The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps

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by William Styron

The Suicide Run collects five of William Styron’s meticulously rendered narratives based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine. In “Blankenship,” Styron draws on his stint as a guard at a stateside military prison at the end of World War II. “Marriott, the Marine” and “The Suicide Run”—which Styron composed as part of an intended novel that he set aside to write Sophie’s Choice—depict the surreal experience of being conscripted a second time, after World War II, to serve in the Korean War. “My Father’s House” captures the frustration of a soldier trying to become a civilian again. In “Elobey, Annobón, and Corisco,” a soldier attempts to exorcise the dread of an approaching battle by daydreaming about far-off islands, visited vicariously through his childhood stamp collection.      Perhaps the last volume from one of literature’s greatest voices, The Suicide Run brings to life the drama, absurdity, and heroism that forever changed the men who served in the Marine Corps.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, War, Audiobook, Military Fiction, Historical Fiction, American

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

William 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.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically, I am an unaggressive, even pacific type, civilian to the marrow, and the very idea of military life sets up a doleful music in my brain - no fifes, no pipes, no gallant trumpet calls, only a slow gray dirge of muffled drums.

Published posthumously, here is a collection of Styron's tales of reluctant soldiers and some military lifers. Though listed as fiction, the stories all seem strongly autobiographical, more a grouping of character studies the author wrote about his experiences than something that sprang from his imagination. Styron's writing is lovely, of course, and so beautiful that it seems almost too literary, too refined and too classy for the subject matter. His prose seems better suited to describing a warm southern afternoon than trying to capture the dirty and brutal act of war; it makes for a somewhat jarring read. I'm too aware of the author's presence, and I find I'm admiring the writing more than being moved by what the he is trying to say.

His lips parted to say something but then, before he could speak, we heard a rumble of engines ascending in the air out of the south. It was a squadron of army air force bombers from the airfield on Tinian Island, across the channel, and they cast down upon us their furious vibrations as they gained altitude and made a slow banking turn in their flight toward Japan. It was known as the nightly milk run. We looked at their undersides as they climbed over the beach, glimpsed the swollen bellies pregnant with bombs that in some hour of the coming day would be unloosed upon Kobe or Yokohama or Tokyo; the noise was brutal but the planes rose with synchronous grace and when they flew past the moon, hugely silhouetted there, I was reminded of their witches' errand and the awful multitude of deaths down in those paper-and-bamboo cities.

Astonishingly well written, but all I can think of is, hmm . . . William Safire goes to war. And try as I might, I could not stop picturing Charles Emerson Winchester III as he sneeringly gazed around The Swamp for the first time.

[Christopher Conlon · Rating 2 out of 5]

When news of William Styron’s death came in November of 2006, some of us who had loved his writings for decades but who had never known the man himself felt a distinct sense of anticlimax, as if the announcement were a mere redundancy—an unnecessary reconfirmation of something we had already known for a very long time. After all, Styron the man departed this world not too long ago; but Styron the writer had already left the building many years earlier.

Writing was never easy for William Styron. He was one of the least prolific of all major American literary figures—in terms of authors who enjoyed similarly long lives (Styron was 81 when he died), only Ralph Ellison and the still-living Harper Lee come to mind as writers with less actual finished, published work to their credit. (History has yet to judge whether J.D. Salinger will be accorded the status of “major writer” or instead be considered a minor one who happened to pen a single freakishly popular novel.) Ellison and Lee, however, were essentially one-book writers. Styron, indisputably a major voice from the day “Lie Down in Darkness” was published in 1951, had much more to say, and said it in a string of highly popular and critically-respected works including “The Long March” (1953), “Set This House on Fire” (1960), the explosively controversial “Confessions of Nat Turner” (1967), and finally the novel universally regarded as his masterpiece, “Sophie’s Choice” (1979).

