Selected Letters of William Styron (33 page)

I got a letter from Vance two or three weeks ago, asking me if I would read his novel.
^§v
I sent him back a note saying I would, but heard nothing after that. Has Vance gone coo-coo? I think your remarks about him were most apt—and also about Tina, who seems to wear better with time. I think Vance’s main trouble, which you described as “gloating over his petty triumphs,” is simply a sort of dreadful self-centeredness which severely restricts his outlooks and intercourse with others, and which might be mildly tolerable if he were at all talented, but which in his daze makes him only seem pompous and a bit ridiculous. I suppose he’s too old to be put wise.

I saw in the
Times
that “Naked” is being made into a movie.
^§w
I certainly hope it’s a good one, and I hope you’ll take me to the premiere so that I can wear my tux and ride in a Cadillac … also that “Rebel Without A Cause” was bought by Warners and is coming out next year? Rose and I were out at East Hampton in August and on the way back stopped in to see the Lindners at Peconic.
^§x
We had a fine time except for the presence of
a horrible person named Chandler Brossard, of whom Bob, so he says, is one of the three friends Chandler has left in the U.S.A.
^§y

Parts of
The Deer Park
still keep coming back to me. It’s amazing how
solid
a book it is, in the sense that its effect hangs on, even if you don’t particularly want it to. I think this is because there is in the book an unremitting determination to be truthful, and that beautifully distinguishes it from most of the novels which are coming out these days, the writers of which have become so bewilderingly entangled in the dishonesty and million-dollar-hokum of contemporary American life that they’ve lost their point of view entirely, so that their slickly cynical distortions are accepted as realism and truth. Most every form of expression in America is now keenly attuned to the second-rate, if not third-rate (Michener, Rodgers + Hammerstein, “Mr. Roberts,” “Teahouse of the August Moon,” “Battle Cry,” Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, etc.) and God Knows how we will find our way out of the wilderness.
^§z
Mediocrity which succeeds is the norm and, as Louis Kronenberger says, “personality” replaces “character.”
^§A
Let us hope that posterity, at least, will redeem us.

Rose and I are looking forward to your return in the cold New York autumn, and send our fondest to you and Adele. Please give my best to Lew Allen and our love to all the brave bulls. And also let us know when you expect to arrive.

As ever,

Bill      

The Styrons purchased their farmhouse and eleven acres in Roxbury, Connecticut, in October 1954
.

T
O
M
AC
H
YMAN

February 2, 1955 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mac:

Deep congratulations on coming through on siring a man-child. I knew you could do it if you worked at it long enough. This way you’ll be able to keep some of the wealth in the family, instead of seeing it go to some adventurer who one day will be cruising after the girls. Tell Gwen I’m right proud of her, too. As for Rose, the new recruit for the Young Communist League hasn’t yet arrived, but we expect it within 3 or 4 weeks. I hope it’s a girl, because I hear (whether rightly or wrongly) that they’re a lot less fuss and bother. Anyway, with a girl I won’t have to take her camping or teach her to build fires or any of that sort of rugged stuff.

I think I know what you mean about pulling up stakes and moving to new ground. Although we have a very fine place up here in Conn., it’s already making me uneasy, and I have a feeling that before too long the size of the place, and all the
possessions
that go along with it, will be giving me a pain in the ass. There’s a lot to be said about marital bliss, but there’s no doubt that it also clutters up life a lot. With all the worldly goods we seem to acquire every day I sometimes get the feeling of a man walking around in 30 lb diver’s shoes. But I guess that’s man’s fate on earth, and there’s not a hell of a lot that can be done, except possibly write about it and even that isn’t a big consolation.

