Selected Letters of William Styron (58 page)

In many ways I think it is easily your most paradoxical book; I am not being intentionally obscure in saying that. What I mean simply is that of all of your works none shows you more at your absolutely glittering best while at the same time reveals your flaws and excesses. First your glittering best, and I mean that: none of your books has displayed a finer hand at that old essential—pure narrative. It is, as you must be aware, an immensely long book, but there was not a moment when after laying it down (usually to take a shit) I was not ready to pounce upon it eagerly again. Your sense of pacing is uncanny, and in terms of simply narrative drive you are at the top of your form (Rose concurs with me in this, incidentally, and she has trouble being satisfied, orgasmically, with narrative; she read it straight through as I did with constant anticipation). Secondly, and just as importantly, your characters are totally compelling and believable, in many ways as fine as you’ve ever done: the book should stand alone upon the wonderful creation of Lucky herself. Despite the fact that I am acquainted with her prototype, she is nonetheless a really wonderful broad, a true woman, deliciously portrayed. Others too are great—Bonham especially. For me he is perfectly delineated: the lonely American Male, in capitals, wrapped up in his heroic and frustrated and impotent existence, seeking Manhood. A truly remarkable creation. Grant is perfectly real to
me too (although in certain areas not very sympathetic to me) as are the minor characters: Rene, the abominable Orloffski, Hunt, Ben, and Irma Unowho, and the wonderful little sideplay Jamaica niggers, perfectly anatomized. For some reason Carol didn’t, in her monstrousness, get through to me—I think only because she reminds me of my stepmother.

Another place where you are absolutely spectacular, of course, is in the underwater scenes. All of them are fantastically good, breathtaking, but for some reason the ones that stick out the most remarkably for me are the retrieval of the two niggers from the river (that panties bit was superb), the time when Ron gets caught in the net, and the time or memory when Bonham goes out and kills him that shark. They are gems in themselves, and recur still over and over in my mind.

Finally, you have pinned down beautifully the thing you told me you were after in the book: this terrible wrench and anguish men have, especially American men, over their
maleness
. I think you have dramatized it superbly, especially in the inter-relationship between Grant and Bonham (and to some extent later with Grointon, though there the heterosexual jealousy takes over); and God knows after that hectic, desperate, wonderfully described voyage to the Nelson Islands, the reader stands in perfect awe of your ability to smell out all the hideous little motivations and counter-motivations, sexual and otherwise, that make men into the kind of half-monsters that they are. In fact, I have an idea that
WIDOW-MAKER
might become the definitive work on the hell of masculine identity.

There is so much fine in the book that I hesitate to niggle about the lapses. I think for one thing (and I speak as a believer in spaciousness in the novel) that it is considerably too long—many too many maneuverings of people around hotel lobbies and bars and in and out of rooms and such, which could have been done in a line or two rather than the paragraphs you took; too much dogged palavering over, for instance, the details of the financing of the
Naiad
, and goings and comings of Sam Finer, and quite a few bar scenes that are repetitious and could have been left out entirely. And also many random paragraphs here and there which simply didn’t—to my mind—have to be there; repetition again. As I say, I believe in scope and length among the Novel’s chief virtues; but as your good friend and reader I think that if you apply ruthless and microscopic attention to eliminating
in the galleys as many superfluous details and scenes as you can (shrinking certain purely transitional paragraphs to a laconic sentence or two, for instance), you can reduce the book’s length by 200 pages and I passionately believe it will gain in force and intensity. At any rate, that is my humble opinion.

