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Having been binned for depression myself, Darkness Visible struck a chord.

sad.

I remember myself clearly watching and then being haunted by Sophie's Choice for years. Reading the article you posted, I realize that I am totally unfamiliar with the controversy that surrounded his books. Hopefully we'll read/hear more about it now... How sad.

There was a big uproar when The Confessions of Nat Turner was published.

But why? I am asking while googling. Holocaust and slavery... What was so controversial about his take?

carmina, a long but good article "If Sophie had been just a victim--helpless as a blown leaf, a human speck, volitionless, like so many multitudes of her fellow damned--she would have seemed merely pathetic, another wretched waif of the storm cast up in Brooklyn with no secrets which had to be unlocked. But the fact of the matter is that at Auschwitz (and this she came gradually to confess to me that summer) she had been a victim, yes, but both victim and accomplice, accessory--however haphazard and ambiguous and uncalculating her design--to the mass slaughter whose sickening vaporous residue spiraled skyward from the chimneys of Birkenau."

Because he depicted Nat Turner fantasizing about raping whites.

thanks arse. Styron himself gives his own interpretation here.

As for Nat Turner I can't find anything much online about the controversy except to say it was a controversy. I do remember reading something about it around the time the Sophie's choice movie came out. As I remember it, it was two part. One attack was from historians who said there were inaccuracies in the story to which Styron defended himself saying he was writing fiction and not a text book. The second attack was from some academics who said he was wrong for writing in the voice of a black slave. The book is a fictional look at Nat Turner's final days in prison. He looks back on his life and tries to understand what events made him make the decisions he made and how those decisions lead him to his fate.

On preview, thanks for the link carmina.

Wow. I have not read Nat Turner and I am assuming the timing of its publication was very sensitive. The 60s, you see. That said, just this year Tsotsi caused such an uproar mostly with regards to the fact that the director is white. I am ambivalent. I know that one has to be extremely well equipped and versatile and focused and above all sensitive and perceptive to treat subjects like that... But I also know that I want to live in a society where such requirements are irrelevant.

carmina, from your link, I think Bill says it well. "There will always be a complaint from people who see writing as a province where one should remain rooted in one's own experience. My view is that one of the glories of artistic creation is to transcend the barriers of race and gender and exploit talent to its fullest and to hell with barriers of race, gender, etcetera."

Reminds me of Bill Kinsella's Hobbema books. Many folks, native and white, attacked him for "appropriating a voice". Then a group of guys from the reserve came out and said something along the lines of "we like the books. It's like what we would write if we were writers."

I keep getting The Confessions of Nat Turner and The Turner Diaries confused. I keep intending to read both on the theory that I'll get past it.

Maybe you want to avoid reading them at the same time...

Huh, I was about to say "wait a second, William Golding wrote Darkness Visible" but then I checked Amazon.com and sure enough, there are two Darkness Visibles. Well, I've only read one so don't have much to add.