Sophie's Choice: William Styron's Novel of Choices, Hobson's and OtherwiseThis novel was chosen by members of On the Southern Literary Trail as a group read for September, 2014. Sophie's Choice, First Ed., First Prtg., William Styron, Random House, New York, New York, 1979 The gate to Auschwitz, where those in charge choose who lives and who diesLife is but a series of choices, is it not? Some easy, quickly made, given no further thought. Others are more difficult. We worry about the outcome, the consequences. After much thought, we arrive at a choice, live with it, find we worried over nothing, or become haunted by consequences we never envisioned. Call it free will.When we are very young life is much simpler, is it not? Our decisions are made for us. By our parents, our caretakers. Perhaps caregivers sounds better. We do not know about the idea of free will, so we do not worry about it. We just take what comes. We are grateful if we have kind parents and caregivers. No, that's not right, we are simply happy because that is what we learn to expect. Many children learn to expect nothing good to happen. Neither the happy children or the sad children have a choice in the matter. It is simply the way it is. A child who expected nothing good to happen, from the film "Schindler's ListBut Sophie's Choice by William Styron deals with choices made principally by his title character in a setting where the choices are given under duress, which are choices not freely made, or choices which have no satisfactory outcome, the classic Hobson's choice. Sophie is an Aryan, not Jewish. However, she is Polish. The Nazi regime despises the Poles as they did the mentally ill, physically imperfect, the gypsies, homosexuals, and dissident intellectuals. All will go to the camps. And all will only leave up through the chimneys of the crematoria.Styron's method of telling Sophie's story is a master stroke of plotting. Rather than resort to the omniscient "god" like narrator, Styron inserts himself into the story as his younger self. "Call me Stingo." Echoing the words of Herman Melville,"Call me Ishmael," Styron relates key facts of his life as a young manuscript reader at McGraw-Hill Publishing who aspires to become a writer. Following his brief stay there, he is terminated. He must move to more affordable lodging. His search lands him in a boarding house in 1947 Brooklyn, a time when trees still grew there. The older Styron writes of himself as a younger more callow figure. Stingo tells us,“To make matters worse, I was out of a job and had very little money and was self-exiled to Flatbush—like others of my countrymen, another lean and lonesome Southerner wandering amid the Kingdom of the Jews.”Oh, yes. Stingo is a Southerner. A Virginian, born and bred, with a degree from Duke University. Not only is he close to impoverished and lonesome, he is lonesome for female company. Among his scant belongings is an unopened box of condoms upon which he casts a wistful look from time to time.Stingo's feverish libido is fired by the nightly sounds of unbridled and enthusiastic celebrations of the ars amatoria from the room above his. It is difficult to sleep, to even think. To write is impossible. Bed springs squeak and a head board beats against a wall with a steadily increasing rhythm. There are brief interludes of silence and then the sounds of the circle of life slowly begin again rising to crescendoing heights. It drives Stingo to distraction.Then we meet the unabashed coupling couple. One Nathan Landau and Miss Sophie Zawistowska. Nathan is Jewish. Sophie is not. She is a Polish Catholic who survived internment at Auschwitz.Stingo walks into the boarding house to find the couple arguing. Not all is well with the two lovers upstairs.At the house Sophie and Nathan were embroiled in combat just outside the door of my room..."Don't give me any of that, you hear," I hear him yell. "You're a liar! You're a miserable lying cunt, do you hear me? A cunt!...[T]hat's what you are, you moron--a two-timing, double-crossing cunt! Spreading that twat of yours for a cheap, chiseling quack doctor. Oh, God!" he howled, and his voice rose in wild uncontained rage. "Let me out of here before I murder you--you whore!Then Nathan turned his attention on Stingo."You're from the South," he said.. "Morris told me you were from the South. Said your name's Stingo. Yetta needs a Southerner in her house to fit in with all the other funnies...Too bad I won't be around for a lively conversation, but I'm getting out of here. It would have been nice to talk with you...We'd have had great fun, shootin' the shit, you and I. We could have talked about sports. I mean Southern sports. Like lynching niggers--or coons, I think you call them down there...Too bad. Old Nathan's got to hit the road. Maybe in another life, Cracker, we'll get together. So long, Cracker! See you in another life."Odd, how those who are the targets of prejudice are among the most intolerant, is it not so?Stingo immediately goes to comfort Sophie. However, his feelings are conflicted. Although his choice is to comfort her, his wish is to possess her. He is captured by her beauty. And Styron will make it clear through the novel that men are frequently drawn to Sophie by her