Styron, William. The Confessions of Nat Turner. New York: Random House, 1966.
I have never run so hot and cold about a book before. On the one hand William Styron has a beautiful writing style. His descriptions of the Virginian south in the 1830s are breathtaking while his depictions of slavery are simultaneously heartbreaking. What I didn’t care for was the obvious artistic liberties Styron took with the plot surrounding historical fact. Obviously, in order to fill an entire novel he needed to expound on the factual confession of Nat Turner which was less than a standard chapter in length. He had to assume supporting plots and characters, but was it necessary to have Nat Turner only lust after white women? Do we know this to be a true trait of Nat? His sexuality seems to be fodder for controversy. I saw The Confessions of Nat Turner to be the truth bundled by fiction. At the heart of Styron’s novel is Nat Turner’s confession, but what surrounds it is pure imagination and speculation. While the book garnered a Pulitzer Prize it was also banned in some parts of the south. That should tell you something.
Two lines that stuck with me: “They were in the profoundest dark” (p 17), and “I do not believe that I had ever thought of the future, it is not in the mood of a Negro, once aware of the irrecoverable fact of his bondage…” (p 171).
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and More Book Lust. From Book Lust in the chapter called, “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1960s” (p 178) and from More Book Lust in the chapter called, ” Southern-Fried Fiction: Virginia” (p 209).
~*LunaSea*~ 