<p> The characters in William Styron's fiction struggle with
guilt, fear, self-loathing, performance anxiety and alcohol.
The main character of Darkness Visible also battles these
demons. He is the author himself, who now answers the question,
What ever happened to William Styron? Since publication of
Sophie's Choice nearly a dozen years ago, he has been among the
estimated 1 out of 10 people who suffer through episodes of
debilitating depression.
</p>
<p> By Styronian standards, this is a mote of a book. It began
as a speech at Johns Hopkins University and was expanded to an
article published last year in Vanity Fair. Adding 5,000 words
to the magazine piece, the author manages to fill 84 pages of
generously spaced type. There is little literary justification
for this. The loose narrative suggests the dangers of
stretching one form to do the work of another. There is an
excess of the billowy and not always apt prose that marks
Styron's fiction: "Doubtless depression had hovered near me for
years, waiting to swoop down. Now I was in the first stage--premonitory, like a flicker of sheet lightning barely perceived--of depression's black tempest."
</p>
<p> But why be too churlish. Even at $15.95 this dilated article
is a bargain if it offers insight and encouragement to the
depressed. Considering the natural defense mechanism that
blunts our memories of pain, it is easy to sympathize with the
page fright that appears to have struck Styron as he attempted
to dredge up his mental agonies. Among the worst were a
paralyzing sense of worthlessness and the inability to find
temporary relief in sleep. That feeling of worthlessness
accompanied him even on a trip to Paris to accept a literary
award that, he says, "should have sparklingly restored my ego."
</p>
<p> Since serious mood disorders have proved difficult to treat
with psychotherapy and antidepressants, Styron has impatient
and unkind words for some of his doctors. Only when he
seriously considered self-destruction did he check himself into
a hospital and begin healing. One of the things that seems to
have put him on recovery road was the realization that his
suicide note was pompous. For a writer of Styron's stature,
