But Did You Really Read Him, Alexandra?

But Did You Really Read Him, Alexandra?

                Alexandra Styron’s memoir Reading My Father, which I am just now finishing, represents for me many of the things that I find troubling about the book business these days. The growth of the confessional memoir, in which the author has little to bring to the table except something horrific that happened to them, or a particularly gruesome childhood, has strained the boundaries of what makes a story worth publishing. It obscures the question of voice, and the believability of all narration. We now expect “the truth” and the style with which a story is told is of secondary importance. Obviously, to sell a lot of books, the object of every publisher, a story must appeal to a lot of people. As a bookseller, I’ve watched the bestseller list, and, believe me, without Oprah it has been pretty slim pickings’ (thank you, Oprah, for taking Toni Morrison out of the back-list doldrums. You are almost forgiven for The Secret). When working for the big-box stores, there was nothing more depressing in than coming in on Sunday to “change” the bestseller wall. I would spend the morning moving books from one slot to another and wondering if any of that dreck would be read in ten years’ time.

So imagine living when literature with a capital “L” and the bestseller list converged, and the so-called “big-ego” authors—Mailer, Bellow, Roth--made their livings writing novels,--big novels. This is the world that our present author grew up in, the world of serious writing, the kind that takes a lot of hours in a room alone, while family life goes on without one very important member. Then there is the serious drinking at night, while the family watches and worries.  Most of the author’s childhood took place while her father was busy writing Sophie’s Choice, one of my favorite books, and, in my opinion, one of the most important novels of the mid-20^th century. She describes his writing method--by hand on legal pads. The edition I have, that I picked up for free outside of a used bookstore that was going out of business (yet another curmudgeonly bookseller whose ability to arrange and talk about books far outweighed his business acumen) runs to 515 pages. Yet each word, phrase, sentence, chapter, was crafted by hand. How many crumpled sheets of yellow paper filled the wastebasket at the end of the day? For the whole last half of Reading My Father, I wanted to add to every one of Ms. Styron’s sentences “this is the man who wrote Sophie’s Choice.” Not that artistic achievement is an acceptable excuse for being a S.O.B., but cut the guy some slack. Every day he worked in a fictional world where reason and the will to live were a thin facade over the desperate reality of unbelievable cruelty, madness, and suicide. When, exactly, could he have been called crazy?

                William Styron didn’t know that Sophie’s Choice would be his last novel. It must have been sad to see such power wane. Boozing is often involved in a writers’ downward spin, such a perfect foil for having spent the day wrestling with the demons in your head. Now that something, anything is on paper, it’s a great relief to relax and spend some time socializing with like-minded people, who are also hard-drinking writers. A few hours’ sleep, some coffee, and then start all over again. Watching this process as a kid couldn’t have been particularly healthy, and maybe this is her main complaint, that she had to be responsible for adult problems before her time. This is probably true, but why whine about it now?

I picked up this book (on remainder) because of the title. I don’t usually read contemporary memoirs (as you may have guessed) but the combination of the double entendre and a chance to add to my literary understanding of Mr. Styron’s work drew me in. But the thing is she admits to not even read Sophie’s Choice until well past it’s release. It sounds as if she was more excited about the movie, with its attendant fame and fortune. This is really not her fault (although you think she would have made the effort sooner). When I revealed to a group of what I thought were literary compatriots that the book was written by hand, they started reminiscing about their favorite scenes from the movie, as if the two were synonymous. That’s what a good movie does—Meryl Streep is  Sophie for many people—but strip away the beautiful, period costumes, the perfect locations, and one of the greatest cast ensembles in history and the story still remains in all of its raw power. How long did it take to write the scene in which Sophie makes her choice—two days, ten? Maybe two months or maybe it was revised over and over again during those long afternoons all alone with pen and paper (pencil, actually). We’ll never know. I don’t think it really matters. We have the story whole and perfect, as it was written. We writers now, with our contests and out MFA programs and our Twitter accounts, can only hope we get that shot.