It’s an impressive resume, yet it’s hard not to notice that in twenty-eight years Styron managed only four full-length novels (“The Long March” is a novella). There was also an indifferently-received play, “In the Clap Shack” (1973), a few abortive screenplay projects, and the occasional stray essay, but in terms of sheer volume, Styron’s collected works were dwarfed by those of his contemporaries John Updike, Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, and Norman Mailer, among others. But Styron remained a heavy hitter his entire career, each of his books heralded as a major publishing event. “The Confessions of Nat Turner” won him the Pulitzer Prize and made him genuinely famous—famous, that is, outside the narrow world of people who read serious fiction—and the celebrated “Sophie’s Choice” cemented his status as a modern literary icon, especially after the Academy Award-winning film version with Meryl Streep appeared in 1982.

Oddly, however, this literary lion would all but cease to roar after the fabulous success of “Sophie’s Choice.” Thereafter his work surfaced occasionally in magazines, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s he became an increasingly familiar figure on television, being interviewed by the likes of Charlie Rose and hobnobbing with the Clintons on Martha’s Vineyard. But those of us who waited for the next Styron novel were doomed to disappointment. Though he lived for nearly three decades after the appearance of “Sophie,” no new full-length fiction ever materialized. Styron nonetheless managed to keep afloat his reputation as a major figure with one more work, the nonfiction “Darkness Visible” (1990), an account of his experiences with depression—a powerful and memorable piece, certainly, but at a mere 88 pages—very small pages with very wide margins—it hardly qualified as a book at all. A final volume, a slender collection of stories called “A Tidewater Morning,” appeared in 1993. And that was the end.

Throughout this post-“Sophie” period, however—and, in fact, even before it—Styron insisted he was hard at work on another novel, this one to be based on his experiences in the Marines and titled “The Way of the Warrior.” He began this project, he said, in the early 1970s, and worked at it for some two or three years before breaking off from it to write “Sophie’s Choice”; after that novel was completed and published, he returned to “Warrior,” talking it up in interviews all the way through the 1990s.

Now, in the posthumously-published “The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps,” we have some of the tattered remains of the never-completed “Way of the Warrior.” The subtitle of the collection is misleading, for none of these works are truly “tales”; with one exception, they are all extracted from various versions of Styron’s unfinished novel. (That single exception is “Blankenship,” an early long story which, according to Styron biographer James L.W. West, is an unfinished fragment—though nowhere in the text of “The Suicide Run” is its incomplete nature acknowledged.)

Reading “The Suicide Run”—as with a lot of posthumously-published books—is occasionally moving, but mostly, alas, depressing. The experience rather reminds me of Truman Capote’s early “lost” novel, “Summer Crossing,” found a few years ago and finally published: Capote himself had referred to the supposedly destroyed manuscript as “thin, clever, unfelt,” and to actually behold the thing itself was only to realize what a perceptive judge the author was of his own work (though to be honest I failed to find “Summer Crossing” particularly clever). So too with Hemingway’s posthumous books: Scribner’s managed to cobble together a fragmented but engrossing work in “Islands in the Stream,” but later published something called “The Garden of Eden,” purporting to be a novel by Hemingway but in fact stitched together from fragments of a much larger project—reports have it that fully two-thirds of Hemingway’s material was deleted. An even later Hemingway publishing project, “True at First Light,” appears to have gone much further in editing and altering the actual material Hemingway left behind—all for a result that received uniformly poor reviews, but which will certainly make a great deal of money. As will, one assumes, “The Suicide Run.”

From the evidence in this book, it appears that Styron worked seriously on at least two different versions of “The Way of the Warrior” over the years. The first, from the early ’70s, is represented here by the fragments “Marriott, the Marine” and “The Suicide Run.” Both are first-person narratives from the point of view of an unnamed World War II veteran who is recalled to active duty with the coming of the Korean War. The narrator is mostly indistinguishable from Styron himself; he has even written a novel which arrives in galley proofs during his initial officer training and re-orientation, just as happened with Styron and his “Lie Down in Darkness.” There is a great deal of powerful and specific writing in “Marriott, the Marine” (originally published in Esquire in 1971), and even some good humor, as in the narrator’s reaction to the first review—a bad one—his novel receives, from a trade journal unnamed in the story but clearly intended to be Publishers Weekly, in which the biggest compliment that the anonymous critic, identified only as ‘L.K.,’ can muster is to grudgingly call the narrator a “skilled wordsmith”:

