Before writing his memoir of madness, Darkness Visible, William Styron was best known for his ambitious works of fiction - including The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice. Styron
also created personal but no less powerful tales based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine. The Suicide Run collects five of these meticulously rendered narratives. One of them -
Elobey, Annobon, and Corisco" - is published here for the first time.
In "Blankenship," written in 1953, Styron draws on his stint as a guard at a stateside military prison at the end of World War II. "Marriott, the Marine" and "The Suicide Run" - which Styron
composed in the early 1970s as part of an intended novel that he set aside to write Sophie's Choice - depict the surreal experience of being conscripted a second time, after World War II, to
serve in the Korean War. "My Father's House" captures the isolation and frustration of a soldier trying to become a civilian again. In "Elobey, Annobon, and Corisco," written late in Styron's
life, a soldier attempts to exorcise the dread of an approaching battle by daydreaming about far-off islands, visited vicariously through his childhood stamp collection.
