Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993 TAG: 9309260221
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JOAN SCHROEDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The three stories in William Styron's new book can be read in a single quiet evening. In fact, they probably ought to be read that way; one after the other, in solitude. And then they ought to be read all over again.
In "A Tidewater Morning," Styron again reveals his continuing fascination with the intricacy of family bonds and the ever-preesnt shadow that death casts over the living. The stories are autobiographical, "an imaginative reshaping of real events that are linked by a chain of memory," the author writes in his introductory note.
The predominant event is the death of Stryron's mother when he was 13, recalled in painfully precise detail in the title story. World War II looms in Europe, and narrator Paul Whitehurst recalls delivering newspapers "... on foot up and down the hot, sycamore-lined streets of [the] little village on the banks of the James River in Tidewater Virginia ... The banner headlines that summer were tall and thick with harsh alarm: HITLER THREATENS. GERMAN TROOPS MASSING. CZECHOSLOVAKIA MENACED."
In her close, hot bedroom, Paul's mother lies dying, his father witnessing the unrelenting pain of his wife's last hours and seeking solace in her German lieder recordings. Paul listens as his father sends away the Presbyterian minister, renouncing a God that would allow his wife to suffer so unspeakably.
The story preceding this one, entitled "Shadrach," concerns the coming home to die of an ancient ex-slave. The ten- year-old story, again narrated by Paul Whitehurst, beautifully evokes Depression-era Virginia.
This is Styron at his sensual best, descriptive details richly layered. Here's how he describes the act of playing marbles: "On that day when [Shadrach] seemed to materialize before us, almost out of the ether, we were playing marbles ... One could admire these elegant many-colored spheres as potentates admire rubies and emeralds; they had a sound yet slippery substantiality, evoking the tactile delight - the same aesthetic yet opulent pleasure - of small precious globes of jade. Thus, among other things, my memory of Shadrach is bound up with the lapidary feel of marbles in my fingers and the odor of cool bare earth on a smoldering hot day beneath a sycamore tree..."
Shadrach has come home to find the Dabney family, who generations ago had owned him but are now a degenerate crew of moonshiners. None of that matters to the man, who asks only that he be buried in the place where once, a long time ago, he was happy.
"Love Day," the story beginning the collection, recalls the impending Marine assault of Okinawa, of which the narrator is supposed to be a part. Twenty years old in this story, Paul is, he says, "appallingly fit ... splendidly trained ... [and] hungry for Japanese heads."
Instead, his crew is destined to languish on board the troopship General Washburn, half-listening to notoriously long stories told by Lt. Col. Happy Halloran. Paul daydreams, thinks of his family: about his father helping to build the ship on which he now sails; about his mother's death; about the brittle balance they had struggled so hard to maintain. What he understands, finally, is what most soldiers come to understand: that they have no stomach for war; that daily life confronts them with the same reality of death over and over again.
"A Tidewater Afternoon" is an elegant little book, vintage Styron, in which the line between fiction and autobiography is faintly drawn, a line which probably doesn't matter much in hands as competent as those of William Styron.
Joan Schroeder is a Roanoke writer.
by CNB