“How can anyone protest a book,” he had asked in the trade press, “that has withstood the critical test of time since last October?”) As the evening wore on, Mr. Styron said less and less, and Mr. Davis more and more (“So you might ask, why didn’t I spend five years and write Nat Turner? I won’t go into my reasons why, but …”), and James Baldwin sat between them, his eyes closed and his head thrown back in understandable but rather theatrical agony.
