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The Long March and In the Clap Shack
Two extraordinary works about soldiers in a time of dubious peace by a writer of vast eloquence and moral authority.
With stylistic panache and vitriolic wit, William Styron depicts conflicts between men of somewhat more than average intelligence and the military machine. In The Long March, a novella, two Marine reservists fight to retain their dignity while on a grueling exercise staged by a posturing colonel. The uproariously funny play In the Clap Shack charts the terrified passage of a young recruit through the prurient inferno of a Navy hospital VD ward.
In both works, Styron wages a gallant defense of the free individual—and serves up a withering indictment of a system that has no room for individuality or freedom.
With stylistic panache and vitriolic wit, William Styron depicts conflicts between men of somewhat more than average intelligence and the military machine. In The Long March, a novella, two Marine reservists fight to retain their dignity while on a grueling exercise staged by a posturing colonel. The uproariously funny play In the Clap Shack charts the terrified passage of a young recruit through the prurient inferno of a Navy hospital VD ward.
In both works, Styron wages a gallant defense of the free individual—and serves up a withering indictment of a system that has no room for individuality or freedom.
- GenresFiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 4, 1993
76 people want to read
About the author
William Styron
124 books896 followersWilliam Styron (1925–2006), born in Newport News, Virginia, was one of the greatest American writers of his generation. Styron published his first book, Lie Down in Darkness, at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the international bestseller Sophie’s Choice.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 26, 2015
William Styron is a striking example of an incredibly gifted writer who began with great promise, wrote one or two brilliant early works, and then slowly declined into a lifelong battle with alcoholism, depression, and assorted personal demons that gradually snuffed out every trace of the great literary artist he might have been. These two short works perfectly illustrate his career arc.
THE LONG MARCH is one of his earliest books, and therefore one of his best. It tells the story of a forced march made by Marine reservists in a remote patch of southern swampland at the height of the Korean War. The story focuses on Captain Mannix, a tough yet independent-minded Marine officer, and his growing hostility towards military authority, represented by his commanding officer Colonel Templeton.
Like much of Styron's work, THE LONG MARCH succeeds on some levels and fails on others. On the literal level, as a brutally realistic account of how Marines suffer and torment each other during the course of a grueling all-night march, this story is almost flawless. The physical symptoms of exhaustion and dehydration are documented with almost clinical accuracy, while Styron's prose is as clean and precise as a surgeon's stainless steel scalpel. On a purely mechanical level, Styron had never written this well before -- and he never would again.
But on the symbolic level, THE LONG MARCH is an enormous disappointment. Styron clearly wants the reader to embrace Mannix as the ultimate rebel outsider -- he carefully inks in symbols and clues linking him to everyone from Oedipus to Lucifer to Jesus. The problem is, it just doesn't wash. Mannix never comes across as a real rebel or a real idealist. He goes from griping about the colonel's orders to bullying his own men with no sense of irony at all. Never once does he seem to be acting from unselfish motives, but only out of personal spite and resentment. When he confronts Colonel Templeton at the end, all the CO has to do is put his hand on his pistol, and "tough guy" Al Mannix folds in a most anti-climactic manner. Indeed, throughout the tale he seems less like a rebellious hero and more like a big, dumb, bullying blowhard.
IN THE CLAP SHACK is a play written in the early seventies, long after Styron had slipped into hopeless alcoholism and depression. The main symptom of his decline is an increased sentimentality. In this play the young Southern recruit mistakenly diagnosed with VD is impossibly sweet, pure and innocent. The insane doctor who attempts to manipulate his mind is a comic book villain. And the dying black man who torments the innocent hero is downright offensive. Again and again Styron complains in wounded tones about the "reasonless, all-embracing hatred" of black men, as if he's on the edge of some profound philosophical discovery. But he's really just an anguished, guilt-ridden Southerner. He knows where the bodies are buried, but he wants forgiveness without an admission of guilt. He talks liberal cant whenever he has to and falsifies American history whenever he can get away with it. He doesn't really want to understand black anger -- he just wants to go on playing the wounded innocent.
