William Styron - Later Work and Acclaim

Later Work and Acclaim

William Styron was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca in 1985. That year he suffered his most serious and dangerous bout with depression. Out of this grave and menacing experience, he was later able to write the memoir Darkness Visible (1990), the work Styron became best known for during the last two decades of his life.

His short story "Shadrach" was filmed in 1998, under the same title. It was co-directed by his daughter Susanna. His two other daughters are also artists: Paola, an internationally acclaimed modern dancer, and the youngest daughter Alexandra, a novelist (All The Finest Girls ) who published a book about her father in 2011 (Reading My Father: A Memoir). Styron's son Thomas is a professor of clinical psychology at Yale University.

Styron's other works published during his lifetime, not already mentioned, include the play In the Clap Shack (1973) and a collection of his nonfiction, This Quiet Dust (1982).

French President François Mitterrand invited Styron to his first presidential inauguration and later made him a commander of the Legion of Honor. In 1993, Styron was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

In 2002 an opera by Nicholas Maw based on Sophie's Choice premièred at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. Maw wrote the libretto and composed the music (Maw had at first approached Styron about writing the libretto, but he declined). Later the opera received a new production by stage director Markus Bothe at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Volksoper Wien, and had its North American premiere at the Washington National Opera in October 2006.

A collection of Styron's papers and records is housed at the Rubenstein Library, Duke University.