There are certain substantive things in the book which, because you saw them that way and because you may be right, I can’t ask you to tamper with but still bother me—fit matters for a personal discussion rather than a letter perhaps. Lucky is such an adorable creation, so filled with insight and sympathy and understanding, that I find it somewhat hard to believe that this sweetie, once she heard the truth from Ron about Ron’s past relations with Carol, would remain so bitter and antagonistic toward Ron, at least for
so long
. Perhaps for a night or a day, in a funk so to speak. But for a girl who has up until this moment been portrayed as such a paradigm of warmth and understanding to be so unremittingly resentful and intolerant is a little hard for me to accept. Just as I find it hard to accept (even within the framework of the dependency-type personality you have established Ron as having, with Carol before), or if not hard to accept then irritating, that Ron would be so insanely jealous over the
possibility
(not the fact) that Lucky stepped out on him with Grointon. My own reaction was, Well, so what? So he stuck it in her once, he won’t do it again. In the meantime the universe and the beautiful underwater world still exist. But all of this, as I say, is substantive and has to do less with the aesthetic of your book than with a particular moral hang-up which seems to posit absolute purity and decency on the one hand and absolute treachery and evil on the other, either one depending upon whether one has inserted a throbbing piece of flesh into a more or less throbbing orifice, or whether one hasn’t. My honest feeling was that Ron had gotten himself into such an insane state over this matter that, although I didn’t know for sure whether Lucky had fucked Grointon, I kind of wished she had.

But all of this does not diminish in the slightest my basic admiration for what you’ve achieved. Despite my reservations (which I expect you to reject anyway) I think you’ve produced a really prodigious work of the imagination, broadly intelligent, filled with uncanny insights about men and manliness (and also about women and screwing), and containing some of the best passages about the sea written since J. Conrad left Warsaw
to become a cabin boy.
^‡ee
I should think that these facts should fill you with some satisfaction and allow you to go to bed at night and tickle (Lucky’s) pussy with a sense of fine mission finely achieved.

I hope you will write me a post card when my book is finished. Love to all and give a stroke to Lucky for old Bill.

B.S.

T
O
C. V
ANN
W
OODWARD

October 26, 1966 Roxbury, CT

Dear Vann:

I think that “The Second Reconstruction” is just splendid, and I certainly don’t think that you need have any worries about either pedantic tendencies or gaucheries about the White Negro.
^‡ff
Indeed, your remarks about the hipness and chicness of Negro attitudes among hip white people are among the best I’ve ever read. It is in a sense, of course, a pessimistic essay, but I don’t think that you should be concerned that some new political pronouncement after the election is going to substantially alter the truth of your viewpoint. You have summed up beautifully the quality of the impasse, and of course the historical perspective you have brought to it gives it an enormous added authority. It is a powerful and disturbing piece and I have no criticism at all except the minor suggestion that you add to your list of defectors from the cause one of the most significant groups: I am thinking of the college kids for whom, according to Monday’s
N.Y. Times
, the civil rights movement is a dead turkey. I am simply thinking that perhaps somewhere in the second paragraph on p. 11 you could add a single short sentence adding the campus young people to the
groups who have joined in the “great stillness.” It is a truly fine piece, and the sooner it appears the better.

I also greatly enjoyed the adroit decapitation you did on Dwight Lowell Dumond
^‡gg
(do you think his middle name had anything to do with his self-righteous ardor?); the reference to Rousseau is perfectly apt.
^‡hh
Also, the observations on the Underground Railroad are fascinating. I’m going to get hold of that book if I can. I’m beginning to think that all of antebellum history was one big pipedream. Who knows, maybe even Garrison was the figment of someone’s imagination.

The November 29
^th
visit with Genovese sounds fine, and I’ve put it down on the book. Also, I’ve gotten a letter from J.M. Dabbs,
^‡ii
who would like to get together with you and me around November 7
^th
. I certainly am amenable to come to New Haven around that time so anything you set up with him will be O.K. with me. Will you let me know what you work out with him?

Yours, sadly, in the backlash,

Bill

T
O
J
AMES
J
ONES

October 28, 1966 New Milford, CT

Une jeune fille 3 kilos Love Bill and Rose.
^‡jj

T
O
R
OBERT
P
ENN
W
ARREN

November 11, 1966 Roxbury, CT

You must read the following message as a short story, without peeking at the ending. You will recall, first of all, the story I told you about my roommate at Davidson College, Charlie Capps, who went on to greater things and became the High Sheriff of Bolivar County, Miss. This story resembles that but exceeds it somehow, and makes me wonder if my youthful roommate background is not somehow strangely blessed, or cursed.

