First edition | |
Author | William Styron |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Publisher | Discovery (serial) Random House (book) |
Publication date | 1952 (serial) October 1956 (book) |
Media type | |
Pages | 88 |
The Long March is a novella by William Styron, first published serially in 1952 in Discovery. [1] and by Random House as a Modern Library Paperback in 1956. [2]
William Clark Styron Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. As of 2013, it is part of Penguin Random House, which is jointly owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann and British global education and publishing company Pearson PLC.
The Modern Library is an American publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. Random House began in 1927 as a subsidiary of the Modern Library but eventually overtook its parent to become the parent company of what then only became an imprint of Random House.
It tells of an overnight thirty-six mile forced march back to base at a US Marine training camp in the Carolinas, the chief protagonists being ageing reservists Lieutenant Culver and his friend Captain Mannix, who have been called up due to the threat of the Korean War. Eight of their colleagues had, earlier that day, been killed by misfired mortar shells, adding to the absurdity of their ordeal.
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border.
Styron himself was called up in response to the Korean War and a forced march he undertook at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina provided the inspiration for the story. [3]
Jacksonville is a city in Onslow County, North Carolina, United States. As of the 2010 United States census, the population stood at 70,145, which makes Jacksonville the 14th largest city in North Carolina. Jacksonville is the principal city of Onslow County and is included in the Jacksonville, North Carolina metropolitan area. In 2014, Forbes magazine ranked Jacksonville as the fifth fastest-growing small city in the United States. Demographically, Jacksonville is the youngest city in the United States with an average age of 22.8 years old, which can be attributed to the large military presence. The low age may also be in part due to the population drastically going up over the past 80 years, from a mere 783 in the 1930 census to 70,145 in the 2010 census.
Writing in The Guardian , James Campbell explains, "The book expresses Styron's dislike of the military experience and must originally have appeared as a reproof to more bullish colleagues such as Norman Mailer and James Jones who, while exposing the brutality of battle, did so in such a way as to aggrandise it. "None of that Hemingway crap for me," says the hero of The Long March, Captain Mannix, with whom Styron has identified himself." [4]
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and took its current name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, the Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The Scott Trust was created in 1936 "to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The Scott Trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to project the same protections for The Guardian as were originally built into the very structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than to benefit an owner or shareholders.
James Campbell, is a Scottish writer.
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and liberal political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. His best-known work is widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In over six decades of work, Mailer had eleven best selling books in each of the seven decades after World War II—more than any other post-war American writer.
Loretta Jane Swit is an American stage and television actress known for her character roles. Swit is best known for her portrayal of Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on M*A*S*H, for which she won two Emmy Awards.
Sophie's Choice is a 1979 novel by American author William Styron. It concerns the relationships between three people sharing a boarding house in Brooklyn: Stingo, a young aspiring writer from the South, and the Jewish scientist Nathan Landau and his lover Sophie, a Polish Catholic survivor of the German Nazi concentration camps, whom he befriends.
Sherman's March to the Sea was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. The campaign began with Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. His forces followed a "scorched earth" policy, destroying military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property and disrupting the Confederacy's economy and its transportation networks. The operation broke the back of the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual surrender. Sherman's bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be one of the major achievements of the war and is also considered to be the early example of modern total war.
Mannix is an American television detective series that ran from 1967 to 1975 on CBS. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller, the title character, Joe Mannix, is a private investigator. He was played by Mike Connors.
Set This House on Fire is a novel by William Styron, set in a small village of the Amalfi coast in Italy, centred on the themes of evil and redemption. The narrator, Peter Leverett, is a lawyer from the South, but the story is primarily told through the recollections of its protagonist, a troubled artist named Cass Kinsolving.
Cape Henry is a cape on the Atlantic shore of Virginia located in the northeast corner of Virginia Beach. It is the southern boundary of the entrance to the long estuary of the Chesapeake Bay.
The Battle of Kettle Creek was a minor encounter in the back country of Georgia during the American Revolutionary War. It was fought in Wilkes County about eight miles (13 km) from present-day Washington, Georgia. A militia force of Patriots decisively defeated and scattered a Loyalist militia force that was on its way to British-controlled Augusta.
