Selected Letters of William Styron (39 page)

June 1, 1958 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mama Peyton,

Many thanks for your sweet letter. I don’t really know how that article happened. There was a girl named Betty Tyler who called me up from Bridgeport. She used to work on the
Richmond T.D
., and now works in the Bridgeport paper. Anyway, she heard I lived in Roxbury, and so she came up and did an interview with me for Bridgeport and, since she still had Richmond connections, she sent the same article down there to Va. It really wasn’t too bad an article, actually, but I wish she’d left out the part of it which said I got drunk on weekends. Well, the fact of the matter is I
do
get drunk on weekends, but it’s not the sort of thing you go around publishing in the newspapers. I only wish old Tommy and old Charlie were around more often so I could get drunk (mildly drunk, that is) with them. I certainly do miss those boys, just as I miss all the sweet old Peytons. Many times in the past few years I have thought about the wonderful times we used to have in Crozet, and the wonderful eating—quail and stuffed lettuce, and one Thanksgiving dinner I still recall as the best meal I ever had—and I long for the time to come when we can all get together again.

Styanna knows all her letters and numbers and is mean as hell, but we sure like having her around. Polly is extremely young, as you know, and we are not on speaking terms yet; however, I don’t think it will be too long before she starts taking over the house like Suzanna did.

If you can send me Satan’s address, please do, or better yet tell him to
write me. I have heard through the grapevine that he is going great guns in Charleston and I have no doubt that he will be running the company before very long. I would dearly love to see him again. He is the best old friend I ever had.

In the meantime, Rose, Styanna, Polly and I are having a good time in our Connecticut retreat. I hope to have this novel finished by the end of the year—at which point we plan to cruise down to Virginia and maybe we can all have a reunion. I will sleep until noon, Satan can go out and shoot some birds, and we will sing songs
en masse
after dinner.

Give my best to old man Tom Peyton, and tell him I am surviving, God knows how, in Yankeeland. I must be charmed.

Love to everyone,

Sty.

T
O
E
LIZABETH
M
C
K
EE

August 8, 1958
^‖l
75 Main Street, Nantucket, MA

Dear Elizabeth:

Everything up here is dandy, except for occasional fog and airplane crackups that disturb the even tenor of our days. Rose + Susanna are sundrenched and flourishing and they send their love to you all.

While on the Vineyard I saw a lot of Lillian Hellman and she wants me to write a play for her production company, Devon Productions.
^‖m
She is ready to give me an advance + contract. I told her I’d be delighted to give it a try, but of course I had to finish the novel first. She understood that, of course, and asked me to ask you to get in touch with her partner so that you could talk over terms and so forth. Will you do this? I think he is expecting your call. His name is Lester Ostermen, Devon Prod., 55 W. 54
^th
St., Judson 6-5570.

Will be back around Labor Day, sound and brown, I hope. Take care of Roxbury.

XXX
Bill

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

October 24, 1958 Roxbury, CT

Dear Louis:

It seems to me that not too long ago I wrote you an extremely ill-tempered letter telling you why I despised all the critic swine and so forth and that you wrote me a much more well-tempered letter back, pointing out how my spleen was misdirected and it all made pretty good sense to me—so much so that only a sense of embarrassment at having gone off half-cocked must have prevented me from writing back right away. I still hate the critic swine—and you know the type I mean—but maybe now with a little more sympathy, at least understanding; that was a fine letter, and I’m glad you pointed out a few things to me about which I was rather pig-headed and blind. Anyway, we got your letter and are both very happy that your Robert is flourishing and has a big mouth. As an old hand at this racket, bub, let me tell you that the first 3 months are the EASIEST, then it gets worse—everything gets worse before it gets better—and that there are moments in the mid-watches of the night when a razor or the oven look mighty enticing, I’ll tell you; then all of a sudden, around the time that they are almost grown-up, they start to behave and act human, then you can knock the shit out of them. Tell Eva she’s got a lot to look forward to.

