Selected Letters of William Styron (24 page)

August 16, 1952 Saints-Girons, France

Dear George—

A card from the Provence, a little south of Toulouse, where Doc, Moose & I are spending the night en route from St. Tropez to St. Jean de Luz.
^‡l
Fine time on the Côte d’Azur, where I fell in love with a 15-year-old girl, alas but am looking forward to more sun + water on the Atlantic. Expect I’ll be back in Paris around next weekend, so stand by for a blowout at Le Chaplain. —Bill

T
O
H
IRAM
H
AYDN

September 7, 1952 Paris, France

Dear Hiram,

I got your letter and thank you for your detailed comments and advice. Day before yesterday I got a letter from Elizabeth, who told me about all the confusion the story seems to have caused. Being so far away, and not having gotten your letter yet, I was not sure what the confusion was about, and so wrote her a hasty and what might have seemed a peevish note, telling her to take it easy, but now I’m more in the clear as to what is going on.

I will follow your letter point by point and try to give you my ideas on the various matters. First I should like to say that I’m of course very glad that you, John and Louis like the MS. I could feel blessed by no better approval. I also feel that I am aware of the various shortcomings of the MS which you mentioned. As a result, I think I would most certainly be willing to try to clarify certain things (the “slightly unsatisfied feeling” the reader might have at the end, for instance); although I’m not sure that I know how to go about making such changes, or whether I’d be successful if I tried. My approach to my own writing is such that when I’ve finished
something I feel that I’ve literally finished, and that in spite of excellent criticism (and warranted criticism) I hardly feel up to changing it all around again. This might be laziness—I don’t think I really have a bull-headed, proprietary sense which says “this is perfect and not a word will be changed”—but I think that it would be nearer the truth to say that my execution so closely coincides with my conception that afterwards, when it’s all over, I just sort of feel that any major tinkering will … [Incomplete letter.]

T
O
L
OUIS
D. R
UBIN
, J
R
.

September 8, 1952 Paris, France

Dear Louis Rubin:

I’m glad to hear that you’re at work on a novel. I can both sympathize and wish you the best of success with it. I’m also happy to learn that Bob Hazel has had his work accepted by World, which someone had already informed me.
^‡m

As for doing the reviews you mentioned, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline, and my reasons are two. The first is that I’ve tried reviewing and I’m simply no good at it. I get terribly wordy and rather emotional. The second, and more important, reason is that I’m somehow rather averse to criticizing my contemporaries. Not that they don’t need criticizing, some of them, but I’m afraid that for a writer to start talking in print about another writer, a contemporary, is in a way sort of sticking his neck out. I write something nasty about Shelby Foote,
^‡n
then he writes something nasty about me, and first thing you know we’ve become squabbling critics rather than writers of books. I hope you understand my position, because if I did undertake to write reviews there would be no journal I’d rather write for than the
Hopkins
.

Paris has been very pleasant, and I’ve even managed to get some work done, but soon I’m off to Rome. Hope all goes well with you and the
Review
, in
spite
of J. Donald Adams.
^‡o

Sincerely

Wm Styron

T
O
D
OROTHY
P
ARKER

September 8, 1952 Paris, France

Darlingest Didi,

Right now it’s cold and rainy in Paris, and I miss you and I love you. I’ve put off writing you for this long because of your rather enigmatic letter about that which “I ought to have done years ago” and “I can’t gather my strength from outside myself,” and so I’ve rather imagined that you would just as soon not get any letters from me for a while. Is that right? If so, I understand perfectly, but at the same time I did want to write you this and tell you that I understand. I hope it doesn’t disturb you, because if there’s anyone on earth I don’t want disturbed or discomfited, and want to be happy, it’s you, my darling. And if you don’t write me for a while, I understand, too, but please, baby, make all this quick, for I yearn for the sound of your voice, no matter if it’s in ink and second-hand.

