Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993                   TAG: 9311040125
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BOB BLATTNER Daily Press
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                                LENGTH: Medium

HE LIVES IN NEW ENGLAND, BUT HIS HEART IS STILL IN DIXIE

"But I still claim citizenship to Tidewater," author William Styron says.

As a writer, he never left.

From his first book, "Lie Down in Darkness," published more than 40 years ago, to his most recent, "A Tidewater Morning," published this fall, Styron repeatedly dips for inspiration into the Virginia Peninsula haunts of his youth.

"I think one is emotionally often the product of the first 18 to 20 years of one's life," he said. "This is the crucible. This is where it happened."

That's why Styron considers himself a Southern writer "very much rooted in the South, in this part of Virginia."

Had he been born elsewhere, he speculates, "I probably would have become a writer, but it plainly would have had far different resonances. It's not an absolute requirement to be a Southerner to be a writer in this country."

But it sure helps.

"The South has produced its far more disproportionate share of writers over the years," he notes: Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Robert Penn Warren. "There's a long, entrenched literary tradition in the South."

A dichotomy between the literary subculture and the anti-intellectual mainstream has long led critics such as H.L. Mencken to dismiss Southern culture as an oxymoron.

Styron insists he likes Mencken's writings. But that doesn't spare Mencken from a none-too-subtle counterattack.

"While he was writing about `The Sahara of the Bozarts,' people like Faulkner were scribbling away," Styron said.

And just as Faulkner had his Oxford, Miss., to draw from, Styron has the Hilton neighborhood of Newport News.

During his first extended trip in decades back to the Peninsula, Styron sits in a village back yard and drifts back, his voice soft, his words measured, only his eyes betraying the deepness of emotion he feels.

"There's always that funky odor of the tidal water that is so different from rivers elsewhere," he said. "What can you say? Nostalgia. It's still very much like it was in the old days. The atmosphere, the climate, the sense of community. This is sort of marooned in time, this little village.

"Back in the '30s, when I was growing up here, it was just marvelous. It was almost a little sanctuary, the perfect place to be a kid. The antithesis of the place where bad things happened. We never locked our doors We'd go away for a weekend and leave our doors open. If you would lock your doors, it would be an insult to your neighbors."

Not all his childhood memories are so bright, however.

"If you were sensitive, you were intensely conscious of racial tension, racial injustice," he said. "You were constantly aware that there was something deeply wrong, askew, in society."

Styron said he suspects such tension is perhaps the biggest reason the South has produced more than its share of famous authors.

"The extraordinary paradox of race," he said. "There's agony on every street corner because of the racial conflict. That's an important factor in Southern writing." So not surprisingly, Styron sees a similarity between Southern literature and the literature of South Africa.

And while he hopes the South's racism has abated, even during a short conversation he swings between hope and despair.

"Each time you state a plus, you almost immediately run into a negative and say we have lost ground," he said.

For instance, blacks are gaining political clout, he said, and institutionalized segregation has ended. But he added, "I think there's as much tension as there always was, despite the gains that have been made."

There's violence, for instance, as he sadly notes the recent fatal stabbing at Kecoughtan High School in Hampton.

"This sort of thing was unheard of in the '30s," he said. "Even in the black schools, the amount of violence was virtually zero. They may have been bad schools, but no one was getting stabbed."

Styron is no more given to neat, tidy conclusions as a conversationalist than he is as an author.

"It's unresolved, all this," he said. "You just can't make any blanket statement about race."

Then, brightening suddenly, Styron tells a story from just last spring, when he traveled to the College of William and Mary to pick up an honorary degree.

The commencement speaker, also receiving an honorary doctorate, was Bill Cosby, the comedian and entertainment tycoon.

"Here is a multi, multimillionaire getting a degree from a place where, when I grew up, he would only have been permitted to sweep the hall."

Later, Styron and his wife hitched a ride back to New York in Cosby's private jet.

And Styron said he will never forget that takeoff, as Cosby's jet, commanded by two black pilots, climbed over the James River where slavery had been an institution in plantations.

"It was overwhelming, the sense of irony," he said. "The strangeness of the society that could produce these extremes."

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