The other thing I was interested to hear was about the Hispano-Virginia don, Señor Salamanca, who has apparently done the commonwealth up brown.
^‖n
Since my own new book will probably exceed even his in length, or grossness, I can only applaud his good American stick-to-itiveness, I think it’s called. But, man, that dialogue. I’ll lay you even money right
now that MGM has bought it for a juicy sum. People like Salamanca always have it made.… Speaking of which, I don’t know whether you saw it or even heard about it, but “The Long March” was on TV recently—a total disaster from beginning to end, with my tragic little tale being turned into a paean to the Marine Corps, the lead actor dead drunk, gumming his lines, everything appallingly grim and tasteless for 1-½ hours.
^‖o
Well, I more than expected this even before it happened, happily collected my CBS loot, and really couldn’t have cared less how it turned out. But let me tell you a small but sad sequel to the whole thing. Just yesterday comes this letter from the headmaster of Christchurch School, my old alma mater, telling me that it was so fine and dramatic, that program, and how he sat breathless watching it, and all the boys thought it was just the greatest thing ever, and finally how
happy
he was that I’d really made the big time and from now on out Christchurch had its EYES ON ME. Well, I could have almost wept, thinking of this Bright Young Educator down there on the Rappahannock—entrusted with the guidance of 125 nubile young boys—who, if I wrote twelve masterpieces to equal Tolstoy wouldn’t bat an eye or give me the time of day but who, having seen a cheap piece of quackery on TV which is a travesty of the original, comes all over himself telling me how great I am. Do you want to know what I did? I sent him a large check (CBS money) and a pompous letter telling him to buy some books for the library, if they still had one, and letting him know that I had no fear for American education as long as the likes of him were in the saddle.

Well, maybe the written word is dying, I don’t know. Anyway, remembering my mean letter to you about the critics, I reflected that the critics were still probably not the writer’s friend, but that here was the REAL enemy—young headmasters, young so-called educated people, teachers, frauds and cretins everywhere who are
supposed
to know,
supposed
to be educators, leaders, but who really have no more concept of culture or history or of the humanities than some country sheriff’s poor harelip daughter. You don’t expect the clods or illiterates to dig you or even care; it’s when people like my headmaster buddy cheer you for the wrong thing that you begin to think that you’re living in a vacuum, or a madhouse.

Well, to hell with it. I’m very glad to hear that your novel is coming along. Curious, although practically all of my book is set in Italy, the framework which supplies the story and the flashbacks is all laid in Charleston, S.C. Which makes it difficult, since my knowledge of Charleston is limited to about three visits of 24 hours each. However, I have solved the problem by having the two major characters—who are trying mutually to recollect what went on in Italy—sit fishing in a skiff in the Ashley river, from which they never move. Describing rivers is easy. However, I know nothing about Charleston fish so I wrote to the Chamber of Commerce and they sent me a flashy pamphlet which set me straight—spot, croakers, and channel bass.

Rose and I don’t know yet where we’re going to be between Christmas and New Year’s—it will be either here or Baltimore—but I hope we can get together during that time. If it’s Balto. maybe you can stop by on your way up to or down from N.Y.; if here, I should think surely we could get together somehow, either in N.Y., or perhaps we could entice you up to the country. Our vines have tender grapes, the children raise hell, but we call it home. We would like to see you.

Give Eva our best. As Kerouac says: “Like I mean, you gotta swing with it.”

Yours,

Bill

PS I was re-reading
The Web and the Rock
the other day (part of it) and it becomes more and more apparent that this was the most tragic writer as Writer who ever lived.
^‖p
Such power and majesty he has still, for me, such a torrent of pure grandeur, and, in the end, such godawful CRAP.

T
O
J
AMES AND
G
LORIA
J
ONES

January 20, 1959 Roxbury, CT

(You must understand I have not placed these items in any particular order. Actually I would put you above Mikoyan, though several cuts above Herbert Hoover.)
^‖q

Dear Jim and Gloria:

Rose + I figured that, though you must undoubtedly subscribe to the
Enquirer
, you probably don’t get the Air Mail edition, so I am rushing these clips off to you tout de suite, so that you may know that you are still keeping the best of company. I have written to J.J. Miller, who of course runs the whole show, telling him your correct address (if it isn’t, you won’t get this), and I hope you will appreciate that fact. Incidentally, Gloria, when you really get pissed-off with Jim you can come live with Rose + me.

