Set This House on Fire

This book took me a bit too long to finish.

However, it wasn't the book's fault. It was more due to the timing with my semester starting.

Despite this, I still enjoyed most of it.

I will admit that a big portion of it went over my head.

But I will still maintain my opinion that Styron is one of the most talented writers, at least to me.

I do agree with the general consensus that the book was a bit too long.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed it a lot.

The story had its moments that really captured my attention and made me want to keep reading.

Even though there were parts that I didn't fully understand, I could still appreciate the beauty of Styron's writing.

His use of language and description was truly remarkable.

Overall, I'm glad I read this book and would recommend it to others who are interested in good literature.

Human depravity is on full display in this work. Styron, a true master craftsman, is operating at the pinnacle of his game.

His ability to explore the darkest recesses of the human psyche is both astonishing and captivating. Through his vivid and detailed descriptions, he brings to life the most heinous acts and the complex emotions that drive them.

The story unfolds like a slow-burning fuse, leading the reader deeper and deeper into a world of moral decay and spiritual emptiness. Styron's prose is rich and evocative, painting a picture that is both disturbing and unforgettable.

As we witness the characters' descent into depravity, we are forced to confront our own fears and prejudices. This is the power of Styron's writing - it forces us to look within ourselves and question the very nature of good and evil.

In conclusion, Styron's work is a testament to his genius as a writer. It is a powerful and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition that will leave a lasting impression on all who read it.

The text is being evaluated as a winter residence that doesn't heat. I don't know what the opposite of congenital is, but in this case, the author and the translator found a rare coincidence. Because when a story that McEwan could have easily turned into a brisk novel with minimal losses is taken, it is expanded into thousands of incidental parentheses and given to a translator who, with tenacious efforts for accuracy, slows down the narrative tempo from pebbly to asphalt-like with cumbersome nominal constructions and literalisms. The result is something on which it is very difficult to find positives. And yet the work must have been enormous. For Styron to build on a successful debut with ambitions, for the translator with kilometers-long sentences, but what's the point of all this when it then looks like this: "The gust of wind caught the sheaf of newspapers and carried it high above the villa; it whirled in a wild frenzy, slid along the edge of the roof, hopped between the empty flagpoles and with a frenzy flew away from the exploding tormented sea."? A futile struggle, I have investigated it once again.

Intriguing, but not an easy read. This statement holds true for many literary works, scientific papers, and complex ideas. Something that is intriguing has the power to capture our attention and spark our curiosity. It makes us want to know more, to dig deeper, and to understand the essence of the subject matter. However, the very nature of being intriguing often means that it is not straightforward or simple. It may require us to think critically, to analyze carefully, and to grapple with difficult concepts.

Reading something that is not easy can be a challenging and rewarding experience. It forces us to stretch our minds, to expand our knowledge, and to develop our intellectual abilities. It can also lead to a greater appreciation and understanding of the world around us. So, while an intriguing read may not be effortless, it is often well worth the effort.

Since the content is sufficiently explained in the detailed blurb, this time I will limit myself to my reactions. I have a weakness for books from the fifties that revolve around a certain theme and I love novels in which a seemingly benevolent childhood friend is unmasked as a manipulative asshole. Therefore, Styron's second novel was a candidate for at least four stars. However, what the later Pulitzer Prize winner has cobbled together from his travel impressions, prejudices, and complexes in this pseudo-Dostoyevsky is simply unenjoyable.

Until the halfway point, one might perhaps quibble that the narrative pace doesn't quite match the rather comical potential of the arrival and stay in Sambucco, or that the symbolism is a bit too thickly laid on. For example, when the childhood friend Mason Flagg, who has long been unmasked as an impotent wastrel, tries to rape a maid while the finale of the first act of Don Giovanni is playing, where Mozart's opera hero's attempt to seduce the maid Zerlina fails.

But in the second part, which largely consists of the drunk confession of the painter Cassius Kinsolving, the impressionistic-existentialist overwrought narrative yeast dough grows so uncontrollably that I can only award one star. The now dried-up artist, who in my opinion strongly resembles a by-product, presents Styron's official alter ego Peter Leverett (a kind of bourgeois Pre-Stingo) with an uncontradicted and maximally detailed yarn about the night of his murder and the backstory over 340 pages, which can make one feel sick, especially since about 100 pages would have been more than sufficient for the content. The climax of the implausibility of this yarn is surely Cass' arrival in Sambucco, where the already heavily drunk painter attaches his empty Vespa to a truck and wants to easily master the serpentine road with one hand. As if that weren't enough, Cass also manages to tap a wine barrel on the loading area while riding the scooter and drink a liter unnoticed on the way up. HaHa, at the editorial office of Random House they must have been even more drunk to simply wink at this passage and so much more.

