Set This House on Fire Book

So the TV's on, tuned to an early-morning movie I'm not watching. I'm trying to figure out what to read next, six books laid out on the coffee table before me. I eliminate William Styron's "Set This House on Fire," figuring I'd wait to re-read that excellent novel next year. I put it back on the bookshelf. The movie catches my eye. It's "Naked in New York," which I'd never seen or even heard of. Eric Stoltz points out to Mary-Louise Parker that the man across the room at the party is William Styron. In one of the movie's quirks, Styron's accomplishments, including a list of his books, flashes on the screen. I'd just put the novel on the bookshelf, and there it is on the TV screen, and there is the man himself. Holy crap. Must be a sign, I think. Styron it is.

Nudge from the gods aside, I didn't need much encouraging to dive back into "Set This House on Fire," through which I'd popped my Styron cherry about 2000 or so. It's the last of Styron's four full-length novels people think of. Not the jaw-dropping debut with the 51-page paragraph ("Lie Down in Darkness"), not the controversial Pulitzer Prize winner ("The Confessions of Nat Turner"), nor the masterpiece that spawned the OK movie ("Sophie's Choice"). But Styron's writing makes me weak in the knees, and there's plenty of his detailed, evocative, gorgeous prose in this tale of three men and a tragic rendezvous with destiny in Sambuco, Italy. There's a lot of Faulkner influence in Styron. Sentences to spin your head and that you can gorge upon; long scenes with digressions and recollections and speeches upon speeches.

A book that opens with Virginian Peter Leverett hitting a pedestrian with his car on the way to visit a charismatic boyhood friend in Sambuco takes a dark, drunken detour into death, madness and, just maybe, redemption. Leverett narrates, but, as in "Moby Dick," the apparent protagonist virtually disappears for long stretches. Leverett, through time shifts and conversations with Cass Kinsolving, the man who lives below Mason Flagg, the dynamic but ultimately cruel heel who will be found dead at the bottom of a cliff after raping a beautiful peasant, takes us on a heady reconstruction of a tragedy. Leverett recounts his school days with Flagg while meeting Kinsolving in North Carolina months after the Sambuco nightmare. And he digs deep into Kinsolving's dark days before and during his time living in the same building with Flagg. Self-destructive, awash in drink, Kinsolving was an easy target for a handsome millionaire like Flagg, "with the hungry look of a man who knew he could own you if you'd only let him." As a movie crew and other partiers buzz around him, Flagg feeds on Kinsolving's humiliation until things finally take a deadly turn.

One feels gluttonous reading Styron's words, particularly in this novel's first half. The self-examination and scenes upon scenes of drunken debasement won't be everyone's cup of wine, but if you're a words-first person, dig in. I feel guilty giving "Set This House on Fire" only four stars (4.5 would be perfect), but since Styron did better at least once (probably twice), and because the second half isn't quite as great and, ultimately, the book is not for everyone, four it is, I guess. (*Sigh*) But I do love the crap out of Styron.