“...I had been cruelly clobbered. I can remember every nuance of my misery and mortification, even—even today—recall each raw detail of my thoughts as they sought to liberate me from this outrage, strove to diminish the intensity of the hurt. ‘L.K.’ Who the fuck was ‘L.K.’? Lydia Kerr, surely—some smart-ass twenty-three-year-old Vassar graduate, an English major with a fabricated passion for medieval poetry looking down her snoot at every American novelist since Melville, a parched little dyke with blotched skin living in a Village walk-up filled with Partisan Reviews, Agatha Christie mysteries, and annotated editions of ‘Piers Plowman’—but no, a Vassar graduate wouldn’t write ‘wordsmith,’ or, well, would she? A hater of southerners, then, Leo Kolodny, some failed writer turned hack reviewer, a CCNY type with a heart murmur, piles, and joyless Talmudic eyes, probably teaching a seminar in modern lit at a dismal uptown night school, where he purveyed muddy wisdom about Bellow, Malamud, and the Jewish renaissance. Leo Kolodny would use ‘wordsmith.’”

Anyone who has ever been “cruelly clobbered” by a review in PW can only laugh in complete understanding of this narrator’s impotent, spluttering rage.

Yet despite some strong characterizations and finely-wrought descriptions (the narrator summarizes his brief glimpse of General Douglas MacArthur by writing that “his eyes appeared as glassily opaque and mysterious as those of an old, sated lion pensively digesting a wildebeest or, more exactly, like those of a man whose thoughts had turned inward upon some Caesarean dream magnificent beyond compare”), neither “Marriott, the Marine” nor “The Suicide Run” satisfy as fiction, precisely because, despite the publisher’s identification of them as “tales,” they simply don’t go anywhere. “Marriott” in particular seems as if it might have made a fine beginning to “The Way of the Warrior”—but after he’d broken off for several years to write “Sophie’s Choice,” Styron clearly reassessed his Marine novel and decided on some fundamental changes.

When he returned to the material, it was very different. The first glimpse the world received of Styron’s new approach came with his novella “A Tidewater Morning” (included in his collection of the same name), a gorgeous piece about a young boy, Paul Whitehurst, growing up in the Tidewater Virginia of the 1930s and trying to comprehend the fact of his mother’s imminent death. When “A Tidewater Morning” originally appeared in Esquire in 1987, it was billed as the opening chapter of “The Way of the Warrior”—just as “Marriott, the Marine” had been sixteen years before. In this period he was also discussing the novel in highly altered terms. Instead of it being a story set during the Korean War, now it took place at the end of World War II: “What it’s about,” Styron told interviewer Georgann Eubanbanks in 1984, “is the last military engagement in World War II and the last man who died in combat, that is, outside of the bombs that were dropped on Japan...the book ends when the atomic bomb drops.” This plot outline bears no resemblance whatsoever to the material in “Marriott, the Marine” and “The Suicide Run.”

Well and good; it’s the wise writer who realizes when a project isn’t going as it should, and who has the courage to stop, reconsider, and start all over again, even if it means sacrificing years of effort. But this new version of “The Way of the Warrior” was doomed to suffer the same fate as the first. Curiously, the publishers of “The Suicide Run” never admit that the book’s major novella “My Father’s House” was ever intended for “The Way of the Warrior” at all; they claim the piece was the opening section of a different, unnamed novel. But everything in “My Father’s House” is completely consistent with “A Tidewater Morning”: the same Paul Whitehurst as narrator, with the same father, same house, same bedroom, same housekeeper (“Flo”). Moreover, the piece was written in the exact same period as “A Tidewater Morning.” The difference is that “My Father’s House” is set much later, a year after Paul has returned from service in World War II. It’s possible that Styron had decided to cut “A Tidewater Morning” from the novel and open instead with “My Father’s House,” but they are certainly both part of the same project—which was “The Way of the Warrior.”