Sophie's Choice is a 1982 American drama film directed by Alan J. Pakula, who adapted William Styron's novel of the same name. Meryl Streep stars as Sophie, a Polish immigrant who shares a boarding house in Brooklyn with her tempestuous lover, Nathan, and a young writer, Stingo.
The Southern theatre of the American Revolutionary War was the central area of operations in North America in the second half of the American Revolutionary War. During the first three years of the conflict, the largest military encounters were in the north, focused on campaigns around the cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. After the failure of the Saratoga campaign, the British largely abandoned operations in the Middle Colonies and pursued peace through subjugation in the Southern Colonies.
James Jay Archer was a lawyer and an officer in the United States Army during the Mexican–American War. He later served as a Brigadier General in the Confederate States Army (CSA) during the American Civil War.
Lie Down in Darkness is a novel by American novelist William Styron published in 1951. It was his first novel, written when he was 26 years old, and received a great deal of critical acclaim.
The Battle of Brier Creek was an American Revolutionary War battle fought on March 3, 1779 near the confluence of Brier Creek with the Savannah River in eastern Georgia. A Patriot force consisting principally of militia from North Carolina and Georgia was surprised, suffering significant casualties. The battle occurred only a few weeks after a resounding American Patriot victory over a Loyalist militia at Kettle Creek, north of Augusta, reversing its effect on morale.
Archibald Campbell Godwin, a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army who was killed at the Battle of Opequon during the American Civil War. Due to his death soon after his appointment, the Confederate Senate never confirmed Godwin's promotion to the grade of brigadier general.
Christmas in the American Civil War (1861–1865) was celebrated in both the United States and the Confederate States of America although the day did not become an official holiday until five years after the war ended. The war continued to rage on Christmas and skirmishes occurred throughout the countryside. Celebrations for both troops and civilians saw significant alteration. Propagandists, such as Thomas Nast, used wartime Christmases to reflect their beliefs. In 1870, Christmas became an official Federal holiday when President Ulysses S. Grant made it so in an attempt to unite north and south.
The Rack is a 1956 American war drama film, based on a play written by Rod Serling for television. It was directed by Arnold Laven and starred Paul Newman, Wendell Corey, Lee Marvin and Walter Pidgeon. After two years in a North Korean prison camp, an American officer returns home, only to be charged with collaboration by his own side. He is forced to defend his actions in court.
William Bull was a landowner and politician in the Province of South Carolina.
The Battle of Alamance was the final battle of the War of the Regulation, a rebellion in colonial North Carolina over issues of taxation and local control. Some historians in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries considered the battle to be the opening salvo of the American Revolution, and locals agreed with this assessment. Yet, this has been questioned by present-day historians arguing that the Regulators were not intending a complete overthrow of His Majesty's Government in North Carolina. They were only standing up against those certain local officials who had become corrupt and unworthy tools of the King, and they only turned to riot and armed rebellion as a last resort when all other peaceful means through petitions, elections to the Assembly, etc. had failed to redress their grievances. Many surviving ex-Regulators became loyalists during the Revolution, and several anti-Regulators [e.g. William Hooper, Alexander Martin, and Francis Nash] became patriots during the Revolution. Named for nearby Great Alamance Creek, the battle took place in what was then Orange County and has since become Alamance County in the central Piedmont about 6 miles (9.7 km) south of present-day Burlington, North Carolina.
The Siege of Savage's Old Fields was an encounter between Patriot and Loyalist forces in the back country town of Ninety Six, South Carolina, early in the American Revolutionary War. It was the first major conflict in South Carolina in the war, having been preceded by bloodless seizures of several military fortifications in the province. Patriot forces under the command of Major Andrew Williamson had been dispatched to the area to recover a shipment of gunpowder and ammunition intended for the Cherokees that had been seized by Loyalists. Williamson's force, numbering over 500, established a stockaded fort near Ninety Six, where it was surrounded by some 1,900 Loyalists.
Claire Alexandra Styron known as Alexandra Styron, is an American author and professor.