Selected Letters of William Styron (40 page)

Are you going to make the New York run anytime soon? If so, let me know, so that we can get the great room squared away and lay in a few cases of Rheingold. I’ll tell you one thing: by now I am so sick and tired of writing that I get spots before my eyes everytime I sit down at a desk. Wouldn’t it have been great to have lived in those days when everyone sat around and talked about how exquisitely wonderful it was? So come on up and we’ll sit around and talk about—boats, maybe, and sex, and writing.

Best to Gwen + your family

Bill
      

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN

February 4, 1959
^‖u
Roxbury, CT

Dear Doctor

So belatedly that I fear I am past hope, I want to thank you for your fine Conrad book, which I read with enormous interest, and also to tell you that, despite my silence, I am still alive and kicking.
^‖v
I was sorry to learn from your last note that you had suffered an indisposition. I hope everything goes well now. But mainly I wanted to congratulate you on the Conrad; the letters are really worth having (he was one of the last who knew how to write them). Perhaps it is only because they are so good that kept me from writing you for so long! Even when he was talking about money (and money did seem to be on his brain) his letters are alive. I love that line: “Perhaps true literature is something like a disease which one feels in one’s bones, sinews, and joints.” And I love the letter to Blackwood about “Thackeray’s penny worth of mediocre fact,” followed by his creed—character living through action. It is a really valuable book, and I was delighted, incidentally, to see that it was accorded proper treatment in the
Times Book Review
.

I am staggering numbly and blindly through the last pages of my own mammoth economy-size novel. It will be the most blissful day of my life when it is finished. Then I will write nothing but short pieces—none of them any larger than a postage stamp. The newly-vamped
Esquire
, by the way, which has pretensions to something called quality, is going to run a longish excerpt from the first part of the book this coming June. The piece will, I fear, do very little to communicate the real quality of the book, but the reaction in itself is not too bad and I got $1,000 for it (I sound like Conrad), and perhaps there is an outside chance that it will whet one or two readers’ appetites for the book itself. We shall see.

I trust you are still planning on the big Duke jubilee in April, as I have
it on my calendar. Will I have to make any formal speech? I sincerely hope not, although I won’t balk at making a few introductory comments. I have for some reason never gotten over a kind of childish stage-fright. Perhaps a year or two of honest teaching would have cured that. At any rate, I am looking forward to Carolina in the spring. The climate up here is fit for muskrats and the birds.

All the best,

Bill      

T
O
R
UST
H
ILLS
^‖w

February 9, 1959 Roxbury, CT

P.P.S. One typo I’ve noticed (my fault): on page 38, line 18, please change the word “But” to “Bent.”

Dear Mr. Hills,

Naturally one never gets
everything
worked out right in a telephone conversation. Since talking to you today I have had these minor afterthoughts about MS. On page 106–107, regarding your query about the construction of Line 8, I have consulted Fowler and find that he views this sort of thing as one of those cases where you just have to throw up your hands and say O.K., technically it is not right but let it stand.
^*
So maybe we’d better let it stand. Another thing—pp. 114, 115—it is of course a good thing to throw out the references to the Kinsolvings, which you had marked. Please cut. Finally—p. 105—(and this is also something I wish to delete in the book MS) please change the name
S.J. Perelman
[note in margin: “P.S. besides, Gibbs is dead, so no problem for
Esquire
about invasion of privacy. Mainly, they’re sweet as she is, I have conceived of Rosemarie as one of those people who think of the
New Yorker
as a sophisticated Holy Bible, sweet as ‘it’ is.”] to
Wolcott Gibbs
. This is exceedingly minor,
meant only as a small swipe at
New Yorker
–worshippers, but I don’t in any way wish to malign Perelman, whom I admire, while I couldn’t care less about Gibbs.

Only one other thing, I gather from the fact that you’re going to run my photograph and so forth you will have at least some kind of explanatory text to run along with it. I don’t know whether you have any intention at all of using any kind of critical reference, but in case you do, I have one for you which I received the other day which pleased me immensely. (This is the author blowing his own horn.) It was from the London
Observer
of Feb. 1, and the critic was Philip Toynbee, who I gather is one of the best in the Old Country.
^‖x
At any rate, the quote was embedded in a review of Faulkner’s collected stories, in which he was discussing the fact that Faulkner was not only the first but “by far the best” of the “Southern school” of American writing. The quote is this: “William Styron’s
Lie Down in Darkness
is the only other novel of this school which seems to me to be on a comparable level of achievement.” Actually, I really don’t consider myself of the Southern school, whatever that is, but I think the comment was a handsome one, and I rather immodestly hand it on to you, and won’t feel in the slightest miffed if you don’t use it.

Many thanks for your excellent help and comment, and I hope we will all be mutually pleased by the June issue of
Esquire
.

Sincerely,

William Styron.

^*
Fowler’s pitch seems to be that in a case like this the phrase “or merely the struggles of the day” has sufficient “rhythmical weight” to override the more grammatical “he.” (If I flop as a writer, I can always get a job as a grammarian.)