Unfortunately, “My Father’s House” has little of the power of “A Tidewater Morning,” and it’s obvious why Styron elected not to publish it separately in magazine form, as he had with the other story. In fact, despite some typically lush and lovely writing here and there, “My Father’s House” is disorganized and clunky, with virtually no transitions at all between his narrator’s various disconnected thoughts and a tendency to allow characters to jump in and out of the piece with little apparent rhyme or reason (this is especially disappointing with the sudden reappearance of Flo, vivid and memorable in “A Tidewater Morning,” uncomfortably close to a black servant cliché here). It’s possible that some of this would have been clarified in the later chapters of the revised version of “Warrior,” but Styron was unable to bring the novel anywhere near completion.

“The Suicide Run” ends on the most discouraging note of all: a very brief “sketch,” as the publisher calls it, titled “Elobey, Annobón, and Corisco,” said to have been written in 1995—as such, surely one of the last pieces Styron managed to complete. Yet the writing in this brief sketch, which focuses on Styron’s narrator thinking of his stamp collection and the faraway places depicted therein as he is on the island of Saipan, is aimless and ineffective. It’s difficult to believe that Styron would ever have wanted these few feeble paragraphs published.

But then that’s the issue with the whole of “The Suicide Run,” just as it is with Capote’s “Summer Crossing” and the various posthumous Hemingway projects. If the writing is bad—and in “The Suicide Run” some of it is, bearing the unfortunate hallmarks of Styron at less than his best: the bloatedness, the obscure show-off vocabulary, the general sense of a pretentious windbag at work—it can hardly be blamed on William Styron, who, except for the two pieces which first appeared in magazines, never authorized the publication of these writings at all.

Yet, though even the best of the material here is second-rate, Styron fans everywhere simply must read “The Suicide Run.” The book shows us clearly—all too clearly—how the author’s talents declined in his later years, but there are moments of beauty and clarity in the writings here which could have been achieved by no one but William Styron. Consider the opening of the one non-“Warrior” piece here, the 1953 fragment “Blankenship.”

“Amid the smelly stretch of riptides and treacherous currents formed by the confluence of the upper East River and Long Island Sound stands a small low-lying island. Surmounted for most of its length by ancient prison buildings, it is an island hardly distinguishable, in its time-exhausted drabness, from those dozen or so other islands occupied by prisons and hospitals which give to the New York waterways such a bleak look of municipal necessity and—for some reason especially at twilight—that air of melancholy and erosion of the spirit. Yet something here compels a second glance. Something makes this island seem even excessively ugly, and a meaner and shabbier eyesore. Perhaps this is because of the island’s situation; for a prison island it just seems to be in too nice a place. It commands a fine wide view of the blue Sound to the east and the white houses on the mainland nearby—houses which, though situated in the Bronx, are so neat and scrubbed and summery-looking as to make New York City seem as remote as Nantucket. One passing by the island might more logically envision a pretty park here, or groves of trees, or a harbor for sailboats, than this squalid acre of prison buildings. Yet perhaps it’s the buildings themselves which make the place look more than ordinarily grim and depressing—so that the cleanly utilitarian, white marble structures on the other of the city’s islands seem, by comparison, almost beguiling sanctuaries. These date back nearly a century, soot-encrusted brick piles of turrets and fake moats and parapets and Victorian towers. With these, and with their crenellated battlements and lofty embrasures and all the sham artifices of fortressed power, the buildings possess a calculated, ridiculous ugliness, as if for someone locked within the walls they must add to the injury of simple confinement the diurnal insulting reminder—in every nook and cranny unavoidable and symbolic—of his incarceration.”

That voice—commanding, portentous, profoundly in tune with the words and rhythms and subtle shadings of the English language—is magnificently William Styron’s.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific book in an understated way. Nothing earth shattering but I felt like I was there through it all. Sparse of word, deep in significance. I'm gonna continue reading more of him. I thought Sophie's Choice was excellent

[Tommy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was going to give this one 3 stars, as I admired the craft of the first three stories but found myself only mildly engaged. But the beautiful, vivid "My Father's House," apparently the beginning to an unfinished novel, is one of the best short stories I have ever read.

[Carol Storm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good pieces here, but THE LONG MARCH by William Styron is much better written and describes the Marine Corps much more accurately.

As other reviewers have commented, there's a fascinating literary mystery at the heart of this fragmented collection of posthumously published scribbles. For the last twenty-five years of his life, William Styron babbled off and on to a wide variety of listeners about his "big novel of the Marine Corps" which was sure to cement his reputation as the greatest American writer since Faulkner. But the gigantic manuscripts somehow sank beneath the waves, like the lost continent of Atlantis. These muddled fragments are all that remain, cryptic clues as inscrutable as the stone heads of Easter Island.

What happened? What went wrong? What dark truths was William Stryon unable or unwilling to confront about the United States Marine Corps?

I believe the key to the mystery lies within Styron's record as a Marine. As a young man spared combat in World War II, he remained uneasily aware to the end of his life that he had never actually passed the test of combat. Yet as a Southerner with a healthy (some would say exaggerated) belief in the inherent courage and inborn valor of all (white, well-born) southern men, he felt an itching need to lay claim to battlefield laurels he never quite managed to earn. When offered the chance to serve in actual combat during the Korean War, he refused with a savage mixture of indignation, resentment and fear -- and indeed spent the rest of his literary career denouncing the Corps for daring to call on him a second time. (It is interesting to note that baseball immortal Ted Williams, under similar circumstances, met the call to serve in Korea with grim resolve, if not with enthusiasm.)

Now why was Styron so eager to dwell on his not-so-heroic service in World War II, and so furious about being offered the chance to serve "for real" in Korea?

What happened to the Marine Corps between World War II and Korea? There was in fact a veritable sea-change that swept over the service. The Marine Corps met and overcame its greatest challenge.

The Marine Corps integrated. Black Marines served in combat in Korea. With honor. With distinction. Without any help from William Styron.

Is it merely a coincidence that William Styron was eager to serve in the segregated Marines of 1944 but disdained to serve in the integrated Corps of 1951?

Slander, you say! William Styron partied with Black Panthers and played touch football with James Baldwin.

But remember, this is the same William Styron who invested seven years of his life in a novel called THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER. This is the landmark novel in which defiant black slave Nat Turner talks (and talks and talks) about his hatred of white people for five hundred pages, only to discover in the last fifty pages that -- surprise!!! Spoiler alert! He can't measure up in combat. The sight of blood makes him sick. Merely being around violence makes him shake with fear.

Was William Styron projecting his own cowardice onto the most well known hero of the despised black race? And was he secretly terrified that the real cowardice lay within his own breast? And was he secretly enraged that the black Marines who served with valor in Korea (and Vietnam) were gaining the battlefield honors that were "rightfully" his?

Reading THE SUICIDE RUN, it is intriguing to note that several of these pieces deal with the difficulties white Marines face in readjusting to Marine Corps life when recalled to service in the Korean War. Never once is integration mentioned as a problem. According to Styron, no black Marines served in Korea. Integration was not ongoing. It's as if the black Marines have simply been erased from history. Whereas if you read a nonfiction account, such as COLDER THAN HELL by Marine combat veteran Joseph Owen, the problem of getting white (southern) troops and black troops to work together was a major challenge -- and one the officers of the Marine Corps successfully, honorably, heroically overcame.

Without any help from William Styron.

That same devious Devil Dog who declined to serve with black Marines in Korea, who never so much as publicly acknowledged the black Marines who served in Vietnam, but who had all the time in the world (or at least seven long years) to create an indelible portrait of Negro cowardice in the quivering, trembling, thoroughly non-historical Nat Turner.

And who talked endlessly of his epic novel of Marines in combat, but who never actually wrote anything. Except a few incoherent scribbles.

And a mammoth novel on Negro cowardice.

Cowardice knows no color, William Styron.

But it takes one to know one.

And every dog knows his own.

And by the way,

Semper Fi.

1st Radio Battalion
1988-1992

[Lukáš Palán · Rating 3 out of 5]

Až do krve bylo teda opět až na krev. Styron píše moc hezky, každá věta je jak z porcelánu, ale nudou by při tom umřel snad i Radek John. Ke konci jsem sebou nosil už i defibrilátor, kdybych náhodou padnul do klinické smrti.

