William Styron Audio & Video

In this brilliant, multi-layered novel, a young Southerner, Stingo, wants to become a writer. In Brooklyn, he meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish intellectual involved in a turbulent love-hate affair with Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman.

A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this best seller is William Styron's true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression.

Novelist William Styron talks about his 1990 book Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness in this interview with Fresh Air. Styron recounts his battle with clinical depression in 1985 that led him to near suicide before he checked himself into a hospital and eventually improved.

Before writing his memoir of madness, Darkness Visible, William Styron was best known for his ambitious works of fiction - including The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice. Styron also created personal but no less powerful tales based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine.

In this short discussion from Charlie Rose in the late 1990s, film director Alan Pakula, author William Styron, and Robert Boorstin, senior advisor to the secretary of the treasury, all briefly talk about their experiences with mental illness.

This conversation between George Plimpton and William Styron, part of a collaboration between 92Y's Unterberg Poetry Center and The Paris Review, was recorded live at 92Y on December 8, 1997.