Novelist William Styron opens the first chapter by remembering a turning point in his life, noting, “In Paris on a chilly evening late in October of 1985 I first became fully aware that the struggle with the disorder in my mind—a struggle which had engaged me for several months—might have a fatal outcome” (3). This realization came to him when he passed a hotel where he had stayed on a trip to Paris, 35 years earlier in 1952. As a young, barely famous writer who had just published his first novel, he had stayed in dive hotels, made friends with other young people, and frequented literary hangouts. By 1985, Styron had a very different mindset, and he remembers being disturbed by a sudden thought: the presumption that he would never see Paris again.

A few days earlier, Styron realized that he had depression and was fighting it ineffectively. He experienced “a sense of self-hatred—or, put less categorically, a failure of self-esteem” (5), and he found that his state of mind wasn’t even improved by the fact that he had come to Paris to accept a prestigious award. The Prix Mondial Cino del Duca came with a $25,000 grant that had to be claimed in person, in Paris.