Talk:William Styron

message: "Despite public defenses of Styron by both Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, a large group of African-American critics reviled Styron’s portrayal of Turner as racist stereotyping, or to be writing about things of which he was not obligated to write..."
This sentence makes no sense to me.
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I agree. While it's true that James Baldwin publically defended Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, what's the source of the supposed fact that Ralph Ellison also publically defended it? There's an incident described in William Styron: A Life by James L.W. West III, where Ellison shares the stage with Styron at a college presentation in which Styron is being criticized by audience members. Ellison claimed not to have read the book, which the biographer states led to a cooling off in the relationship between the two authors. It's certainly possible that Ellison changed his opinion about it, however, I'd like to know where he publically defend it, because I haven't been able to find such a defense in his essays, and his biography by Lawrence Jackson ends in the early 1950s.
"The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory" (2005) by Scot R. French, describes some of the controversy over Styron's book. French states that African American historian John Hope Franklin, and I believe Nathan Huggins, as well, endorsed the book's historical scholarship (it is, of course, a work of fiction). However, French fails to mention the book's endorsement in the 1990s by both Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West, then of Harvard, who attributed the controversy to the excesses of the 1960s. French also neglects to mention Spike Lee's expressed interest in basing a film on Styron's novel. I suppose those facts can be verified by an Internet search, although I'm not certain.
:Happened to look at this article again today (I wrote most of the objectionable material--perhaps my first Wiki article, actually) and thought I'd address some concerns.  Spike Lee seems to have given up on the Nat Turner project, but you can find sources on his original interest here http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9812/styron.html.  Ellison's defense of Styron does occur on that occasion that they shared a stage; it's contained in Conversations with Ralph Ellison.  Though Ellison hasn't read it, he does defend Styron's "right" to write on black affairs--but I've obviously no objection to this bit being removed.  --Dvyost 21:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All of those changes make sense to me pending sources; the bio section was culled from the Dictionary of Literary Biography and Contemporary Authors, two pubs that I often question the fact-checking of.  If you've got quotes/sources from Styron interviews, I say go for it... --Dvyost 21:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: * I have changed his date of death to November 1 to October 31 as per sources. Capitalistroadster 05:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears to have been changed back.  What are the sources?  -- the GREAT Gavini 18:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Date of Death

message: The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article.-- Jreferee 22:38, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Class_parameter|Biography assessment rating]] comment 

message: Acting on their behalf, I recently created a new article for a company called Styron. I suggest the redirect from Styron to William_Styron be removed, and in its place, a disambiguation page be created. MatthewBurton (talk) 14:35, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect vs Disambiguation 

message: I removed these from the infobox to remove the warning - but wanted to save the information so it isn't lost for those who want to updated it as cited/citable instances into prose according to practices posted on info box template. Here is the removed infomation:
| influences   = Mozart, Mark Twain, Flaubert, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, Albert Camus, Romain Gary, Robert Loomis, Thomas Wolfe
| influenced   = James Jones, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton, Jonathan Kozol, Richard Yates, Janet FrameSigout56 (talk) 17:46, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Influences and Influenced no longer supported by info box template 

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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071013032440/http://www.charlierose.com/shows/1998/05/22/3/a-discussion-about-mental-illness to http://www.charlierose.com/shows/1998/05/22/3/a-discussion-about-mental-illness
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071012030014/http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2006/11/03/2/an-appreciation-of-author-william-styron to http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2006/11/03/2/an-appreciation-of-author-william-styron
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The paragraph on Darkness Visible calls Styron a dilettante vis-à-vis his approach to enlightening the world about depression in this work. Since he was a sufferer, this doesn't seem an appropriate word. Uneducated might work, if what was intended was to say that he lacked academic credentials in the area. SDCHS (talk) 01:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Styron a dilettante regarding depression?