SOURCE: "Signs of a Shift: The Long March," in The Novels of William Styron: From Harmony to History, Louisiana State University Press, 1995, pp. 45-67.
In this excerpt, Cologne-Brookes sees in The Long March signs of a change in Styron's emphases, from his earlier view that literature is a way to achieve harmony in a chaotic world to his later conviction that art is necessarily part of a dialogue with sociohistorical matters.