Books like Sophie's Choice

”Mercifully, I was at the age when reading was still a passion and thus, save for a happy marriage, the best state possible in which to keep absolute loneliness at bay. I could not have made it through those evenings otherwise. But I was an abandoned reader and, besides, outlandishly eclectic, with an affinity for the written word--almost any written word--that was so excitable that it verged on the erotic. I mean this literally, and were it not for the fact that I have compared notes with a few others who have confessed to sharing with me in their youth this particular sensibility, I know I would now be risking scorn or incredulity by stating that I can recall the time when the prospect of half an hour’s dalliance with a Classified Telephone Directory caused me a slight but nonetheless noticeable tumescence.”\ \ The young William Styron.The prospect for me of parting the pages of a new book produces a similar feeling to parting the warm thighs of a new lover. The anticipation and thrill of the beginning of a new adventure, whether it is swimming through the pages of a book or wrestling between the silk sheets of a bed, should produce the same tingles and let loose the same sparks of grand passion. Reading is a love affair. If you don’t feel this way, I’m sorry. I’ll offer you the same advice that I offered a married woman who once confessed to me that she didn’t enjoy sex. My reply was...are you sure you are doing it right? Maybe too many of you are picking the wrong lovers, or maybe you don’t have the proper reading resume to make the connections that produce grand passion, or maybe your mind is too closed off and you need to let it roam free. Do keep trying.This is a novel of lust and tragedy. At several points in the narrative, there is a merging together of the tragedy of unfulfilled wishes tinged by memories that can’t stay forgotten. This is really two novels, twinned together as the past intersects with the present. One part is of the trials and tribulations of Sophie Zawistowska, a Polish citizen who becomes the guest of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War Two, and the other part is of the struggles of a young Southern writer in Brooklyn, New York, who is attempting to write the great American novel. Stingo first meets Sophie and her lover Nathan Landau while boarding at The Pink Palace. He doesn’t so much meet them as hear them. They are in the room above him fornicating like amphetamine drugged rabbits. There is nothing more excruciating to a person suffering from inflamed, unmitigated passion than to be forced to eavesdrop on the lustful consummations of the successful sexual conquests of others. When one is in this state, it is easy to give in to brooding self-pity and start believing that everyone in the world is getting laid except for him. Stingo is twenty-two and not only suffering from excessive horniess but also suffering from a malady that most men, especially, wish to rid themselves of as soon as possible...virginity. His yearning to breach the defenses of a woman’s virtue and finally end his involuntary celibacy is an all consuming desire that is even starting to adversely affect his ability to produce his masterpiece. ”I still yearned passionately to produce the novel which had been for so long captive in my brain. It was only that, having written down the first few fine paragraphs, I could not produce any others, or--to approximate Gertrude Stein’s remark about a lesser writer of the Lost Generation--I had the syrup but it wouldn’t pour.” Yes, Stingo has sap issues, if you know what I mean.William Styron infuses autobiography into this book under the guise of fiction. It is almost impossible for me to separate the young Styron from the sexually frustrated Stingo. Styron was a master at describing lust, verging on purple prose at times, but yet managing to capture in lush detail the true nature of hormonal driven desire. Here he describes Stingo noticing the rather innocent ramblings of his neighbor that inspired such wonderful flights of salacious yearning. ”Alone for an instant, blond Mavis Hunnicutt would appear in the garden, dressed in a blouse and tight flowered slacks; after pausing for a peek up at the opalescent evening sky, she would give an odd and bewitching toss of her lovely hair and then bend down to pluck tulips from the flowerbed. In this adorable stance, she could not know what she did to the loneliest junior editor in New York. My lust was incredible--something prehensile, a groping snout of desire, slithering down the begrimed walls of the wretched old building, uncoiling itself across a fence, moving with haste serpentine and indecent to a point just short of her upturned rump, where in silent metamorphosis it blazingly flowered into the embodiment of myself, priapic, ravenous, yet under hair-trigger control.” Stingo might be a bit optimistic about the prospect of possessing any control if his fantasy, by some miracle, had ever manifested itself into reality. Chances are he would have been slinking back to his room with his tail between his legs, elated at finally successfully having sex, but burning with shame that he had failed to put in a good showing. In fact, he may have been left at the starting gate, having shot his wad before the starter’s pistol could even fire. Elation and shame, after all, are frequent companions during the early days of male sexual experience. He becomes best friends with Nathan and Sophie and soon finds himself caught up in their passionate affair. Their arguments prove as epic as their bouts of sexual passions. Stingo soon finds himself riding their emotional rollercoaster of cloud dwelling amorousness followed by dark, abhorrent, abusive quarrels that leave him shaken to the core of his belief in their enduring relationship.Stingo, like most of us, really does want the beautiful love story. Of course, riding side saddle during his Nick Carraway observations of Sophie and Nathan is his enduring love/lust for Sophie. She is lovely, not only in appearance, but in character. She is the type of woman for whom, if we are lucky enough to know her, most of us, male and female, would harbor our own infatuation. And then there is this constant, visible testament to her past: \ ”And once again I was conscious of that pitiless blue toothbite of a tattoo on her forearm.”\ During the many times that Nathan and Sophie are split up, Stingo gets exclusive time with Sophie, listening to her pour out her frustrations and fears that her love for Nathan will end in tragedy, but she also shares with Stingo the horrid story of her time incarcerated by the Nazis. The things she is asked to do. The decisions she is forced to make are beyond what any human should ever have to do. Hearing the story of her past adds poignancy in his desire for her. It evokes in Stingo the longing to give her a safe, happy life that will make up for the life that war took from her. William Styron/Stingo has written a masterpiece. The honesty and humor about Stingo’s galloping sexual desire coupled with the tragedies of Sophie’s life take the reader up and down the emotional scale with laughter one moment followed by the brimming of tears. We experience Stingo’s inept, humorous conquests as he searches for a woman liberated enough to allow him ”to taste in a calm, exploratory way those varieties of bodily experience which until now had existed in my head like a vast and orgiastic, incessantly thumbed encyclopedia of lust.” Stingo also constantly suffers from his disloyal desire for Sophie while also hoping that somehow she and Nathan will figure out a way to be together. Mental health is explored in detail as well, a subject close and dear to Styron as he struggled his whole life from dark depressions. \ \ The older William Styron.This book is unforgettable. I have a feeling I will be able to recall scenes in vivid technicolor from this novel for the rest of my life. How can I ever forget Stingo, Sophie, and Nathan? Their lives have become so much a part of my life I can almost swear that I have moved into The Pink Palace for a time and listened to their Olympian bouts of lovemaking, punctuated with the thumping of the headboard and the susurrus of the bedsprings, by the groans of Stingo’s growing frustrations. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.comI also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten