This book was a lecture given at a symposium in Baltimore in 1979 sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry of the John Hopkins University School of Medicine and also appeared in Vanity Fair.It is deeply personal about William Styron and how he dealt with the darkness in his own life, depression. It began after he quit drinking or actually drinking quit him because his body reacted to alcohol and he simply could not drink it.We all deal with depression at some point of our lives and for some folks it grabs hold of them. However this book is a good read to get an intimate portrait of the darkness.