After surviving World War II himself (only in Japan), Styron took an editing position with McGraw-Hill in New York City. He later recalled the misery of this work in an autobiographical passage of Sophie's Choice. He was fired for "for slovenly appearance, not wearing a hat, and reading the New York Post."
Unlike Gary Paulsen, Styron didn't necessarily live what he wrote about. At his studio in Roxbury, he posted a copy of a note that Flaubert, the great French writer, sent his mistress: "Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."
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