IN THE CLAP SHACK is a relatively harmless adolescent fantasy, but his "masterpiece" THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER is a work of vast hypocrisy and malice. It's just as dishonest as GONE WITH THE WIND, but not nearly as entertaining.
THE LONG MARCH is one of his earliest books, and therefore one of his best. It tells the story of a forced march made by Marine reservists in a remote patch of southern swampland at the height of the Korean War. The story focuses on Captain Mannix, a tough yet independent-minded Marine officer, and his growing hostility towards military authority, represented by his commanding officer Colonel Templeton.
Like much of Styron's work, THE LONG MARCH succeeds on some levels and fails on others. On the literal level, as a brutally realistic account of how Marines suffer and torment each other during the course of a grueling all-night march, this story is almost flawless. The physical symptoms of exhaustion and dehydration are documented with almost clinical accuracy, while Styron's prose is as clean and precise as a surgeon's stainless steel scalpel. On a purely mechanical level, Styron had never written this well before -- and he never would again.
But on the symbolic level, THE LONG MARCH is an enormous disappointment. Styron clearly wants the reader to embrace Mannix as the ultimate rebel outsider -- he carefully inks in symbols and clues linking him to everyone from Oedipus to Lucifer to Jesus. The problem is, it just doesn't wash. Mannix never comes across as a real rebel or a real idealist. He goes from griping about the colonel's orders to bullying his own men with no sense of irony at all. Never once does he seem to be acting from unselfish motives, but only out of personal spite and resentment. When he confronts Colonel Templeton at the end, all the CO has to do is put his hand on his pistol, and "tough guy" Al Mannix folds in a most anti-climactic manner. Indeed, throughout the tale he seems less like a rebellious hero and more like a big, dumb, bullying blowhard.
IN THE CLAP SHACK is a play written in the early seventies, long after Styron had slipped into hopeless alcoholism and depression. The main symptom of his decline is an increased sentimentality. In this play the young Southern recruit mistakenly diagnosed with VD is impossibly sweet, pure and innocent. The insane doctor who attempts to manipulate his mind is a comic book villain. And the dying black man who torments the innocent hero is downright offensive. Again and again Styron complains in wounded tones about the "reasonless, all-embracing hatred" of black men, as if he's on the edge of some profound philosophical discovery. But he's really just an anguished, guilt-ridden Southerner. He knows where the bodies are buried, but he wants forgiveness without an admission of guilt. He talks liberal cant whenever he has to and falsifies American history whenever he can get away with it. He doesn't really want to understand black anger -- he just wants to go on playing the wounded innocent.
IN THE CLAP SHACK is a relatively harmless adolescent fantasy, but his "masterpiece" THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER is a work of vast hypocrisy and malice. It's just as dishonest as GONE WITH THE WIND, but not nearly as entertaining.
December 28, 2024
Two works about soldiers: The first a novella about marine reserves called back to training during the Korean war; the second a play set in a venereal disease ward during the second world war. These were published separately in 1972 and 1952, yet again Styron writes eloquently and passionately and realistically about soldier life. This was a quick read for me – like it or not I’m still goals driven (retired in Feb this year after 35+ years in a face paced corporate environment) and achieving my 2024 reading objectives is challenging but possible.
