguing, frustrating novel is one of those rare books that are so suffused with suffering and tragedy that the reader, if s/he is the sort of "deep" reader, as I imagine most prospective readers of this book are, will not emerge from reading it without suffering and trauma themselves. In particular, the character of Helen Loftis, whom Styron seems to have drug up from the depths of Hell, has such depraved and hateful intricacies in her soul, which Styron never ceases to plumb to their core, that this reader at least, breathed a long sigh of relief upon finishing the book and knowing that I wouldn't have to read about her anymore. She makes Lady Macbeth seem an ideal candidate for sainthood. All of this invites the question of whether a book that causes the reader to suffer is worth the read. To this, I don't have a pat answer.

Yes, the poetic prose is beautiful and haunting. But so is that of Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe and Proust and Lowry and, more recently, John Banville. I'm not sure I would recommend this book before these, or even with these. A book which causes the reader to suffer is a unique experience in my long acquaintance with literature.

I've not much else to say here, save to let the novel speak for itself, to let the prospective reader know what s/he is in for:

"...a song of measureless innocence that echoed among lost ruined temples of peace and brought to their dreams an impossible vision: of a love that outlasted time and dwelt even in the night, beyond the reach of death and all the immemorial, descending dusks. Then evening came. Arms and legs asprawl, they stirred and turned. Twilight fell over their bodies. They were painted with fire, like those fallen children who live and breathe and soundlessly scream, and whose souls blaze forever." Last paragraph of Chapter 5, pg. 225, in my edition.

Pretty love scene...No? One comes away from this book feeling that one is emerging from a Hell of Styron's own devising full of characters whose souls blaze forever in its bowels.

I recently managed to make it all the way through Sophie's Choice, a book I had attempted to read in college and hadn't had the maturity to finish. I loved it on my recent read so I thought I should return to Lie Down in Darkness, another book I hadn't been able to complete.

This is a very good, if not great, novel. It is also very depressing. I remember it being so depressing that I just couldn't get through it the first time (and my memory was good). All the same, the writing is beautiful and the characterizations clear and sad. In a sense, this novel is a lyrical essay on Tolstoy's quote about unhappy families from Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

The novel opens on Peyton Loftis' body returning to her family on the train from New York after her suicide. Styron ranges back and forth in time and point of view throughout the novel in presenting the causes of Peyton's depression and suicide.

Peyton Loftis is the template for a particular kind of doomed Southern girl - beautiful with Daddy issues and a dozen bad habits, the kind of girl certain kinds of boys fall in love with but never marry. She is in some ways a very old-fashioned character - very much of her own generation. Reading her will make you grateful that our mothers' generation fought the feminist battles and gave us options beyond attending Sweet Briar and marrying the first fraternity boy that crossed our path. I think it's a wonder more intelligent and creative women didn't cut their own throats in the public square out of sheer boredom.

I'd like to say that all the changes in the status of women in the last 50 or so years have made the Peyton Loftises of the world obsolete, but that would be untrue. There are still plenty of boxes for both women and men to be confined to and political and societal change don't necessarily eliminate them.

I'm glad I made it through this one this time. It is, as I said, a good novel. I can strongly relate to all the flavors of despair that Styron depicts and truly felt the presence of his own depression throughout the novel. Styron is wonderfully flamboyant with language and character, even when weighed down with his own demons.

How this novel has only garnered 14 reviews on Amazon is beyond me. This is one of the great American novels of the 20th century and is a "must read" for any student of letters, for any aspiring novelist. Styron's style is poetic and majestic; the novel is a beautiful read. It is a joy to read. Every page reveals new wonders and delicate crafting of the English language.

Lie Down in Darkness is not a great book. But it is a very good one, and shows how William Styron, even in his youth was a talented and perceptive writer. This novel begins with the death of Peyton Loftis, and goes back in time to follow her childhood and coming of age, as well as her eventual marriage, until her death. We see these pictures through the alternating points of view mostly of her father and mother, but also of some other characters, and learn how her death was inextricably related to the slow attrition caused by stubborness, jealousy, and hate that tears apart her family. Darkness is everywhere in the novel, taking the form of guilt and personal failures that corrode the hearts of each character and make inevitable Peyton's tragic end. Indeed the predetermination is all the more evident, since we know from the very beginning that she has died.

Although Sophie's Choice shows how much more polished (and more thoughtful too, perhaps) he has become as a writer, Styron's writing is beautiful, as are the characters and the story. This may not be a necessary read, and the beginning may be slow, but it was well worth my time.