William Clark Styron, Jr. (June 11, 1925 -- November 1, 2006) was an
American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his
work.
For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, including:
Lie Down in Darkness (1951), his acclaimed first novel, published at age 26;
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), narrated by Nat Turner, the leader of an 1831 Virginia slave revolt;
Sophie's
Choice (1979), a story "told through the eyes of a young aspiring
writer from the South, about a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz and
her brilliant but troubled Jewish lover in postwar Brooklyn".
In
1985, he suffered his most serious bout with depression. Out of this
grave and menacing experience, he was later able to write the memoir
Darkness Visible (1990), the work Styron became best known for during
the last two decades of his life.
In an episode of the television
series Cheers titled "Thanksgiving Orphans" (this episode first aired
in 1986), Styron is mentioned as an esteemed guest of a Thanksgiving
party hosted by one of Diane Chambers' literature professors. Styron and
other guests at the party are expected to recreate the first
Thanksgiving.
Styron appears as himself in the 1993 movie Naked in New York
Styron's Darkness Visible was part of the plot of the 2013 film, Side Effects, a crime thriller about depression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_...
Joseph
Heller (May 1, 1923 -- December 12, 1999) was an American satirical
novelist, short story writer, and playwright. The title of one of his
works, Catch-22, entered the English lexicon to refer to a vicious
circle wherein an absurd, no-win choice, particularly in situations in
which the desired outcome of the choice is an impossibility, and
regardless of choice, a same negative outcome is a certainty. Although
he is remembered primarily for Catch-22, his other works center on the
lives of various members of the middle class and remain examples of
modern satire.
Joseph Heller was born in Coney Island in
Brooklyn, New York, the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac
Donald Heller, from Russia. Even as a child, he loved to write; as a
teenager, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and
sent it to New York Daily News, which rejected it. At least one scholar
suggests that he knew that he wanted to become a writer, after recalling
that he received a children's version of the Iliad when he was ten.
After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent
the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and
a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps.
Two years later he was sent to the Italian Front, where he flew 60
combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. His Unit was the 488th Bombardment
Squadron, 340th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force. Heller later remembered the
war as "fun in the beginning... You got the feeling that there was
something glorious about it." On his return home he "felt like a hero...
People think it quite remarkable that I was in combat in an airplane
and I flew sixty missions even though I tell them that the missions were
largely milk runs." ("Milk runs" were combat missions, but mostly
uneventful due to a lack of intense opposition from enemy anti-aircraft
artillery or fighters.)
After the war, Heller studied English at
the University of Southern California and NYU on the G.I. Bill. In 1949,
he received his M.A. in English from Columbia University. Following his
graduation, he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at St Catherine's
College, Oxford. After returning home, he taught composition at
Pennsylvania State University for two years. He also taught fiction and
dramatic writing at Yale. He then briefly worked for Time Inc., before
taking a job as a copywriter at a small advertising agency, where he
worked alongside future novelist Mary Higgins Clark. At home, Heller
wrote. He was first published in 1948, when The Atlantic ran one of his
short stories. That first story nearly won the "Atlantic First."
He was married to Shirley Held from 1945 to 1981 and they had two children, Erica (born 1952) and Ted (born 1956).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_H...
Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr. (/ˈvɒnɨɡət/; November 11, 1922 -- April 11, 2007) was an
American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle (1963),
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) blend
satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. As a citizen he was a
lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a critical
pacifist intellectual. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was
honorary president of the American Humanist Association.
The New York Times headline at the time of Vonnegut's passing called Vonnegut "the counterculture's novelist."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Von...
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