Povídky to jsou fajn, a to i přesto, že jsou nudný. Život gum a jejich typy jsou tu vykresleny skoro ze všech stran, někdy víc zajímavě a někdy míň. Celý je to samozřejmě pacifický jak oceán, přičemž mě ale trochu mrzelo, že po tom nekonečným brblání záložáků nikdy nedošel Styron tak daleko, že by je poslal do nějaký pořádný válečný šlamastyky, nebo aspoň za děvkama na šlem-a-styky. To si většinou jen gumy povídaly někde ve výcvikovým táboře, že se jim tam nechce a pak byl konec. To je jako si objednat jagermeistera a pak ho nevypít.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this because I'm about to move to Port Warwick in Newport News, VA, so I'm excited to read his stuff. I liked this because my husband is a newly commissioned second lieutenant as is the main character in many of these stories. "Suicide Run" wasn't the violent story I thought it would be but the actuality of it was kind of funny and touching. Glad I've finally started reading his stuff--next I'll have to read "Sophie's Choice," maybe while sitting in Styron Square.

[Lane Willson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not my favorite Styron work, it was an enjoyable and quick read. My only criticism is that the stories seemed to not quite reach their conclusion. Of course since they were published posthumously...

[Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a veteran of the US Air Force. My nephew is active duty Coast Guard. My brother was in the Marines. My dad and all of my uncles were in the Army, the Army Air Corps or the Air Force. My grandfather was a dough boy in WW1. I have a strong affinity to stories of the military. There is something very human about war stories because they force us to confront all or our demons.

However this book of stories by Styron doesn't stand up to some of the better books about war that I have read in recent months. If you want to learn more about the Korean War read On Desperate Ground by Hampton Sides, or read about the Vietnam War as experienced and told by another writer, Dispatches by Michael Herr. Both are superb. Or, read Styron's much better The Long March.

[Steve Petherbridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Styron is probably a little underrated, having lived and written alongside a generation of great American writers, but, the quality of his writing cannot be questioned. Born and raised in the the deep South, but, with an empathy for the black man, he lived most of his life in Connecticut and Massachusetts and wrote at least two classics of American 20th Century literature - one novel chronicling a rebellious black slave in "The Confessions of Nat Turner" and a second book about a non-Jewish Holocaust victim in his most celebrated work, "Sophie’s Choice", the main character played so memorably on the big screen by Meryl Streep.

Styron was re-conscripted into the US marines during the Korean War in 1954(?). Towards the end of the Second World War he had postponed university to join the marine corps, but, luckily for him and conveyed honestly by him as a stroke of good fortune, the Japanese surrender came as he was about to leave for the front. So in neither conflict, as it turned out, did he see action; but his mortal dread of actual combat on the field of battle permeates these five powerful, quite pacifist tales, here presented in the order in which they were written - “Blankenship” in 1953, “Marriott, the Marine” and “The Suicide Run” from the early seventies (part of a planned novel about the “sterile, ingrown and philistine” culture of military life that Styron put aside to write Sophie’s Choice, “My Father’s House” from 1985, an obviously autobiographical narrative describing a soldier's adjustment to the mundanity of civilian life and a short final piece or vignette, written in 1995, in which a soldier deflects his terror of war by using his childhood stamp collection to imagine visiting idyllic islands.

Though not prodigious in terms of output, Styron developed his own strong, distinctive voice. He was traumatised throughout his life by severe depression and his mental fragility is often hinted at here. There are echoes of Hemingway in his writing style, but, without the machismo that Hemingway felt obliged to demonstrate as often as possible to allay his many inner conflicts.

To quote from a review: "So why did this late story remain unpublished, and just three of the others appear in American magazines in his lifetime?
Posthumous publications like this can be fraught with danger. Some will feel that these slender stories pale in comparison with Styron’s titanic novels. Others will fret that, as with the recent, ill-advised publication of a Vladimir Nabokov fragment by his son, they do little to enhance an established reputation.
Both writers were scrupulous masters of their literary destinies, sparing in the work they chose to make public. So would Styron have wished these stories to be collected, for what but commercial gain, after his death?"

However, I do not think that his reputation suffers. If anything, we gain an evocative insight into Styron as a young and sensitive man on the cusp of history, dreading participation, as well as fearful of his death, in two of the bloodiest confrontations of the last Century. He also gives a graphic description of the U.S. Marine Corps, in many ways a maverick unit of misfits, however admirably brave and effective were the members in war-time.

