Since the time he started writing, it seems to have been [Styron's] conscious aim to perpetuate the great tradition in Southern literature, and to assume the throne left vacant by William Faulkner by producing something that, in terms of both its themes and its historical scope, could merit comparison with The Sound and the Fury, Look Homeward, Angel, and All the King's Men…. Styron's first published book, Lie Down in Darkness, [was] treated with almost universal respect and had epithets like "brilliant," "major," and "tragic" showered upon it. Lie Down in Darkness, as befitted its author, had ambition written over its every page—it represented a deliberate stab at greatness—and the fact that Styron could back his ambitions up with an extraordinarily seductive style (by turns descriptive, lyrical, and elegiac) more or less guaranteed its initial success. It was almost too easy, thanks to the prodigious brilliance...