We’ve read a lot of the reviews of
The Pistol
, and are very pleased that it seems to be getting more judicious treatment than
Running
.
^‖r
Most of the ones I’ve seen have treated it with the greatest respect, which it very much deserves. It is, as I think I told you several thousand years ago (when was it, last March?), quite a wonderful job, and I’m glad that the critics are at least basically acknowledging that fact. Why we give a God damn what the reviewers think is something which, in the long run, escapes me, but we do, even though they’re all practically scoundrels and nitwits. Anyway, to repeat, I’m happy that
The Pistol
is receiving (at least partially) its just measure.

We enjoyed your various postcards from exotic shores and envied you both until we were each the color of pea soup. Cannes! The Italian Riviera! Paris! To hell with both of you. As I write the temperature outside is 18° and our monstrous dog, Tugwell, has just vomited all over the living-room
rug. Do you call this living? We wish we could join you at the Lapérouse, but unfortunately we can’t, until I finish this novel, which I’m still writing on, as I was last March, and which I expect to be doing until I’m a dreary old man, scrofulous, incontinent, and a ward of the State.
^‖s
Actually, I hoped and prayed that I’d have it all done by now, but the deeper I get into it the more horribly complex and endless it seems to get. Though I’m being somewhat melodramatic, really. If I keep a steady hand I should have it all done in a matter of a few months. The trouble is keeping that steady hand. Though sometimes I tell myself that I know it’s a fine book, most of the time it seems a big gross idiotic pain in the ass. In the meantime, time skips by and I develop a big fat gut and everybody seems to be looking at television.

Speaking of which,
The Long March
was on television last fall (
Playhouse 90
) and it was turned into an absolutely incredibly delicate abortion
^‖t
: Jack (“Mannie”) Carson drunk, blowing his lines, Sterling Hayden as the Colonel striving valiantly with lines no one, least of all me, could conceive of, a chorus line of cuties, Inez and Pearl and Roberta, a lot of dames I never heard of, a triumphant mountain climb at the end, the Marine Corps supreme, beautiful, inviolate, etc. Thank God you’re in France.

If you have time to send a
letter
, do so; otherwise, don’t send these terrible, glittering, sexy, seductive, abominable postcards with angle shots of sun and sea and European poontang which makes me wish you’d drop dead. But in spite of all my gloom, there’s a fairly good chance that we’ll make it to Europe by summer. We want to go back to Ravello and if we go we plan to ease through Paris and give you a hard time as a couple of visiting firemen.

The children are fine. Polly is an incredible production, fat as a pig and with an ingratiating moronic grin; Susanna stuck a safety pin (closed, thank God) up her vagina, but we got it out O.K., and where she goes from here is anybody’s guess. They send their love, as does Rose, and I too—

Truly yours always

Billy

T
O
M
AC
H
YMAN

February 4, 1959 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mac:

This is just a short note to tell you that though I was extremely tempted by your invitation to go to Castro-land, I have had recently a lot of second thoughts. Man, they shoot you down there! Anyway, as soon as I finish up this economy-sized novel of mine, maybe we can join forces, you and I, and go to some nice civilized place like the Belgian Congo (they’re having just a small revolution there) and shoot crocodiles and sip up a few rum Collinses.

I thoroughly enjoyed your boat piece in
Esquire
. It was really funny all the way through and, having had one nautical experience with you anyway, that only made it that much better. Speaking of
Esquire
, they are running a longish hunk of my novel next June, so you might take a look at it, though I have more than a few qualms about pre-publication of parts of novels: I mean, taken out of context, the stuff often just doesn’t make too much sense. Anyway, they don’t pay too badly (though not too good, either) so what the hell: I figure you can’t really lose.