William Styron, 1925 - 2006

The main character in Nick Hornsby's High Fidelity is constantly mulling over and revising a series of personal Top Ten lists, most related to music: "Greatest Songs to Appear on Side One, Track One," etc. One of the reasons I enjoyed the book was the discovery that I'm not the only person who has these internal conversations. My personal music lists are pretty basic, of the "Top Ten Desert Island Albums" type. The more involved lists run toward baseball and, especially, writing: Best writers, non-fiction (Michael Lewis), essays and criticism (Adam Gopnik), graphic novels (Alan Moore, obviously), observation of pop culture (Chuck Klosterman), and so on.

But the most extensively considered list has always been in the prime category of Novelist. Different authors have come on and off as I've gotten older and my tastes have changed, but there have always been two constants: all of the writers were alive, and William Styron was always somewhere on the list. I decided that until I read a better book than "Sophie's Choice," he wasn't moving. I haven't, and neither has he.

So the news of his death last week, while not surprising, was still unavoidably sad. Few 20th century writers wrote with his elegance and power, and fewer still--particularly American writers in Styron's mid-century cohort--chose to apply their gifts to the wrenching moral questions that defined the age. Styron didn't produce a lot--for years, articles would suggest that he was working on a final novel based on his experiences as a Marine in World War II, but one always had the sense that it would never come. Now it never will, but what he did give us was more--much more--than enough.