Worth a read? Definitely. At 194 pages, it is not very time consuming and, as I said earlier, Styron could really write. I picked it up, in hardback, in prime second-hand condition in a well known bookworm's bargain treasure trove in Galway City, the famous "Charlie Byrne's Bookshop", while holidaying in Connemara. Once I saw the name William Styron, it was a no-brainer to just grab it!

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this one up by chance, and was blown away by the writing. Probably because I had never heard of Styron before, and guessed this was just some ex-Marine looking to fill his retirement by writing war stories. Nope, definitely an impressive author. The stories were rich and artistic, while keeping a good pace and holding the reader's interest.
My only complaint is that the last three stories were so connected it seemed more like a short novel, which unfortunately ended prematurely. Also, the short story "The Suicide Run" had a great line in it that perfectly verbalized my problem with gratuitous sex in books. I wish I had copied it down, but basically his point was that no matter how he worded it (the details of his night with his lover), it was going to come off sounding cheap, and that a popular trend among writers to include these detailed scenes wasn't enough to convince him to do so when it wasn't necessary to the story. I applauded him (and I need to go find that quote, since I'm obviously not doing it justice), but then later on, I felt like I got more detail than I would like on some sexual topics, and I was disappointed that he included that. It wasn't extremely offensive or anything, just not necessary.
Anyway, other than that, I really enjoyed the writing in this book, and it was an interesting look at post-WWII America and the build up to/involvement in the Korean War.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for tales of glory and honor extolling the Marine Corps this book is not for you. If you are looking for: short stories that vividly capture the heat and humidity of the South in summer while training for war; what it feels like to be young and wanting to get laid before you make the final sacrifice; feeling bitter that you didn't get to taste combat but relieved you didn't; and dealing with what to do with yourself after a war and learning how to not say the f word in normal conversation- well, this book is for you. Some great stories that perfectly capture what it's like to be young and meat for the god of war. Styron respects the Marine Corps. He might not have propagandized it but you can feel his respect and also his fear of becoming a lifer. This book reminded me of Anthony Swofford's 2003 book Jarhead in that it's unlike it. Swofford has a chip on his shoulder about his Marine Corps experience. It's too bad Styron never wrote some great opus on the Marine Corps. His prose has soul and is a social critique of American mores at the time-there's a good exchange of info on the execution of a black man for rape in Virginia. I could so relate to this book's many vignettes, especially the scene where the Admiral gives the brief on the invasion of Japan-I had the same experience/feeling for Desert Storm.

[Tamsin Burford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps a harsh rating. I read this quickly and found it really well written.

Stories showing the inner voice of the officer in war but not from the perspective of the front line, but from the bedroom, the bar, the car, the aftermath. Styron brings to life the hot feeling of American summers, the idleness/relief/suppressed guilt of the newly discharged soldier. He also describes well the ennui endured during the training or refreshment process.

A series of five short stores, some longer than others. All gripping in their own way. Some very long sentences slightly similar perhaps in style to Philip Roth perhaps. I noticed myself re-reading various sentences so that I could be sure I had fully grasped them and often I had not. A failing in reader certainly but perhaps in author too. Nonetheless I feel I had the gist of things.

Other characters are painted less clearly but were still intriguing. In "My Father's House" for instance I wanted to know more about his father and much more about his deceased mother. In fact thinking about it, other stories too contained characters who were briefly sketched and I wanted more of them. The brevity was not a problem, rather that the people came alive and left me wanting more. Laurel, for example.

Dont read this if you want war stories. The cover does not depict the contents.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent collection of five shorts by the excellent writer Styron, although at times I had this feeling he was trying too hard, but the stories were interesting, and supposedly heavily based on his experiences as a Marine. I suspect hardcore gung-ho Marines may not appreciate all the sentiments, but a revealing look into the mind of at least one who served, albeit at the end of WWII. The dismay at being called up as a reserve, the portrayal of guard duty, waiting for front-line assignment, all interesting takes. Also his insights into what it felt like being back at home, luckily all in one piece. Returning vets from our recent conflicts might find it worthwhile.

