To the Editor:
As a fan of A. O. Scott’s thoughtful criticism, I was disappointed by his Oct. 7 review of the movie “Birth of a Nation” and his characterization of the novel “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” by William Styron, my father.
Mr. Scott claims that the book “notoriously depicted Turner as a psychopath.” I strongly disagree.
When my father began researching Turner’s (then little known) rebellion, he relied primarily on a short document published by Turner’s court-appointed lawyer, Thomas Gray. That Nat Turner was indeed a madman — raving, bloodthirsty, beset by apocalyptic visions.
But my father knew that such an unsympathetic extremity of character would be unworkable in his fiction. As quoted in your paper (Book Review, Sept. 7, 2008), he set out instead to give Turner “dimensions of humanity that were almost totally absent in documentary evidence.”
By most accounts, he succeeded. The nuanced portrait my father created is essential to the book’s artistic achievement. His Turner is troubled and righteous, poetic and profane. Above all, he is human.
If my father had failed on this account, had drawn Turner as a monster rather than as a man, I doubt that many people would have read his book. Nor would it have become a flash point in the meaningful, if volatile, dialogue about race during the height of the civil rights movement.
ALEXANDRA STYRON
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