I’m glad your oil well is still booming. Incidentally I know Ed Trzcinski, the
Stalag 17
man; I met him in Rome, a very nice guy, and I think he’ll do well by the play.
^§B
As for getting sort of fed up with all the post-publishing crap and talk that attends a successful book, I think that’s natural; there are a lot of bullshitters in the world and they can make life miserable. It is obviously better, though, to be in a position where these
things happen, than to have none at all, as is most often the case, and that, too, is a sizeable consolation. I think it will all pretty much fade away in your mind when you start on Opus #2 for if you are at all like me you will suffer such contortions on your second book as to make your first one seem like something that happened to someone else. Actually it’s been a solid year just getting started on my first chapter—thinking and moaning and suffering every day—and the only really joyful thing in my life within the past month or so is that finally I seem to have seen the light, the first chapter and the whole book are taking shape. Actually you may have no trouble at all, and if so you can consider yourself fortunate. But if you do have trouble I’d like to offer you the small contentment of knowing that there are others who have been in the same boat. God Knows, writing can be a pleasant and rewarding thing when it’s moving along well; but the business of first trying to figure out how to give order, shape, and movement to the things you want to say can be distilled hell.

Rose and I are moving back to N.Y. on Feb. 7
^th
for two months while she has a baby. We have a large apt. at
430 East 57 St
., where you can reach me after that date. I hope maybe you can make it up to the big city for a few days in February. If things are going well with Rose you’re certainly welcome to stay with us, and if I know Rose things will be going well with her. Our phone no. is
MUrrayhill 8-9299
, so give us a ring if you come up. We’ll have a party and I’ll fix you up with a nice hangover like the last one you had, plus maybe a hot number I know in the chorus line at the Copacabana (you think I’m kidding?).

Give my best to Blackburn when you see him and tell him I’ll write him at length when I get this maternity business in the groove.

All the best,

Bill      

Susanna Styron was born on February 25, 1955
.

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN

April 20, 1955 Roxbury, CT

Dear Doctor:

Now that I have given birth to a child (a girl child named Susanna), now that the gray, grimy winter’s lying-in in New York is over, now that I have moved 2½ tons of equipment out to the permanent home, now that spring has begun a tentative foray into my life, and now that I’ve made the first successful stab toward conquering a sort of incipient and dreary alcoholism into which for seven or eight months I was threatening to fall, now that my Presbyterian conscience has finally asserted itself and I have begun the attack on another masterpiece of 20
^th
Century prose—now that all these are out of the way, I feel that I can sit down and write you a rational sort of letter, along with tendering you my apologies for having been silent so long.

The girl child is quite handsome, I think, although she is so far completely inarticulate and has all of the moist habits of one so young. It could not have been an easier process for Rose, who went through her
accouchement
with the practiced grace of Mrs. Dionne. We are now all installed in our pseudo-farm in Roxbury, which is in real honest-to-God country about 2 hours from New York. I say pseudo, because my efforts along agricultural lines have so far been limited to the planting of a few early radishes and onions around our back door, but with spring in evidence it is a lovely place and we hope that someday before long you will see it. We have a sort of swimming-pool—this will be my damnation as a writer, but I don’t care, and about eight acres of untarnished woodland to trample in or on. Also a television set (it came with the house), a huge stone fire-place, and all sorts of other bourgeois comforts.

I had been told that the second novel often posed quite a problem, but I had no idea that it could actually lead one to toy with the idea of suicide. However, as I say, I’ve passed the hour of crisis with a hair’s breadth to spare, and am at least “embarked.” I honestly believe sometime that I should have concentrated on business administration at Duke. These are really ridiculous times for the writing of fiction. A fifth-rate entertainer on TV has more tangible and satisfactory rewards than a novelist. I know in a sense that sounds ridiculous (tell Mac when you see him that I’ll write him soon) but it’s more than half-way true. I suppose the only answer—without
wishing to sound pretentious—is to write with the idea that you’re writing for the generations unborn and not for Lewis Gannett.

Hiram, as you probably know, is now top banana at Random House and the difference between it and Bobbs-Merrill is like the difference between the Little Acorn and the Tour d’Argent. For one thing, Hiram has already persuaded Bennett Cerf to publish
LDID
in the paperback Modern Library, which is beginning to appear; for another, I have started to feel like an author, rather than someone who published a book.
^§C
I went to lunch a few weeks ago with Hiram and the
maître
himself, Mr. Faulkner of Oxford, and the conversation, while not exactly glittering, was worthwhile. Mr. Faulkner had one whiskey sour; he allowed as how he was glad to be going to the Ky. Derby under the auspices of Mr. Luce’s
Sports Illustrated
. They were sending him down in a chauffeured limousine, and since he had never ridden so far in a chauffeured limousine before, he thought that would be a right nice experience. As for Mr. Capote, his writing reminded Mr. Faulkner of a “big flea.” He didn’t elaborate. I got the impression that Mr. Faulkner had begun to like the New York whirl right well.