T
O
J
AMES AND
G
LORIA
J
ONES

March 24, 1959 Roxbury, CT

Dear James and Moss:

In the past six weeks I have been scouring the
N.Y. Enquirer
and all the other gossip sheets, including Leonard Lyons,
^‖y
for news of you but found nothing, so I’ve decided to venture a communication in order that I may, perhaps, find out how you are first-hand. Your last letter was greatly enjoyed. The apartment sounds fabulous and you cannot know how much we envy you. Especially since we are at present concerned with such problems as: the spring running dry (this can cause a big stink in the house, but we finally got it fixed); Susanna filling up all the milk bottles, put out for collection, with jellybeans; the Plymouth V-8 station wagon catching a case of the clap, or whatever the hell else it is that causes it to use a quart of oil every 100 miles; the washing machine getting clogged with grease and running all over the kitchen floor; the maid sulky because we don’t call her “ma’am.” You people don’t really know how lucky you are. Also, you may be interested to know that the both of us, caught up in the grip of overpowering lust one winter night, got exceedingly careless, and we are going to have Scion #3 next August. I don’t know what possesses me to do such a thing; I am not a Catholic and it is certainly not (since I am secure in my virility) ego-gratification: it must be madness. Any way, I hope the two of you will for Christ sake get started along the same lines so I won’t feel like a complete fool about this thing. The worst thing, of course, is that it cuts out any hope of a trip to Europe
this
summer, you will just have to do the Portofino bit by your own selves, and we will curse you every minute. We are going to Martha’s Vineyard. Shit, do you really think He does care for us at all?

About your liver ailment: forget it. All French doctors, I found out when I was in Paris, think that my ailment is caused by, and any overindulgence is detrimental to,
le foie
. You must put fear out of your mind, and resume drinking right away. I really mean this. I know a guy who received the same edict from the doctors, and stopped drinking, and very shortly he died. I am quite serious, James; to be temperate in France is
moral and spiritual suicide, and never mind what Montaigne said in regard to wine.
^‖z
I know what I am talking about.

One of the things I wanted to tell you is that there is very shortly coming to Paris for the first time in his life a friend of mine, a writer named Edwin Gilbert and his wife, who live not far from here.
^‖A
You are probably chewing my ass out this very minute for the presumption, but I told him that if he sent you a
pneu
sometime you would be delighted to see him and show him all the fleshpots. For God sake don’t feel obliged on my account, but he’s a very nice guy and so is his wife, and I think you would like them, and I know they would be tickled to meet you and Moss. He wrote
Native Stone
and
Silver Spoon
, both big best sellers. His latest is called
The Hourglass
(Lippincott) and it should sell a million. Norman knows him well, too, incidentally.

Speaking of Norman, about whom you asked, I have not seen him since I saw you last, and still don’t much care to. He has moved back to New York—the Village, of course—and I hear very little about him. I am quite serious when I say that I think he has flipped his lid, or is gradually flipping it (there are a lot of other stories), and it is all very sad, but it is something I’d rather talk to you about than write about.

My own personal professional-type news is very scanty, except that I’m gradually edging up on the grand climax of my book, and am about to pee my pants with excitement over the fact that it might soon be finished, after four long years. It is about 825 typescript pages with maybe 100 more to go, which falls somewhat short of
War and Peace
, but it isn’t bad and I’m not really
that
competitive. The MS got into the hands of the people at
ESQUIRE
, from whence it came back sort of smeared with Coca-Cola stains and burgers, but for a
very stiff fee
they are going to run about 20,000 words of the book, starting in the June issue and featuring it and all (they took a very glamorous picture of me, impaled upon a Gramercy Park fence railing), so since I imagine it will be good publicity I am not
complaining.
^‖B
Did you read in
TIME
about Hiram Haydn starting his own publishing house? Much as I care for Hiram I guess I will have to stay at Random House, for this book at least.
^‖C
Anyway, without being cynical, it puts me in a good situation re Random House. I got a love letter from Bennett Cerf the other day, telling me he’d just die to have me stay, etc.
^‖D
So I got him over the old sawhorse. This is probably the bitchiest sort of talk, but I figure that if you work your ass off over a book it’s good to see the publishers scramble for you. There are few enough delights for a writer these days. N’est-ce pas?

I’ve heard some very fine things, incidentally, about
THE PISTOL
recently—nothing official, that is, but from various people I’ve run into. In other words, it’s being read, which is the main thing and all that counts. I hope you’re still staggering along somehow and keeping at it. I don’t know exactly why I say this but I think writing in general is very subtly enjoying some sort of renaissance and is due for a real breakthrough soon. I think people are just really fed up to the teeth with TV, Kirk Douglas, Norman Vincent Peale, and other such imposters, and are ready for the real scoop. I don’t mean tomorrow, but soon. It can’t be any other way, I
figure, else everybody will have to slit their throats—and I don’t mean just writers.

Now that we
have
started on this correspondence, send me a billet-doux sometime. Susanna, Polly, and Rose send their dearest best to both of you and ask me to tell you that they won’t be too upset if in the midst of Martha’s Vineyard I just fly over by myself and take a piss in the Seine from your balcony.

Ever yours,

Billy

T
O
G
EORGE
P
LIMPTON

May 11, 1959 Roxbury, CT

Dear George:

I hate to be a pain in the ass about this thing.
^‖E
Your own comments—and Peter’s—were most sensible and also very sympathetic. I don’t think I would be nearly so adamant about my position in this matter had it not been for Train’s puerile and pedantic and really quite insulting remarks.
^‖F
I was told by you and Peter not to take Train seriously. Yet on second thought, it comes to this: if he is not to be taken seriously in a matter like this he seems hardly in any position to be an editor of the magazine—a serious business, or so I’ve always thought.

So I must repeat: I am perfectly willing to make the one or two major changes you + Peter suggested but I must insist that I cannot let the piece be published if any of Train’s changes are heeded (with the one or two exceptions, the grammatical errors listed below). I am sorry to have to put it that way, but if you want the piece you will either have to want it as I substantially wrote it, or get Train to write it for you. To my mind Train is and always has been an arrogant and supercilious little prick—but I’ve told you that before. If I felt that except in one or two minor points Train was right about this piece I would have the grace to admit it. But in every
basic criticism he is simply wrong. Therefore, I hope you see my position in the matter.

… If you’ve got any questions about this please give me a ring and I’ll be glad to iron out any details. I’ll be coming in town no doubt in a week or two and hope to see you. Meanwhile, watch the burbling.