As you know, the other night on TV we witnessed one of the weirdest finales of any national election in recent history. Well around 7 PM—when by way of the new electronic marvels that announce the winners, accurately by God, 10 minutes after the polls close, on the basis of early returns, and make you feel that you are living in 1984—I turned on the set and by pure coincidence saw the smiling victorious face of one of my old roommates. (His face had been preceded by that of Lester Maddox, also smiling, winner of the disputed but probably sure governorship of Georgia.) I near about dropped off the davenport. Anyway, this roommate was my roommate at Duke for 8 months when we were in the Marine V-12 together. Really charming guy—a native of Montgomery who had been transferred to Duke from Emory. I shared a room with him and a Jewish boy from Memphis named Arthur Katz. We had a great time together, boozed it up a lot and went off whoring in Raleigh, and one time—together with a couple of girls from Wilmington, N.C.—had the nearest thing to an orgy I ever encountered. This fellow was bright and engaging, a good student, charming, generous, and I honestly missed him after we shipped out of Duke and went our separate ways in the Marines.

After I had become what they call a Writer, I began to get an occasional very nice letter from him, pleasant and congratulatory and in good tone. He obviously had moved ahead. He was in his mid-thirties (my age at the time) but was already the president of a Life Insurance company down south. He invited Rose and me to come and see him, implying without being ostentatious that he had a pretty good place to make us feel at home in. Then about three years ago I actually ran into him, in the lobby of the Hotel Savoy-Hilton in New York. Great hellos and hollers and all that. He was in NY on business, up from the South. We had several drinks together, terribly pleasant, and planned to hit the town together, as they say,
to recapture all the old times, but for one reason or another it fell through. Anyway, during the brief time I saw him I got the impression of an up-and-coming, very unstuffy rich young businessman from Down South that either of us would like to have adorn our living room. Literate without being bookish, all that, knew Warren, Faulkner, Styron, not the whole Canon but enough, all that bullshit.

The short story is coming to an end. The man’s name is Claude Kirk, Jr., and he has just been
elected
the
governor
of the
sovereign state of Florida
. I would say that his politics, such as they are (He ran like the rightist in Md. on the platform of “Every man’s home his castle,” and the
Times
reported him as winking at old ladies in parking lots during the campaign and promising $3 billion of state goodies on a $1.5 billion budget) is somewhere between Willie Stark and Lester Maddox. Actually, it occurs to me that he is the
new
Willie Stark, all Duke U. and Brooks & Warren and very much in and sophisticated, lit., etc., and several miles to the right of Mussolini. Some of the things he said in his campaign would curl the hair of a man inured to Vardaman and Maddox.
Not
because they were the words of a redneck, but precisely because they were so Duke U. and suave. Anyway, that’s the end of the short story. I think that before you return from France I will have taken me a little edifying trip to Tallahassee. An essay on Old Roommates.

Our new offspring is just beautiful, and Tommy is meaner than hell about her. On the first day after she was born, when his grandmother called up to ask what he wanted her to bring him, he said quite slowly and deliberately, “Some wire … and some … batteries … and some nails … and some heavy weights.” I really think he was building an electric chair for the baby in the cellar.
^‡kk

The book
marches
toward an end. We plan a spring (early spring) visit to the Alpes Maritimes.

Love to all the Warrens,

Bill         

PS: Not that I want to push my weight around about food but tell Eleanor that we have just finished a bushel of Chincoteague oysters.

T
O
R
OBERT
W
HITE

November 18, 1966
^‡ll
Roxbury, CT

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Postal Regulations Forbid Me Signing Anything But A Cryptic: W.S.