The Long March explores the relationship of power (the military, marine in this case, system) vs. the individual (a captain in this case). The storyteller protagonist, Culver, records the conflict between the large, bearish and Jewish Mannix (the captain) and the dandyish Pendleton (the colonel), his superior. The story starts with the horrific experience of cleaning up after a mortar accidentally explodes during lunchtime on a “Carolinian” beach, and a dozen fresh, young marines are dismembered, and many wounded. The inanities of the machinations of war, and its inevitable destruction, seem a theme to what I’ve read of Styron. I note that he usually includes Jewish people (not-practicing for the most part), as well as southern black men (race tension) in the works I’ve encountered so far. The Long March is a 36 mile, grueling, seemingly impossible “practice” run ordained by the colonel, to the chagrin of the other officers and men – remember these are not fit men, they’ve had 6 years since the battles of WW2 and have settled into an American Life of comfort, suburban homes, children, rich food, etc… What I enjoyed most about this, and Styron seems to have specific experience here, is the physical and emotional toil that some men are willing to put themselves through to prove they are free – it’s pride really, the desire to not be dominated. And this leads to their destruction, since there is no winning, in this case, against the institution of the marines, which is the military, which is the government – and the petty men who profit from it are much hated (the Napoleonic affecting colonel Pendleton, in this case). The tormented, bearish, hairy captain Mannix cannot bear this, and forces his men to endure exhaustion to the point of death, refusing to “crap out” and be carried further in the back of trucks. It’s a contest of wills, and a good one, as our hero succeeds and then finds, inevitably, that it was all for little or nothing but his own vanity in the end. Until maneuvers, they live in an artificial life of officers, on the base, and this reminded me of the emotion of the Martin Sheen character in Apocalypse Now, despairing of the soft, hotel life with the impending doom of the enemy crouching and strengthening in the bush. Here’s Mannix, on the base before the horrors and the march begins (p. 53): “There, at ten minutes past four each day, Mannix could be found, his uniform shed in an instant and a gin fizz in his hand – a sullen, mountainous figure in a lurid sportshirt, across which a squadron of monstrous butterflies floated in luminous, un-military files. Both Mannix and Culver hated the place- its factitious luxury, its wanton atmosphere of alcohol and torpid ease and dances, the vacant professional talk of the regular officers and the constant teasing presence of their wives, who were beautiful and spoke in tender drawls and boldly flaunted at the wifeless reserves – in a proprietary, Atlanta-debutante fashion – their lecherous sort of chastity.” One can see the power of Styron, saying so much in a couple of sentences.
Styron is particularly skilled at getting into the military mindset, the allegiance to which brings familial-like comfort in belonging to something bigger than oneself, a higher purpose, but also the loss of one’s humanity, ones sense of individual freedom – the stress can be unbearable, as during the march Culver laments (p. 102/103) “…the morning’s sun began to flagellate him anew, adding curious sharp blades of pain to the furious frustration boiling inside him. Frustration at the fact that he was not independent enough, nor possessed of enough free will, was not man enough to say, to hell with it and crap out himself; that he was not man enough to disavow all his determination and endurance and suffering, cash in his chips , and by that act flaunt his contempt of the march, the Colonel, the whole bloody Marine Corps. But he was not man enough, he knew, far less simply a free man; he was just a marine- as was Mannix, and so many of the others – and they had been marines, it seemed, all their lives, would go on being marines forever; and the frustration implicit in this thought brought him suddenly close to tears. Mannix. A cold horror came over him. Far down, profoundly, Mannix was so much a marine that it could make him casually demented. The corruption begun years ago in his drill-field feet had climbed up, overtaken him, and had begun to rot his brain.” In some sense, Styron’s musings, through his interesting characters is dark, dark beyond my personal imaginings – I know he was a depressive, it comes through his writing and it is shocking to me that he was able to write prose so accurately, beautifully really – though so dark.
In the Clap Shack was a very fun read, as we meet the characters with various ailments, mostly with gonorrhea but one young fellow with syphilis. The doctor and his assistant have what seems like an unusual fascination with the causes of how these boys got the disease, and the confessional sessions were excessive (I won’t spoil your plot). The interactions of the boys, especially the severely diseased and dying Lorenzo Clark, and the gregarious Jew Schwartz, was bracing. The antisemite slurs of Clark and the use of the N word by Schwarz seemed gratuitous – in the end Schwartz’ humanity and compassion wins out, but the unrepentant Clark is violently angry up until his last breath. The main conflict in the story is that of the young syphilitic Magruder, who becomes increasingly angry with the doctor – again we get that theme of the individual railing against the power structure of the military (this is the Navy, the doctor is an officer). This is a play, told with stage instructions, and I would personally love to see this – the “Clap Shack” a metaphor for the military hospital floor where these men are secluded – their conversations are lively, and often crude, but their humanity and fears and hopes bleed through with sharp dialogue. Also interesting to me was the medical treatment and jargon of that time, when sulfa drugs were administered with some success, and the wonders of penicillin were just being heard about, across the ocean in Europe, not yet available. What a change these drugs made to the course of humanity. Being set in 1943, I think it likely that Styron got his facts straight, since the value of penicillin did arrive when most needed during the second World War. The tension between the Jewish Schwartz and the black Clark was, however, shocking – the cruelty and use of racial slurs seemed excessive, but perhaps that’s the way it was.
