SOURCE: An interview with Michael West, in Conversations with William Styron, University Press of Mississippi, 1985, pp. 217-33.

In this excerpt from an interview that was originally published in 1977, Styron speaks of how his resentment of authority figures has been a significant feature of his writing.

[West]: The themes that have captured your imagination have driven you to complete four novels, if we consider The Long March to be a short novel, and I wonder if there are some themes that recur though the stories differ greatly. I am thinking of themes like the struggle of a man or a woman against authority or an authoritarian system, a system of values which seems to oppress.

[Styron]: Yes, that's been remarked upon before and I think there's some truth in that—a great deal of truth. I have been more or less drawn to human relationships in which there is...