As for me, I’m back in Paris once more after a long and for the most part delightful
voyage
to the ends of France. I sent the long story off from St. Tropez, hoping that it would get into the first issue of
Discovery
, but it got such close and lengthy examination by E. McKee and Hiram that I’m afraid it’s going to end up in the
Rocky Mountain Review
, if that. Perhaps by the time you get this something will have been done about it. I hope so. At any rate, St. Tropez was marvelous, with the sea deliciously just like you described your own sea off Long Island, with wine, and with
women
. It wasn’t love but at least I got my ashes hauled, as they say. Incidentally, some day I’d like to write you a long pornographic letter describing my fantasies about making love to you, which I have 10 times a day, but that
would no doubt disturb the rather delicate equilibrium you’re in at the moment, I guess.

Anyway, from St. Tropez we drove to St. Jean de Luz on the Atlantic where, with the Matthiessens and with Irwin Shaw, I weathered, with the help of a pile of martinis, four or five days of absolutely foul weather. Finally it cleared up and we did a lot of fine surf-swimming at Biarritz, went to a bull-fight in Bayonne with Art Buchwald of the
Herald-Tribune
, who wrote a very funny piece on it afterwards, and then—last week—came back to Paris, finding all much the same, but lamenting the fact that you hadn’t been along to be with on the sand.
^‡p
I love you.

I’m making now slow preparations to go to Rome but they seem to be hindered almost impossibly by the continuing night life here in the City of Light. What I like to call the Elsa Maxwell circuit holds me in thrall.
^‡q
Last night I went to a birthday dinner for Sammy Goldwyn, Jr., given by his father at a sordid little Nedick’s-type dive called Joseph’s where the entrees alone usually run to about $7. I had
coq au vin
,
crêpes suzettes
,
champagne
, and Mrs. William Paley, on my left, who is a tasty dish herself but not nearly so good as the
coq
.
^‡r
Darryl Zanuck was across from me and we had a fierce and regrettable fight over Chambers’s
Witness
, which I’ve just finished reading and consider one of the vilest, most unwholesome documents I’ve ever read.
^‡s
Zanuck is apparently a mile to the right of Msgr. Sheen, and so the discussion, especially since I was loaded to the ears with martinis, was a bit heated.
^‡t
I also somehow alienated Goldwyn, Sr., by saying Ike was a platitudinous ass and learned that Goldwyn is
head of the Ike-for-Emperor movement in California. I’ll never get into the pictures that way.

You must read
Witness
, if you haven’t already; it’s an obscene, infuriating book but engrossing, perhaps, because of this—in the same way that a lot of revolting things are fascinating. Someday I’d love to be able to do a
J’Accuse
against Chambers, in the same way Zola did against the French government in the Dreyfus case. The more you read the book the more you become convinced that Hiss, though probably guilty, was nonetheless the dupe of one of the most frightfully, psychotically vengeful men in history.

I must close now, dearest. I hope things are going well with you, and that you do find within yourself the courage you need. But always remember that I’m ready to give you more courage if you need it and that I love you, always more than anything on earth.

Your

Bill

J
OHN
P. M
ARQUAND
, J
R
.
^‡u

September 17, 1952 Paris, France

Dear old Jack,

“Skinhead,” which is what Cass calls his old man, was over here the other day on some sort of crazy joy-ride with T.K. Finletter, and he told me about your receiving 25 G’s from the
Post
for “The Second Happiest Day.”
^‡v
I wanted to hurry to be the 500
^th
person to congratulate you so here it is—congratulations
mille fois
. It really was great news; with that dough you’ll be able to organize a rival boot camp in competition with old Jim
Jones, only far better furnished and with all of the trappings of elegant depravity. At least you and no doubt Miss Bailey will be able to swing a trip to Europe; why don’t you come over?
^‡w
Incidentally and of even more importance, to me, than the dough, I’m very interested in seeing the book when it comes out. Do you think you could manage to send me a set of proofs, or at least an advance copy? Everyone here who’s seen it—Cass Canfield
père
and
fils
, among others—have great things to say about it, and so I think the least favor you could do for an old buddy is to see that I get a first look.

Furthermore, I want to thank you, shamefully and very belatedly, for the fine letter you wrote me this summer. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it then and how the impression of it still lingers. After all the postal abuse I got (and still get every now and then) from illiterate morons in places like Modesto, Calif., complaining about my degeneracy, I can tell you that a letter like yours was a great thing and I’m not shitting you when I say that I’ll treasure it.

Life in Paris has been fine but has become monotonously the same during the past few weeks and I’m looking forward to Rome toward the end of the month. Cass and I have gotten drunk with a rather dangerous regularity recently, and the new vogue, originated by Cass, has become a sort of blackface toward the end of the evening, whereby with the aid of a burnt piece of cork everyone is transformed into Groucho Marx, glasses are thrown into the street, and Franco-American relations become utterly dissolved. On my part I think this footlessness arises from the fact that for the past month or so I did no work. I had a fine trip to St. Tropez and then to St. Jean de Luz (which Michael no doubt told you about) but with nothing to do now in Paris, and no project to concentrate on, the place has become something of a drag. I hope to get busy in Rome. I wrote a 22,000 word story this summer which apparently now is in the first mitts of John W. Aldridge for consideration for
Discovery
, but I have a lingering hope that somehow it’ll turn up in
Harper’s
, in spite of its great length. Oh well—hell, the literary life is sure a pain in the ass, isn’t it? I’m of the opinion
that if you have an agent, as I do, you’re lucky if your stuff gets into
Women’s Wear Daily
.

Look, old Jack, do try and get over here this fall or winter. I can assure you from experience that there are happier things than being in New York when your book is published. After October 1
^st
I’ll be at the Accademia Americana, Porto San Pancrazio Rome, so drop me a line then if not before. Tell Appleton to keep his elbow straight and give him and all the boys in the back room at
Harper’s
, including Mike and Jack Fischer, my best and love to M. Bailey.

All the best, Bill

T
O
E
LIZABETH
M
C
K
EE

September 25, 1952 Paris, France

Dear Lizzie,

Thanks for the cable and for the letter about the story, which I received today. I was happy to hear that
Discovery
took the story and that they liked it; no, $725 doesn’t seem too small at all—outside of
LDID
it’s the first thing I’ve ever written which I got paid for, and $725 seems good for that kind of starter.

There are two small but important items I want to mention here. First is the title of the story. On reflection, the title “Like Prisoners Walking” seems a bit flowery—a couple of other people here who read the story are of the same opinion. Instead, I think something like
THE LONG MARCH
is more direct and apropos, so I wish you would get in touch with Vance or Aldridge or whoever has the MS and tell them I want the title changed to
THE LONG MARCH
. I hope it’s not too late to make the change. Secondly, on reading over my handwritten MS I noticed a misusage of a word. This occurs on what must be the third or fourth page of the typewritten copy and it’s in the passage where I describe Culver’s home-life in New York. I had written “a cat which he deigned to call by name.” This is the wrong usage of “deign”; and implies that Culver condescended to call the cat by name. What I meant was that Culver wouldn’t call the cat by name and so the phrase should read “a cat which he did not deign to call by name.” I wish you’d have this changed in the MS. Incidentally
will I get galley proofs of the story to check over before publication? I hope so because though I don’t think I’m especially prissy about my stuff, I like to be on the lookout for those important mistakes which occur in even the best-edited copy.

Now, as for the contract, that sounds fine with me. However, I’ve already promised my friend Annie Brierre, who wrote the enclosed interview, first crack at the story for possible publication in the weekly magazine she works for—
Les Nouvelles Littéraires
—and told her that I would arrange to have a copy of
Discovery
sent to her when it comes out. So that’s all taken care of. By the way, there’s a lotta garbled stuff in that interview (I didn’t tell her I was in Korea for seven months, or even one month), but you know the French and their flair for drama.