What do You think about Set This House On Fire (2001)?
So the TV's on, tuned to an early-morning movie I'm not watching. I'm trying to figure out what to read next, six books laid out on the coffee table before me. I eliminate William Styron's "Set This House on Fire," figuring I'd wait to re-read that excellent novel next year. I put it back on the bookshelf. The movie catches my eye. It's "Naked in New York," which I'd never seen or even heard of. Eric Stoltz points out to Mary-Louise Parker that the man across the room at the party is William Styron. In one of the movie's quirks, Styron's accomplishments, including a list of his books, flashes on the screen. I'd just put the novel on the bookshelf, and there it is on the TV screen, and there is the man himself. Holy crap. Must be a sign, I think. Styron it is.Nudge from the gods aside, I didn't need much encouraging to dive back into "Set This House on Fire," through which I'd popped my Styron cherry about 2000 or so. It's the last of Styron's four full-length novels people think of. Not the jaw-dropping debut with the 51-page paragraph ("Lie Down in Darkness"), not the controversial Pulitzer Prize winner ("The Confessions of Nat Turner"), nor the masterpiece that spawned the OK movie ("Sophie's Choice"). But Styron's writing makes me weak in the knees, and there's plenty of his detailed, evocative, gorgeous prose in this tale of three men and a tragic rendezvous with destiny in Sambuco, Italy. There's a lot of Faulkner influence in Styron. Sentences to spin your head and that you can gorge upon; long scenes with digressions and recollections and speeches upon speeches. A book that opens with Virginian Peter Leverett hitting a pedestrian with his car on the way to visit a charismatic boyhood friend in Sambuco takes a dark, drunken detour into death, madness and, just maybe, redemption. Leverett narrates, but, as in "Moby Dick," the apparent protagonist virtually disappears for long stretches. Leverett, through time shifts and conversations with Cass Kinsolving, the man who lives below Mason Flagg, the dynamic but ultimately cruel heel who will be found dead at the bottom of a cliff after raping a beautiful peasant, takes us on a heady reconstruction of a tragedy. Leverett recounts his school days with Flagg while meeting Kinsolving in North Carolina months after the Sambuco nightmare. And he digs deep into Kinsolving's dark days before and during his time living in the same building with Flagg. Self-destructive, awash in drink, Kinsolving was an easy target for a handsome millionaire like Flagg, "with the hungry look of a man who knew he could own you if you'd only let him." As a movie crew and other partiers buzz around him, Flagg feeds on Kinsolving's humiliation until things finally take a deadly turn.One feels gluttonous reading Styron's words, particularly in this novel's first half. The self-examination and scenes upon scenes of drunken debasement won't be everyone's cup of wine, but if you're a words-first person, dig in. I feel guilty giving "Set This House on Fire" only four stars (4.5 would be perfect), but since Styron did better at least once (probably twice), and because the second half isn't quite as great and, ultimately, the book is not for everyone, four it is, I guess. (*Sigh*) But I do love the crap out of Styron.
—Tim
When I was young I felt this was Styron's richest, most entertaining novel, and I still enjoy it. But my perceptions have changed a lot. I read this book when I was an undergraduate years ago. I gobbled up the lush Italian setting, the boozing and the brawls, the colorful supporting cast of millionaires and movie stars and barefoot Italian beauties. The central conflict was a classic man to man battle like MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. The dashing charm of the corrupt boyish American millionaire, Mason Flagg, matched against the primitive male courage of Cass Kinsolving, the tough Southern Marine turned painter.This was great stuff for me as a young thing. Having said that, however, when I reread the book recently I was shocked at how my impressions had changed. Looking back now, I don't see Cass as a very heroic character at all. His self-pity and sentimentality are much more apparent to me now that I've lived nearly 45 years. I've supported myself the whole way, unlike Cass, who drinks and sponges to stay alive. And Mason, who was supposed to be fiendishly evil, in a profoundly disturbing way, now seems to me like nothing more than a one-dimensional villain of the Snidely Whiplash variety. He's yet another cowardly Yankee scalawag, and Cass finds "redemption" not by searching his own soul but by passing judgment on someone else.Conveniently, Mason is a coward, and conveniently, Cass is honor bound to kill a man he already hates for all the wrong reasons. Styron is clearly working off an ancient grudge when the cowardly Yankee turns and runs the minute the southern boy picks up a rock and gives the rebel yell. But in real life, Yankees don't always turn and run(see Pickett's Charge). More than that, a Southerner who is really looking for redemption has got to go beyond the old, soothing stereotypes of sniveling Yankee cowards and fearless southern chivalry. Styron blows his horn all through the novel about wanting to create great tragedy, to shatter materialism, offer redemption, and the like, but in the end he settles for cheap shots at safe targets, creating trite melodrama rather than seeking to ask tough questions.For my money, this is Styron's best written novel, even if SOPHIE'S CHOICE and NAT TURNER were more controversial. It's just a shame that the booze got to him in the end.
—Carol Storm
I must confess, this wasn’t the book I was looking for when I wandered out into the stacks at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library with my sights set on William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. (I’d always enjoyed the movie immensely and wanted, finally, to give the author his due.) Unfortunately, my sights were not to be satisfied: Sophie’s Choice was out; and so, I settled for Styron’s Set This House on Fire, a book I’d never even heard of and consequently knew nothing about.In spite of the rave reviews and blurbs on both the front and back covers of the book, I shouldn’t have bothered.There are certainly moments and entire passages that let a reader understand why Styron has the reputation he has. But these are too few and far between.My honest opinion? Styron could’ve told this story much more effectively as a short—or at least as a novella. It didn’t need (or merit) a novel of over 500 pages in small print. And why his three principal characters, all American, insist on inserting the odd Italian word into their dialogue is entirely beyond me. (Moreover, I suspect—though, lacking reference books at this point, can’t confirm—that Styron’s Italian leaves a lot to be desired. Most of it reads like transcriptions directly from the English.)Will I still hunt down Sophie’s Choice? No doubt. But I’ll now hunt it down with a skeptical eye—and in the hope that Styron will have enlisted the help of a better editor than he had for Set This House on Fire.RRB3/31/13Brooklyn, NY
—Russell Bittner