The Long March explores the relationship of power (the military, marine in this case, system) vs. the individual (a captain in this case). The storyteller protagonist, Culver, records the conflict between the large, bearish and Jewish Mannix (the captain) and the dandyish Pendleton (the colonel), his superior. The story starts with the horrific experience of cleaning up after a mortar accidentally explodes during lunchtime on a “Carolinian” beach, and a dozen fresh, young marines are dismembered, and many wounded. The inanities of the machinations of war, and its inevitable destruction, seem a theme to what I’ve read of Styron. I note that he usually includes Jewish people (not-practicing for the most part), as well as southern black men (race tension) in the works I’ve encountered so far. The Long March is a 36 mile, grueling, seemingly impossible “practice” run ordained by the colonel, to the chagrin of the other officers and men – remember these are not fit men, they’ve had 6 years since the battles of WW2 and have settled into an American Life of comfort, suburban homes, children, rich food, etc… What I enjoyed most about this, and Styron seems to have specific experience here, is the physical and emotional toil that some men are willing to put themselves through to prove they are free – it’s pride really, the desire to not be dominated. And this leads to their destruction, since there is no winning, in this case, against the institution of the marines, which is the military, which is the government – and the petty men who profit from it are much hated (the Napoleonic affecting colonel Pendleton, in this case). The tormented, bearish, hairy captain Mannix cannot bear this, and forces his men to endure exhaustion to the point of death, refusing to “crap out” and be carried further in the back of trucks. It’s a contest of wills, and a good one, as our hero succeeds and then finds, inevitably, that it was all for little or nothing but his own vanity in the end. Until maneuvers, they live in an artificial life of officers, on the base, and this reminded me of the emotion of the Martin Sheen character in Apocalypse Now, despairing of the soft, hotel life with the impending doom of the enemy crouching and strengthening in the bush. Here’s Mannix, on the base before the horrors and the march begins (p. 53): “There, at ten minutes past four each day, Mannix could be found, his uniform shed in an instant and a gin fizz in his hand – a sullen, mountainous figure in a lurid sportshirt, across which a squadron of monstrous butterflies floated in luminous, un-military files. Both Mannix and Culver hated the place- its factitious luxury, its wanton atmosphere of alcohol and torpid ease and dances, the vacant professional talk of the regular officers and the constant teasing presence of their wives, who were beautiful and spoke in tender drawls and boldly flaunted at the wifeless reserves – in a proprietary, Atlanta-debutante fashion – their lecherous sort of chastity.” One can see the power of Styron, saying so much in a couple of sentences.
Styron is particularly skilled at getting into the military mindset, the allegiance to which brings familial-like comfort in belonging to something bigger than oneself, a higher purpose, but also the loss of one’s humanity, ones sense of individual freedom – the stress can be unbearable, as during the march Culver laments (p. 102/103) “…the morning’s sun began to flagellate him anew, adding curious sharp blades of pain to the furious frustration boiling inside him. Frustration at the fact that he was not independent enough, nor possessed of enough free will, was not man enough to say, to hell with it and crap out himself; that he was not man enough to disavow all his determination and endurance and suffering, cash in his chips , and by that act flaunt his contempt of the march, the Colonel, the whole bloody Marine Corps. But he was not man enough, he knew, far less simply a free man; he was just a marine- as was Mannix, and so many of the others – and they had been marines, it seemed, all their lives, would go on being marines forever; and the frustration implicit in this thought brought him suddenly close to tears. Mannix. A cold horror came over him. Far down, profoundly, Mannix was so much a marine that it could make him casually demented. The corruption begun years ago in his drill-field feet had climbed up, overtaken him, and had begun to rot his brain.” In some sense, Styron’s musings, through his interesting characters is dark, dark beyond my personal imaginings – I know he was a depressive, it comes through his writing and it is shocking to me that he was able to write prose so accurately, beautifully really – though so dark.
