The Long March and In the Clap Shack (2 Books in 1) [Paperback]

William Styron (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage International | Publication Date: January 4, 1993

Two extraordinary works about soldiers in a time of dubious peace by a writer of vast eloquence and moral authority. With stylistic panache and vitriolic wit, William Styron depicts conflicts between men of somewhat more than average intelligence and the military machine. In The Long March, a novella, two Marine reservists fight to retain their dignity while on a grueling exercise staged by a posturing colonel. The uproariously funny play In the Clap Shack charts the terrified passage of a young recruit through the prurient inferno of a Navy hospital VD ward. In both works, Styron wages a gallant defense of the free individual--and serves up a withering indictment of a system that has no room for individuality or freedom.

Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage International ed edition (January 4, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679736751
• ISBN-13: 978-0679736752
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #501,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Styron (1925-2006) , a native of the Virginia Tidewater, was a graduate of Duke University and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. His books include Lie Down in Darkness, The Long March, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie's Choice, This Quiet Dust, Darkness Visible, and A Tidewater Morning. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Howells Medal, the American Book Award, the Legion d'Honneur, and the Witness to Justice Award from the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation. With his wife, the poet and activist Rose Styron, he lived for most of his adult life in Roxbury, Connecticut, and in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, where he is buried.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two stories of noncombat military life., April 25, 2004

By 

j-c-m - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Long March and In the Clap Shack (2 Books in 1) (Paperback)

The Long March: A novella set in a Marine training area during the Korean War. An officer sets his battalion on a forced march over 36 miles to complement his swaggering self-image. Soldiers drop out by the truckload in the sweltering heat, and one is driven to insubordination by his conflicting senses of self and duty.

In the Clap Shack: A play in which a young Marine tested positive for syphilis is taken advantage of by an egotistical doctor. Styron witholds little in his depiction of the unpleasantries to be found in a World War II Naval Hospital urological ward: "short arm inspections," racism, doctors' lack of compassion. Despite this, a grim humor can be found in several scenes.

William Styron (himself a Marine) gives us believable characters facing an environment that seeks to depersonalize them and shows how the military's command structure can leave little room for individuality.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A vitriolic look at a Navy ward, December 22, 2004

By 

HORAK (Zug, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Long March and In the Clap Shack (2 Books in 1) (Paperback)

Mr Styron's theatre play is set in 1943 in a urological ward of a Navy hospital. There are several soldiers all of whom suffer from various venereal diseases, their presence being "a sign of the moral breakdown the war has brought about". Schwartz, a solemn Jew, a South-born black called Lorenzo Clark and a syphilis patient, Wally Magruder. The latter has to wear a special bathrobe marked with a yellow "S" and he has to use a washbasin reserved for patients suffering from the same disease.
Among the staff, there is Dr Glanz, well known for "always wanting people to be sick" and the homosexual male nurse Lineweaver who naturally delights in examining the patients in the ward.
A tragic and at the same time comic play about the way patients can be manipulated and mislead by the medical profession, the competence of which is clearly to be mistrusted according to Mr Styron.