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This Quiet Dust By William Styron Random House, 305 pp., $17.50

This Quiet Dust (the title comes from Emily Dickinson) is a collection of disparate essays written during the last thirty years for Harper’s, Esquire, and The New York Review of Books. The coherence of the book could have been vastly improved by starting with Styron’s fascinating memoirs of his native place, which has continued to nourish his imagination, the Virginia Tidewater: “warm as mother’s milk, and just as reassuring”; his education at Christchurch School and at Duke University; his service with the Marines in World War II and Korea; the origins of his early novels; his years in Paris and Rome, and travels on the Nile; his friendships with masters like Robert Penn Warren and coevals like James Jones.

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers

Mr. Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of John Huston: Courage and Art.

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This Quiet Dust By William Styron Random House, 305 pp., $17.50

This Quiet Dust (the title comes from Emily Dickinson) is a collection of disparate essays written during the last thirty years for Harper’s, Esquire, and The New York Review of Books. The coherence of the book could have been vastly improved by starting with Styron’s fascinating memoirs of his native place, which has continued to nourish his imagination, the Virginia Tidewater: “warm as mother’s milk, and just as reassuring”; his education at Christchurch School and at Duke University; his service with the Marines in World War II and Korea; the origins of his early novels; his years in Paris and Rome, and travels on the Nile; his friendships with masters like Robert Penn Warren and coevals like James Jones.