Rose and I both hope you will be up this way before too long. I suppose Connecticut country living is a cliché, but it’s also very pleasant. Anyway, as I say, this is real country and not the kind of suburbia that New Yorker dreams are built on. Say hello to Mac for me, and Brice, and let me know sometime how things are on the Durham scene.

As ever,

Bill

T
O
H
ENRY
M
ILLER
^§D

June 27, 1955 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mr. Miller,

I am very happy to be able to recommend Ravello to you. It is a spectacular place, a thousand feet almost straight up above Amalfi, with a broad and noble view of the sea and the adjoining peaks and hills. People who know have told me that in a way it is not too unlike your country around Monterey, except of course that it faces a much more tranquil body of water (though still very dramatic) and that it is not the
U.S.A
. but
Italy
. Anyway, my wife and I lived there for nearly eight months and thought it was great, and we are waiting for the day when we are able to go back there. From all the Ravello lore I have been able to store up I have noticed that some extremely sophisticated people have tended to criticize it as being too “stagy” in atmosphere, with too many vertical and upsetting plunges and slants—perhaps post-card-like, in the way that the Alps are—but this is a theory I never was able to appreciate. I simply think that it is one of the loveliest places a person could choose to be in.

Ischia I visited only for an hour or so, so I’m unable to say what it would be like for living. Positano I saw more of—it’s only half an hour or so from Ravello, down the shore drive—but I never cared for it at all. It’s right on the sea, which Ravello isn’t, but the beach itself is lousy and, more importantly, the town has become terribly
chic
and as far as I can see has attracted all sorts of boring riff-raff, American, Swedish, Italian, and otherwise. It would certainly be no warmer than Ravello in the Fall or Spring, and I think duller and not nearly so beautiful.

Since heat seems to be one of your first considerations, I’d advise against living in Ravello in the
dead of Winter
—January or February, say, or March. But from what I’ve been able to tell, almost any part of the Mediterranean is likely to be chilly at that time of the year, except for Sicily and maybe parts of the Riviera. My wife and I were in Ravello from April until late December, though, and although at the beginning and the end it got
a little brisk at times, there was no point where we were ever really uncomfortable. We lived in a villa which, like most of those in southern Italy, had no central heating. There are two or three hotels and
pensiones
, however, which are heated, and so I think that if you avoided the dead of winter you would be quite comfortable.

In terms of relative inexpensiveness Ravello is fine (at most ½ as expensive as France, I’d think). Our villa, which comprised two floors—a huge vaulted living room upstairs, also a large kitchen; downstairs, two comfortable bedrooms, modern bathroom, plenty of closet space—cost us $60 a month. During July and August the rent went up to $100, but since this was the vacation season it was understandable, and we were glad to pay it, in view of what we got away with the rest of the time. We also had a really excellent cook who doubled as maid and laundress, who worked eight to ten hours a day, and whom we paid $25 a
month
, and relatively without guilt, since most of her cohorts in town got a little more than half that amount.

Our
padrone
also runs the best hotel in town, and I’d like to give you his name and suggest that you write him, because he should be able to dig up for you (especially in the off-months of Fall and Spring) a really good place to live; at the very least, I think he would give you advantageous rates at his hotel (a first-class establishment) if you decided to live there for any length of time. He is a fine, tragic man, a Swiss-Italian who married an English woman and who has three fabulously beautiful children. I’m sure he’s the only hotel-keeper of Swiss blood whose heart still dominates his desire for a dollar. At any rate he’s an excellent, good man, and I suggest you write him. (In English) The name and address: PASQUALE VUILLEUMIER, HOTEL PALUMBO, RAVELLO (SALERNO), ITALY. Pasquale is also somewhat absent-minded, so that if you write him and he should fail to answer after reasonable time, let me know and I’ll jog him up.