John Williams
Nothing But the Night by John Williams depicts a day in the life of Arthur Maxley, a young man psychologically tormented by a traumatic event that happened in his childhood. The nature of the trauma is not revealed until the end of the novel.
Arthur had been advised to forget the memory of this traumatic event but his fragmentary recollections constantly intrude, paralyzing his thoughts and actions. He has abdicated all sense of agency, drifting aimlessly throughout a day punctuated with frequent hallucinations of his mother in a white gown, portraying her as some sort of hovering angel. He is self-obsessed, morbid, and confused. He meets and argues with a friend. His dinner with his estranged father is fraught with tension. And his encounter with a young woman in a club ends his day in violence.
This is Williams’ debut novel, and it shows. Unlike his brilliant subsequent novels, Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus, it lacks the subtlety and poignant silences that spoke volumes in the later novels. Nothing But the Night is unrestrained, histrionic, melodramatic, and highly-strung. But it contains flashes of the writer Williams was to become, so it is probably worth reading for that reason alone.