[Steve Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are snippets, could be magazine pieces but Styron writes so well all are enjoyable and evocative of my own military service. Like him I was not such a good system man, I was competent but only just and the episodes here could in one way or another have been part of my own military life as a young officer. Without doubt the most impressive piece was contained in "May Father's House" describing the fears of a young officer about to go into combat. Right on the knocker, that was me down to a tee.....and I think just about everyone else in the same position. A great little collection well worth the read

[David Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five short stories about Styron’s experience in the Marines in WWII and the Korean War. Very competent case studies with some good insights. Great description of a soldier on the eve of an assault who has conceived the ultimate coward’s way out, which was probably a coping mechanism. There were some unresolved issues, such as the reference to his relationship with a woman during his time training for WWII (the Suicide Run). I read this during my time with Rob in Columbia at the Residence Inn after his attack on February 28 and his surgery on March 3, 2010.

[Eddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was meh, ok. I thought it was me in not following along. It's a fragmented book with some short stories and unrelated anecdotes of Marines in WW2 era. Apparently, this book was pieced together posthumously from notes that were going to be a book (which explains the disjointedness). I was thinking I would listen to it again but the mostly negative reviews tells me not to bother. I guess there were some short stories here but it was hard to tell where they began and ended.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a war story buff, and I've never read anything by Styron before, but clearly I was missing out. The stories were riveting. Styron's characters have depth that is missing in most short stories, and the stories themselves are self-contained gems with picturesque prose. He inspires me to write.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I read this, I thought it was just a set of pieces connected vaguely by the marines theme slapped together to make sure Styron was an earner even from the grave. Well maybe it is, but it isn't just that. The first story on the theme of marines-as-one-big-prison (written with compassion for the people in it) connects oddly well with the other pieces written decades later. Good stuff.

[Evelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read some prior raving reviews about the book and I feel I might not be in the same league because I found it hard to keep on reading the book and forcing my self through it.
I gave the 3 stars since The Suicide Run chapter was funny and His father's house Chapter was very interesting moral issues for the era that I enjoy, but I'm sorry I wasn't connected at all.

[Evelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read some prior raving reviews about the book and I feel I might not be in the same league because I found it hard to keep on reading the book and forcing my self through it.
I gave the 3 stars since The Suicide Run chapter was funny and His father's house Chapter was very interesting moral issues for the era that I enjoy, but I'm sorry I wasn't connected at all.

[Patrick Fay · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of these short stories, drawn from Styron's experience in the Marine Corp, show his genius for capturing and bringing readers deeply into poignant moments. Unfortunately, as good as they are, they are more fragments than completed stories. Well worth the read, but less satisfying than his complete novels.

[Russell George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this a few months ago so this is going to be a bit vague, but I did enjoy the insight into the mind of a Marine training for the Korean war. There's something of Hemmingway here, with a bit of Hunter S Thompson too, though I don't remember thinking that I'll read more of his stuff.

Then again, I might.

[Roshnara Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of novellas about the author's life in the Marines, this is a look into the contradictions, inconsistencies, and fascinations of life as a Marine. Well written, and more human than many of the war books out there, this has definitely piqued my interest in the author, and I will be picking up more of his works to read.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a memoir, and has little of direct combat stories. Styron's writing is superb, and this book encouraged me to want to read other works of his. The stories are unveven in terms of interest, but "The Suicide Run" is hilarious.

[Helen-Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent stories of what it is like to serve in the military - though he didn't like the life much himself when he was in. Of course, the Korean War was not a great time to serve. Easier to read, and oddly more upbeat than "Sophie's Choice" or Confessions on "Nat Turner."

[Juan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Sophie's choice and confessions of bat turner. Amazing, outstanding books. This was a disappointment. I gather that these were unpublished or very early stories that Styron chose not to publish for good reason while he was alive.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming and engrossing with an edge since it took place during WWII for the most part.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great great writing. There are three long stories here, all early works. I like them better than some of the longer things I've read. Just terrific.

[Steve Shilstone · Rating 2 out of 5]

5 tales of the Marine Corps, the best being the opening section of an abandoned novel, 'My Father's House'. Wish he hadn't abandoned it.