In Cass' confession, all women are pea-brained creatures. First and foremost is his extremely fertile elf Poppy, but also Mason's huge bosom wonder La Framboise only appears as a sexually controlled zero, and the female star of the film is also portrayed by the artist as a completely hollow figure.

In the first half of Peter Leverett's story, there are also plenty of such simply drawn characters. Only Mason's constantly cheated-on wife is, as long as it's not about her infatuation with a violent lunatic, a multifaceted, pleasant contemporary, whom the poor Peter of course can only envy his childhood friend for.

In principle, I have no problem with a novel mainly featuring stupid or evil people, as long as the characters at least keep the action going to some extent. For a briskly written tragicomedy, Styron's ingredients in the right proportion might even have been sufficient, but this genre was completely foreign to the author. Instead, he tortures his readers with seemingly endless pseudo-existentialist monologues or dialogues between men about guilt and atonement, humanistic fascism, the end of art, pornography as the ultimate art form.

There is also an essay from the fifties by Norman Mailer on the latter topic in Advertisements for Myself. The same book also contains a rather clever furnishing of the literary contemporaries, which unfortunately was published before the completion of the rather long second novel Set This House on Fire. It's really a pity. It would now be a great pleasure for me to once again enjoy the corresponding passages from Appraisals, Some Offhand, Hazardous, Critical Comments on the Talents of Our Time about this completely failed work.

Conclusion: In the footsteps of his namesake Faulkner, William Styron had a successful debut with Lie down in darkness, which was very well received at the time. The attempt to stand on his own two feet as a novelist went horribly wrong. Set This House on Fire is a horribly bad apprentice work that at best could be a windfall for mentalities researchers. With such a botched job, William Styron, if he were to enter the scene as a young author now, would probably not only be banned from the PC stronghold Random House.

Man, what a slog it is!

As we southerners like to say, this author really does go on and on! Now, don't misunderstand me. I read the entire thing, and a significant portion of it was truly beautiful. I have no regrets about reading this novel penned by the author of Sophie's Choice. However, I firmly believe that it could have benefited from more extensive editing.

A great deal of ink is expended on delving into one character's state of mind as an alcoholic. He dwells on it to such an extent that it almost verges on the pornographic.

The story undertakes an exploration of the events that occurred one night twenty years ago, along with the lead-up and the aftermath of those events. The narrator arrived late on the scene and, ultimately, slept through a large part of it. The other man, a WWII veteran suffering from what has only recently come to be known as post-traumatic stress, was in the throes of alcoholic disintegration and was blackout drunk at the time. He can only recall certain parts of it, while other parts he deduces.

And yet, despite its flaws, I would still read it again.

SCC

Boring, narcissistic, and filled with excessive drinking and debauchery, this work left me with the urge to skip through large portions. It felt so redundant that I simply couldn't bear to read it all. Unless you have a penchant for punishment and a deep appreciation for the hedonistic era depicted by authors such as Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, there's really no need to bother. While I have a great fondness for their fictional works, their autobiographies fail to hold the same allure for me.

Perhaps it's the lack of the creative sparkle that makes their real-life accounts seem so dull. Or maybe it's the overemphasis on the vices that were so prevalent during that time. Whatever the reason, I find myself disappointed by this particular piece. It serves as a reminder that not everything an author writes is gold, and that sometimes, we're better off sticking to their fictional masterpieces.

He is a master framer, a true virtuoso in the art of constructing stories that captivate and enthrall. But he is also a raging alcoholic, a man whose demons haunt him and drive him to the brink. He is an insatiable genius, always striving for more, always pushing the boundaries of what is possible. And yet, he is also a gullible observer, easily swayed by the world around him.

His works are a tapestry of beautiful women, a rainbow of colors and personalities that add depth and complexity to his tales. They all appear throughout his works, shades of each in the other, creating a rich and nuanced world that is both familiar and foreign.

Part of his story is set in Italy, a land of beauty and romance, a place that inspires him and fuels his creativity.

I love his writing, for it is a window into a world that is both fascinating and disturbing, a world that makes me think and feel and question everything I know.