beauty.One important thing that the reader must realize is that Styron is dealing with two time frames. He is dealing with the present in which he is writing the book. He is dealing with the present of 1947 in which the action actually occurs. It is through this distancing that Styron is able to set up throughout the novel moments of foreshadowing. It must never be forgotten that Old Stingo/Styron knows how this tale ends. It is a flashback within a flashback.Styron gradually reveals to us that Nathan Landau is brilliant, wealthy, but mentally ill. He is capable of great charm, care, and generosity. Nathan has chosen upon meeting Sophie who is still suffering from the after effects of her internment in Auschwitz to bring her back to health and save her life. He takes her to his brother Larry who is a physician who treats her and refers her to other physicians. Upon their meeting Sophie suffers from scurvy, has endured typhus, scarlet fever, and malnutrition. She has lost her teeth. Nathan has provided perfect dentures for her. Clothing. Most important to Sophie, music in the form of the latest model phonograph and records, extremely expensive in that day. And Nathan restored her eroticism to her the sense of which was totally lost to her in Auschwitz.Nathan will also make the positive choice to befriend Stingo. Stingo will become part of a threesome, included in Nathan's and Sophie's adventures. Nathan will come to praise Stingo's writing giving him the confidence to complete what will become his first novel, Styron's Lie Down in Darkness. The novels most charming moments are when the three are together on one of Nathan's elaborately planned adventures. It has the sense of Truffaut's "Jules et Jim."Old Stingo will recall,“There are friends one makes at a youthful age in whom one simply rejoices, for whom one possesses a love and loyalty mysteriously lacking in the friendships made in after-years, no matter how genuine.” Oddly enough, Nathan's misgivings about Stingo were not totally inaccurate. Stingo has his share of Southern guilt with which to live. It seems that his family once had a slave named Artiste and he was put out to work. The value of that work was a large sum of money which came into his father's possession. His father sent Stingo his share of that burden of Southern history. It was that largesse that allowed him to continue to live in Brooklyn and write. The reveal of this information instantly brought a comparison of Stingo to Quentin Compson. "I don't hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I don't hate it," he said. "I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!" Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner. Nathan chooses to self medicate with amphetamines and cocaine. An employee at Pfizer Laboratories, he easily obtains what he needs. The "Bennies" the cocaine make him fly. It is when he begins to crash that his Mr. Hyde personality appears. Sophie can only hope that barbiturates can ease him into sleep before he emotionally abuses her or physically harms her.It is during those periods of time that Nathan abandons Sophie that Stingo becomes her confidant. Though she has lost her faith in the horror of Auschwitz, she treats Stingo as the priest in the confessional. Stingo is a safe confidant. John Steinbeck reminded us in East of Eden, “Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.” Stingo helped Sophie to talk. It is in Sophie's narration to Stingo that we are gradually led to Sophie's Choice. Old Stingo/Styron repeatedly reveals bits and pieces that lead us to believe that it was horrible indeed. It was.In a novel as dark as this a reader is grateful for any brief respite of humor. Styron provides it here in young Stingo's pursuit of sexual satisfaction. There is the divine Leslie Lapidus who loves to talk dirty, and can talk the talk with expertise but cannot bring herself to do the deed. She envisions Stingo with his Southern accent as some Cavalier officer of the Confederate army.“I mean, I don't know much about the Civil War, but whenever I think of that time—I mean, ever since Gone With the Wind I've had these fantasies about those generals, those gorgeous young Southern generals with their tawny mustaches and beards, and hair in ringlets, on horseback. And those beautiful girls in crinoline and pantalettes. You would never know that they ever fucked, from all you're able to read." She paused and squeezed my hand. "I mean, doesn't it just do something to you to think of one of those ravishing girls with that crinoline all in a fabulous tangle, and one of those gorgeous young officers—I mean, both of them fucking like crazy?""Oh yes," I said with a shiver, "oh yes, it does. It enlarges one's sense of history.”Then there's Sally Ann, the Baptist, she of the stalwart hand. She leaves Stingo wrung out like a limp wash rag. Stingo complains he could have done that better himself. But we must return to Nathan, Sophie, Stingo, and Auschwitz.The last time Nathan broke with reality, he threatened to murder Sophie and Stingo. He believed they had made love. He was wrong about that.Stingo was determined to save Sophie from Nathan. He persuaded her to go with him to a farm owned by his father in Virginia. It was on