1/5/2007

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Kenneth S. Greenberg, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Suffolk University, joined a group of six esteemed writers, artists, and critics at “A Tribute to William Styron,” held at the Boston Public Library on December 13, 2006.

Styron, who died in November at 81, exerted a powerful influence on American literature. His writing—including the novels Lie Down in Darkness, Sophie’s Choice and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Confessions of Nat Turner, as well as plays, essays, and a searing memoir, Darkness Visible—plumbed subjects disturbing and profound: slavery, the Holocaust, depression. He also worked avidly on behalf of human rights in America and abroad.

The speakers read from Styron’s acclaimed (and often controversial) works and discussed his lasting impact. Dean Greenberg, Distinguished Professor of History at Suffolk, has written extensively on the institution of American slavery and focused his remarks on Styron’s book about Nat Turner, a slave who led a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831.

“Throughout much of the 1960s, [Styron’s] mind often lived in the violent, bloody world of 1831 Southampton County, Virginia, struggling to write The Confessions of Nat Turner, attempting to understand from the inside an extraordinary inhabitant of that world, one of the greatest American slave rebels,” said Greenberg.

When the book came out in 1967, “The Confessions of Nat Turner was greeted with a reception accorded virtually no other American novel of the twentieth century,” said Greenberg. “The praise was staggering, overwhelming. Perhaps no other American author has ever produced a book that generated such an initial reception.”

“Then, at some point, amidst all the awards and all the praise, a counter theme began to emerge – a trickle at first and then a flood. Many in the African American community began to read the book and react in a radically different way. Rarely has the racial divide seemed so stark and so wide.”

“While Styron saw his decision to write in the voice of Nat Turner as a compliment to the rebel, black critics viewed it as an expropriation of the voice of a great leader. While Styron thought he had portrayed a Nat Turner whose complex psychology was distorted by the experience of enslavement, black critics viewed his approach as emasculating a great black hero.”

One characteristic of Styron, both in writing this book and throughout his life, was his willingness to try to understand what at first seemed alien, to learn about someone who came from another social world. “This was at the heart of William Styron’s sensibility as a writer and as a moral human being,” said Greenberg. “When he succeeded it was a glorious thing to behold. I will miss him.”

Speakers at the event also included Robert Brustein, founding director of the Yale Repertory and American Repertory Theaters, and a newly appointed member of the Suffolk faculty; Geraldine Brooks, author of Year of Wonders and March, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction; Gail Caldwell, Pulitzer Prize-winning chief book critic of the Boston Globe; Jennifer Haigh, award-winning author of Mrs. Kimble and Baker Towers; and Norman Mailer, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Naked and the Dead and many other books. 

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Kenneth S. Greenberg is Distinguished Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Suffolk University. He has written extensively on the institution of American slavery. His books include Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery and Honor and Slavery. For the past 10 years he has been studying and writing about the Nat Turner slave rebellion. He is the editor of the original 1831 Confessions of Nat Turner, the editor of Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, and co-producer and writer of the film, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, nationally broadcast on PBS.

“A Tribute to William Styron” was presented by the Boston Public Library and PEN New England, one of five regional branches of PEN American Center, in turn part of International PEN, the only worldwide organization of writing professionals. www.pen-ne.org
 

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