In the Clap Shack was a very fun read, as we meet the characters with various ailments, mostly with gonorrhea but one young fellow with syphilis. The doctor and his assistant have what seems like an unusual fascination with the causes of how these boys got the disease, and the confessional sessions were excessive (I won’t spoil your plot). The interactions of the boys, especially the severely diseased and dying Lorenzo Clark, and the gregarious Jew Schwartz, was bracing. The antisemite slurs of Clark and the use of the N word by Schwarz seemed gratuitous – in the end Schwartz’ humanity and compassion wins out, but the unrepentant Clark is violently angry up until his last breath. The main conflict in the story is that of the young syphilitic Magruder, who becomes increasingly angry with the doctor – again we get that theme of the individual railing against the power structure of the military (this is the Navy, the doctor is an officer). This is a play, told with stage instructions, and I would personally love to see this – the “Clap Shack” a metaphor for the military hospital floor where these men are secluded – their conversations are lively, and often crude, but their humanity and fears and hopes bleed through with sharp dialogue. Also interesting to me was the medical treatment and jargon of that time, when sulfa drugs were administered with some success, and the wonders of penicillin were just being heard about, across the ocean in Europe, not yet available. What a change these drugs made to the course of humanity. Being set in 1943, I think it likely that Styron got his facts straight, since the value of penicillin did arrive when most needed during the second World War. The tension between the Jewish Schwartz and the black Clark was, however, shocking – the cruelty and use of racial slurs seemed excessive, but perhaps that’s the way it was.
January 21, 2025
یک داستانک خوب از استایرن که کسانی که سربازی رفتند بهتر درکش خواهند کرد،یک نمایشنامه هم داره که مترجم خیلی کالب از گزند سانسور در رفته.
February 2, 2017
The tone reminds me vividly of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, where the author is basically a fanatic of the military cool-aid. Except, unlike Heinlein who tries to convince readers that the military is this wonderful, benevolent leader if you just shut up and follow the rules, Styron's military is harsh and pointless. Most of the characters were cruel, bordering on sadistic (if not outright over the line), ignorant and racist. There were enough n-bombs and Jew jokes to put Twain to shame.
To continue the lack of redeeming qualities, the characters were one dimensional and vapid and the storytelling was lackluster. Paragraphs lasted several pages for no reason.
To continue the lack of redeeming qualities, the characters were one dimensional and vapid and the storytelling was lackluster. Paragraphs lasted several pages for no reason.
August 10, 2016
That's a 4 for The Long March and a 2 for In the Clap Shack. I guess the middle of the Vietnam War felt like a good time to make a grotesque mockery of the "melting pot squad" cliches of 40s Hollywood war movies, but 40 years on, looking back on it is like trying to have fond memories of toilet training. The characters and situation of Long March aren't really any less cliche, but the nested fragments of backstory that cut in and out of the first half are structurally interesting, and even with the 50s-style cleansing (at least there's no fugging) the dialog rings truer.
April 14, 2017
Solid and sometimes humorous tales of US Marines. The Long March is a novella about middle-aged Reserves in the early ’50s called back to duty after having become accustomed to peaceful middle class living. In the Clap Shack is a play set in a Urological hospital in the Southern US. These aren’t your typical military tales—no heroics here, but both works reveal hard truths about the Marine Corps, the psychotic authoritarians in charge and the callous apparatus they employ to grind soldiers down.
July 4, 2011
Interesting little book - One novella and a play about the life of marines stateside during WW2. Funny and sad.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews