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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780679735977
ISBN number: 0679735976
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: March 03, 1992
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: March 03, 1992
Sale Popularity Level: 81043
Studio: Vintage
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
William Styron traces the betrayals and infidelities--the heritage of spite and endlessly disappointed love--that afflict the members of a Southern family and that culminate in the suicide of the beautiful Peyton Loftis.
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Rated by buyers -
I think it was interesting how Styron dedicated the final 10 pages of a 400-page book to a baptism of the minor characters. But in doing so, he draws a contrast between the impotence of Carey Carr and the spiritual bankruptcy of Helen Loftis and the power of Daddy Faith to inspire Ella and a faith community. Carr's ministrations fail to save Helen from her own guilt and self-loathing, which ultimately destroy her marriage and her daughter. On the other hand, Ella supports the Loftis family throughout the book, even if it is in a servile role, and at the end safeguards a stranger, Doris, who has strayed from her mother during the baptism. I couldn't help but think that the tragedy that befalls Peyton would not have occurred had she been Ella's daughter. A larger theme could be that the spiritual community in which Ella belonged is an antidote to the nihilism that pervaded the Loftis' world.
Rated by buyers 
-
Before I read the novel Lie Down in Darkess, I read commentary which said that Merle Miller, a noted critic of the time, could not finish the last eighty pages because of beautiful and doomed tragedy of it all. The day I finished Styron's Lie Down in Darkess, it occurred to me that I should stop writing because none of my prose would ever be this amazingly poetic.
Lie Down in Darkess is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Milton Loftis, the main character, is not a protagonist because he is not our hero, although we certainly spend time hoping that he might find a middle ground between his shrewish wife, his alcoholic excesses and the heartbreak of his feelings for his oldest daughter Peyton. Milton Loftis is a man trapped in a Greek tragedy who blunders on every day, balancing his illusions and hoping for the best, although he, and we, the readers, see the foreboding clouds which spell certain doom from the beginning of the book.
Helen, the bitter, hypocritical wife, clothes herself in the self righteous delusions of religiosity and spends most of her energy with the mentally incapacitated daughter Maudie. She pretends that Milton is a profligate sinner and adulterer who has made it his life's work to torture her, ignoring that her icy civility and the obvious hatred of her own daughter has been the prod to his loveless and licentious life style. Milton Loftis finds some modicum of hope in his sad affair with Dolly Bonner, but that and whisky are only ways to escape an insufferable existence he cannot escape and cannot understand. He is not weak enough to die, and he is not strong enough to flee.
Admittedly, I am a stylist of the Faulknerian, Reynolds Price persuasion, so I found the haunting beauty of this novel enough to recommend it to other readers. I understand that is my bias, but I stand by that verdict. The more people who read this great book, the more awareness of life's inexorable twists, and, hopefully, the more aware we become of the pain of others, and the more committed we become to tolerance and forgiveness.
Rated by buyers -
This long, wending, fatiguing, frustrating novel is one of those rare books that are so suffused with suffering and tragedy that the reader, if s/he is the sort of "deep" reader, as I imagine most prospective readers of this book are, will not emerge from reading it without suffering and trauma themselves. In particular, the character of Helen Loftis, whom Styron seems to have drug up from the depths of Hell, has such depraved and hateful intricacies in her soul, which Styron never ceases to plumb to their core, that this reader at least, breathed a long sigh of relief upon finishing the book and knowing that I wouldn't have to read about her anymore. She makes Lady Macbeth seem an ideal candidate for sainthood. All of this invites the question of whether a book that causes the reader to suffer is worth the read. To this, I don't have a pat answer.
Yes, the poetic prose is beautiful and haunting. But so is that of Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe and Proust and Lowry and, more recently, John Banville. I'm not sure I would recommend this book before these, or even with these. A book which causes the reader to suffer is a unique experience in my long acquaintance with literature.
I've not much else to say here, save to let the novel speak for itself, to let the prospective reader know what s/he is in for:
"...a song of measureless innocence that echoed among lost ruined temples of peace and brought to their dreams an impossible vision: of a love that outlasted time and dwelt even in the night, beyond the reach of death and all the immemorial, descending dusks. Then evening came. Arms and legs asprawl, they stirred and turned. Twilight fell over their bodies. They were painted with fire, like those fallen children who live and breathe and soundlessly scream, and whose souls blaze forever." Last paragraph of Chapter 5, pg. 225, in my edition.
Pretty love scene...No? One comes away from this book feeling that one is emerging from a Hell of Styron's own devising full of characters whose souls blaze forever in its bowels.
Rated by buyers -
made me grateful about those long, boring afternoons spent in learning English!I just read all the reviews: Some were written by real experts. But some of them depict this novel as "too long" (I WISHED IT WOULD HAVE BEEN LONGER!")"boring" (This lady is far of understanding any book:
This book is a living proof of the geniality of Styron : He is capable of describing the most shining and also the most heinous feelings of a character. Styron strips the characters and drive us to watch them as they really are.
This is one of the most soul tearing book ever...and the argument is unique, BRUTAL, TERRIFYNG and BEATIFUL1
Rated by buyers -
William Styron's very first novel is often overlooked because "Sophie's Choice" is, without doubt, his flagship; however, his style in "Lie Down in Darkness" is as melancholy and forceful as it was in each of his subsequent novels. No reader can leave these pages unmoved by the depth of suffering, both self-imposed and due to other forces, of its principal characters. The family unit is rife with undercurrents and has no opportunity to become functional because the parents are so deeply enthralled with their own problems. I disliked Helen the most. Her passive aggressive martyrdom fueled her husband's neuroses and alcoholism until their relationship became Faulknerian in its dysfunction. Styron's well-known bouts of depression obviously inspired much of the insights into mental illness. The pain of these characters is palpable throughout the book, and I find myself thinking about this family more than I would like.
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