that trip Sophie revealed her choice at Auschwitz. It was on that trip that Sophie made love to Stingo. And she asked if there was a Berlitz language school near there so she might learn to write in English."There are so many things that people still don't know about that place!" she said fiercely. "There are so many things I haven't even told you Stingo, and I've told you so much. You know, about how the whole place was covered with the smell of burning Jews, day and night. I've told you that. But I never even told you hardly anythng about Birkenau, when they begun to starve me to death and I go so sick I almost died...Or..." And here she paused, gazed into space, then said, "There are so many terrible things I could tell. But maybe I could write it as a novel, you see, if I learned to write English good, and then I could make people understood how the Nazis made you do things you never believed you could...I was so afraid! They made me afraid of everything! Why don't I tell the truth about myself? Why don't I write it down in a book that I was a terrible coward, that I was a filthy collaboratrice that I done everything that was bad just to save myself?" She made a savage moan, so loud above the racket of the train that heads turned nearby and eyes rolled. "Oh, Stingo, I can't stand living with these things!"Viktor E. Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” Perhaps Sophie lost her why at Auschwitz.Birkenau: Those who do not have a why to live cannot bear any how. Is it not so? Now we come to one Thomas Hobson who was an English Stable Keeper around 1600. He always required his customers to take the horse nearest the door or none at all. It came to be known as Hobson's choice, meaning what appears to be a free choice which offers no option at all. That was Sophie's choice. Was it not so?Let us allow young Stingo to have the last word, shall we?“Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie's life..., and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?"And the answer: "Where was man?” I have mentioned the work of Viktor Frankl. This novel stands on equal footing with Night by Elie Wiesel, The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart, and Schindler's List byThomas Keneally.William Styron won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1980. He was a finalist for the National Critics Circle Award. However, reviews were mixed. Styron was criticized for having taken on a topic to huge to be taken on in any manner other than silence, ignoring earlier works in existence and widely recognized. A narrower criticism was based on Styron having selected a Polish Catholic as his central character as the Holocaust's purpose was deemed the extermination of the Jewish Race. Styron responded in an essay in the New York Times that the Holocaust transcended anti-Semitism, that “its ultimate depravity lay in the fact that it was anti-human,” he wrote. “Anti-life.”All who suffered under the Third Reich suffered universally. Was it not so?Other MaterialsThe Lebensborn Program (view spoiler)[Lebensborn” translates to “wellspring of life” or “fountain or life.” The Lebensborn project was one of most secret and terrifying Nazi projects. Heinrich Himmler founded the Lebensborn project on December 12, 1935, the same year the Nuremberg Laws outlawed intermarriage with Jews and others who were deemed inferior. For decades, Germany’s birthrate was decreasing. Himmler’s goal was to reverse the decline and increase the Germanic/Nordic population of Germany to 120 million. Himmler encouraged SS and Wermacht officers to have children with Aryan women. He believed Lebensborn children would grow up to lead a Nazi-Aryan nation.The program ran from 1939-1945. Polish children were particular targets of the program with allegedly over 100,000 children stolen from their parents.In an effort to save her son, Jan, Sophie begged Auschwitz Commander Rudolp Hoess to enter him into the Lebensborn Program. She doubted that he ever did anything. Hoess is the only real character to appear in the pages of Sophie's Choice. He did serve as the commandant at Auscwitz. He was a defendant at the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to death. The author gratefully acknowledges the Jewish Virtual Library for information regarding Lebensborn and Rudoplh Hoess. This library may be located at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/. (hide spoiler)]
I know, I know. At the rate I'm going, I'll soon have abandoned more books than I've finished. I'm just not so keen on contemporary literature, I suppose. Fiction, for the most part, has become indistinguishable from magazine writing: pretentious yet self-deprecating, staccato ("relatable") language, a smattering of intellectual/poetic adornment, some social commentary, and the contents of your medicine cabinet--to show that this is an intimate communication between us. Sophie's Choice is all that. And all that aside, I was really loving it...to begin with.I watched the film when I was very young and I, along with the rest of the world population, pleaded with the television, "Leave him! Sophie, leave him! Marry Stingo! He's the one who really cares about you!" Now 31 years old, I know the power of a Nathan. I too