SHORT TAKES : Styron Tells Past Suicide Lure

Novelist William Styron says that in 1986 he almost joined the ranks of such authors as Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and Jack London who have committed suicide.

“Like many great American writers,” Styron wrote in December’s Vanity Fair, “I used alcohol as the magical conduit to fantasy and euphoria, and to the enhancement of the imagination.”

But in 1985, Styron’s body suddenly rejected alcohol, “which for so long had kept my demons at bay.” Deprived of this crutch, depression swooped in.

After months of emotional darkness, he said, he redrafted his will, penned a suicide note, and threw out a prized personal journal in preparation for killing himself.

But, he said, “I drew upon some last gleam of sanity,” and the next day checked himself into a hospital for treatment.