loved a nurturer/sadist. After he left me, I went into a deep depression. And after that, I met George. George is Stingo of that film,--his views, his experiences. He even looks a little like Peter MacNicol. (He hates it when I say that.) Though less gentle than my boyfriend, and less gentle than MacNicol's portrayal, this character (the narrative voice) evoked my boyfriend,--to begin with,--like no one since Sebastian Flyte. I love Stingo. I've always loved Stingo. So you can imagine my utter heartbreak as the he gradually revealed his jaded, pervy thoughts.Very early in the story there's a rape scene. The assault happens in public, in the dark, on the subway. It was tastefully, poignantly written, I must say. In no way would I characterize it as erotica. I was particularly struck by the way it was subtly paralleled against an earlier scene where Stingo pines for an unknown woman outside his window. Like Stingo, the rapist is anonymous. Like Stingo, his lust has been driven "underground," so to speak. Again, I say, well done. This book, as we all know, is largely about guilt. I certainly don't begrudge a man looking out his window at fully dressed women in broad daylight. Stingo is a good man. But there's a monster in us all. The character is made all the more appealing for his candor.What started to bother me, however, was the way he kept harping on the notion that the rape would have been less traumatic had it been less veiled. I get it: Her attacker could be anyone, anyone on the street, in the halls of her building. That is indeed terrifying. Secrets do, indeed, fester. But the way Stingo/Styron was carrying on, I started to wonder what he was getting at. Here's what he was getting at:"...her shame was anything but lessoned by the fact that she was Catholic and Polish and a child of her time and place--that is to say, a young woman brought up with puritanical repressions and sexual taboos as adamantine as those of any Alabama Baptist maiden. (It would take Nathan, she told me later, Nathan with his liberated and passionate carnality, to unlock the eroticism in her which she never dreamed she possessed.) Add to this the indwelling shame of the rape the unconventional, to say the least, the grotesque way she had been attacked--and the embarrassment she felt at having to tell [her doctor:]..."...Whereas a sexually liberated atheist, attacked openly, will be juuuust fine. (My Nathan's "passionate carnality" did more locking than unlocking, but I'll leave that alone. Sophie isn't me.) There does seem to be a hint of righteous indignation on Stingo's part.And then..."...I felt that there was being thrust on me a priceless reward for the vigor and zeal with which I had embraced my Art. Like any author worth his salt, I was about to receive my just bounty, that necessary adjunct to hard work--necessary as food and drink-- which revived the fatigued wits and sweetened all life. Of course I mean by this that for the first time after these many months in New York, finally and safely beyond peradventure, I was going to get a piece of ass."Well, again, he's just being honest..."Thus during those hours when I had not been immersed in my novel I had thought of Leslie and the approaching tryst, sucking on the nipples of those 'melon-heavy' Jewish breasts..."Okay, that's enough honesty."That the era became epitomized by Little Miss Cock Tease--the pert number who jerked off a whole generation of her squirming young coevals, allowing moist liberties but with steel-trap relentlessness withholding the big prize, sobbing in triumph as she stole back to the dorm (O that intact membrane! O those those silvery snail tracks on the silken undies!)..."Okay, seriously, William..."[It's:] no one's fault, only that of history..."Yes, it always is. < / sarcasm >"Aside from that disaster, on the afternoon when I met Leslie Lapidus my past experiences had been typically base and fruitless. Which is to say, typically of the forties. I had done a certain amount of smooching, as it was called then, in the balconies of several movie theaters; another time, stranded in the leafy and secret dark tunnel of the local lovers' lane, I had with madly pounding pulse and furtive fingers succeeded in obtaining a few seconds' worth of what was known as 'bare tit'; and once, scenting triumph but nearly fainting with exertion, I managed to wrest off the maidenform bra only to discover a pair of falsies and a boyish chest flat as a ping pong paddle."You poor thing."I had not idealized 'femininity' in the silly fashion of the time and therefore I am sure I did not foresee bedding down some chaste Sweet Briar maiden only for a trip to the altar. [Of course, not.:] Somewhere in the halcyon future, I think I must have reasoned, I would meet a cuddlesome, jolly girl who would simply gather me into her with frenzied whoopees, unhindered by that embargo placed upon their flesh by the nasty little Protestants who had so tortured me in the back seats of a score of cars."Well, hello, Ian McEwan John Updike D. H. Lawrence Creepy Creeperton."Oh, what ghoulish opportunism are writers prone to." Indeed. Holocaust/rape victims are HOT.I wonder what he had to say about the World War II...
What do You think about Sophie's Choice (1992)?
Either review or judgment it was refreshing to find a discordant voice on both book and novel. My Mediterranean blood might explain my preference for wordy digressions and psychodramas, so I guess that could be a good explanation as to why I adored both Meryl's acting and Styron's opulent prose! :)
—Petra X
The term “Sophie’s Choice,” which derives from a critical plot point in William Styron’s eponymous novel, has become a prominent American idiom. You’ve probably heard it in your daily life. It was the subject of a relatively well-received movie starring Meryl Streep. Certainly, you’ve come across it if you’re a fan of The Simpsons. (A Sophie’s Choice joke is the kicker to Season 10, Episode 5’s “When You Dish Upon a Star”). Despite its prevalence in the cultural landscape, I’m not going to assume you know the parameters of the choice. (I’ve been wrong – cough Moby Dick cough – in my spoiler assumptions before). I will say, though, that knowing those details won’t in any way effect your enjoyment of this novel. I’ve known the twist for years; the mistake I made was in thinking it was the essence of Sophie’s Choice. It is not. Sophie’s Choice is nearly overwhelming. It is wildly ambitious, chronically unfocused, irritating and ostentatious, precisely detailed, overly-written, soaring, gutter-dwelling, psychologically acute, digressionary, complex, utterly narcissistic, and an absolute masterpiece.This book is the best kind of sprawling mess there is. It is all over the place, as though Styron’s many and obvious talents just spilled out on the page and spread in every direction. This book made me laugh. It made me cringe. Part of it made me embarrassed for Styron (or the editor). Other parts made me extremely envious. Classics are usually works of art you must wrestle with. This is a classic. The story is set in post-war New York City (beautifully wrought) in 1947. It is narrated in the first person by a young, transplanted southerner who calls himself Stingo. It bears mentioning, I suppose, that Stingo is a thinly veiled version of Styron himself. Like Styron, Stingo came north from the Tidewater to pursue writerly ambitions. Like Styron, Stingo works at McGraw-Hill. Both are terminated from that position by the same act of defiance. Stingo is working on a novel that bears more than a passing resemblance to Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness. Stingo also – no surprises here – is fascinated by Nat Turner, and eventually writes a novel about him. Stingo – though not ever, I assume, Styron – meets two remarkable people while staying at a NYC boarding house. They are Nathan, a young, brilliant Jewish man who works at Pfizer; and Sophie, a Polish woman who survived the camp at Auschwitz. From the start, Stingo is both intensely attracted to the couple (especially Sophie) and repelled by the violent tumultuousness they openly display. Living beneath them, he hears them making love and fighting, both with passionate intensity. Very shortly, he becomes obsessed with them. The plot, such as it is, is the gradual revealing of the many secrets shared by Sophie and Nathan (including, obviously, Sophie’s titular selection). To say that things are moving towards a single dramatic peak, however, isn’t really accurate. This book is a meander more than anything, equal parts frustrating and breathtaking. Early on, for instance, Stingo takes a fair amount of time to describe to us the publishing job – reading manuscripts and writing summaries – that he is shortly to lose. Included in these passages are a number of “excerpts” from Stingo’s work product, highlighting Stingo’s darkly humorous critiques. What do these pages have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing. But that is the book’s modus. It goes where it wants, when it wants. Towards the end, right when the endgame begins, Stingo/Styron pulls back on the reins for a curious four-page interlude in which Stingo bemoans his courtship with Mary-Alice, a girl who only gave him hand-jobs (rest assured each hand-job is described).Your tolerance, and response, to Sophie’s Choice is going to depend on your tolerance of Stingo. He is a navel gazer of the first order. There are dueling tragedies at play in this novel. First, the tragedy of the Holocaust, as symbolized by Sophie and Nathan. And second, the tragedy of Stingo’s virginity, represented by numerous lengthy set-pieces in which Stingo tries – but fails – to get laid. All tragedy is local, I suppose. It should also be noted that Stingo/Styron is among the more verbose storytellers you’ll encounter. There is never a moment in this novel in which Styron uses one word when five words will do; for that matter, he won’t use one normal word when one obscure one can be used. (See, e.g., the use of avoirdupois). The Confessions of Nat Turner is Styron’s most controversial novel, delving as it does into the mind of a slave. I’ve only just started Confessions, but I cannot imagine it topping Sophie’s Choice is terms of sheer audacity. Many times while reading I actually paused to ponder: did he really just do that? The Holocaust within this novel’s world is just one of many realities that bleed into each other. Styron does make any effort to partition of the all-time deadly-serious Auschwitz scenes from the Stingo-is-sexually-frustrated scenes. Instead, Styron veers from one to the other with a cavalier sense of I don’t give a damn. The passage of time allows for human tragedy to become literary drama. The Holocaust has not been immune to this. Even so, the friction between the fictional and real-life elements that Styron mixes is so jarring that it can uncomfortably draw attention to itself. There are two incredible, lengthy set pieces within Auschwitz, one of which includes a razor-intense encounter with Commandant Rudolf Hoess. There is also a marathon sex scene that goes on for three pages.If this review seems conflicted, it’s because I am conflicted. I was conflicted while reading it. Page to page, my forbearance towards Styron spiked and dipped. When I put the book down, though, it didn't leave me right away. It lingered on into the next book I started, which felt pallid and lifeless after the lapel-grasping of Sophie’s Choice. This is a book that resonates. It is mad and loopy; it is powerful and passionate. It is the kind of book that I want to read again for the first time.
—Matt
These characters are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. Styron’s words are written into my genetic code. His characters don’t just haunt me--they are me. Call me Sophie. Sophie was a Polish Catholic wraith who washed ashore in Brooklyn as a postwar refugee. A tattooed number on her forearm testifies to her internment at Auschwitz; thick scars on her wrists proclaim her attempt at self-destruction. Guilt pursued Sophie like a demon: Often I cry alone when I listen to music, which reminds me of Cracow. And you know, there is one piece of music that I cannot listen to, it makes me cry so much. I cannot breathe, my eyes run like streams. It is in these Handel records, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” that make me cry because of all my guilt, and also because I know that my Redeemer don’t live and my body will be destroyed by worms and my eyes will never, never again see God.” (99) Sophie no longer plays piano or reads music. Call Me Nathan. Sophie’s lover is exuberant, funny, and possessed of magisterial intelligence. Nathan’s knowledge of biology, literature, music, history, cuisine, cinema, and medicine is as encyclopedic as it capacious. With a gift for mimicry and comic bluster, he is “utterly and fatally glamorous.” Sophie and Nathan meet in the New York Public Library over the sad poems of Emily Dickinson. With assistance from Brahms and Thomas Wolfe, Nathan nurses Sophie back to health from scurvy. In her shaky English she whispers, “Nathan, thank you for making me to bloom like a rose.” Nathan’s “liberated and passionate carnality” unlocks Sophie’s eroticism, which allows her to drown her guilt. Although he saves the life of Sophie, Nathan himself is also an afflicted refugee of a different sort. “I need you like death.” As a Jew, he regards himself as an authority on anguish and suffering, so he needles Stingo mercilessly regarding Southern apartheid and is suspicious of Sophie’s escape from Auschwitz--“while the millions choked on the gas.” She resents “the unearned happiness” of Nathan, but she is so chaotically in love with him that it is “like dementia.” Their destinies were wedded indissolubly. Call Me Stingo. Into the immigrant world enters our narrator, a young Southern writer. When we first meet Stingo, his spirit is landlocked, and he is a stranger to both love and death, but Stingo will be sucked toward the “epicenter of a squall of gusty shifting emotions,” as the couple lays siege to his imagination. Stingo, a virgin, yearns for Sophie while adoring Nathan as a glamorous elder brother. Because our narrator also loves literature and music, he sprinkles hundreds of “outlandishly eclectic” literary references throughout the novel as well as scores of references to classical music, which plays on the Victrola as we read. If you don’t like Stingo, you won’t like Styron. This book is not for those who dislike ornate writing, expensive words, or books about other books and writers. Stingo, I must tell you something now that I’ve never told anyone before. Without knowing this, you wouldn’t understand anything about me at all. Tell me, Sophie.You must get me a drink first. Choices. As the title implies, choices are made. There is a famous choice that Sophie made at Auschwitz “Don’t make me choose, I can’t choose.” In fact, there are many other choices throughout this book: choices about our attitudes-- about love and hate; life and death; about empathy and selfishness; weight and lightness; memory and forgetfulness; free will and fatalism; and optimism and despair.Call me Steve. I choose this book. This book goes to the core of my being because I was wired for these words which fire my neural pathways. I choose Sophie. My love and desire for Sophie is deeply personal and mysterious. Perhaps it hints at the mystery of suffering and my own existence because I know that I am wired for a certain degree of sadness that coexists uncomfortably with my bedrock optimism. Thus, I choose Stingo. I was made to not break faith with belief in meaning. Like Stingo, I desire Sophie, and I am utterly convinced that I can save her. But failing that... I choose to remember. I choose to testify. I choose life. May 7, 2013******William Styron came within inches of taking his own life, a story which he recounts in his memoir, "Darkness Visible." Here is a link to my review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
—Steve Sckenda
