Selected Letters of William Styron (81 page)

Love

Porter

T
O
M
IA
F
ARROW

February 21, 1986 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mia:

I’ve been out on the street for a while and am feeling very good once more. I will miss your cheery voice on the telephone, which was one of the few tolerable features of my detention. Except for the superb hospital cuisine (crabmeat au gratin, broiled snapper en papillote) it is one feature I will miss very much. You were a dear to think of me. My head and soul have been put back into working order—perhaps better than before, for whatever
that’s
worth—and I divide my time between work and the new indoor-outdoor jacuzzi, very Finnish in this brisk weather. Come over sometime and try it out. You were wonderful in
Hannah
, which is the first movie I saw after I was sprung. I hope I see you before too long, not just the great sound of your voice wishing me well.

Love

Bill

T
O
P
HILIP
C
APUTO

April 5, 1986 Roxbury, CT

Dear Phil:

I tried to call you recently but discovered that the number you gave me in your letter had been “changed to an unpublished number.” I appreciate very much your letter of March 10, its encouragement and good will and faith. I went through an extremely grim period between early December and early February but I’m happy to say that I’ve pulled out of it nicely and am in the process of finishing the job of putting myself back together. Depression is a horrible and mysterious malady; the only good thing to be said about my form of the illness is that such depressions almost always resolve themselves for the better, even after forcing one to the very edge of the abyss.

I’m sorry about the fate—at least up until now—of your truly excellent article. There is a great deal of truth to the fact that I’ve abandoned the book I told you about; however, it’s really not so much abandonment as
extreme alteration. It’s much too complicated to go into here but the gist of what I want to say is that I’ve completely reconstructed the novel—to a degree that would make what I told you quite erroneous—although I fully intend to retain the section that was in
Esquire
. Naturally I’d like to see the article published—in
Esquire
or elsewhere—and naturally, too, it would require a certain amount of rewriting in view of my change of plans for the book. But in case you still want to do the piece, and I gather you do, I’d be glad to talk to you about the changes that would be necessary to make. Maybe you’d want to discuss this by phone, if so, please call me here in Roxbury, where I’ll be until early June.

Let me say again how grateful I am to you for your letter. Corny as it may appear, it seems that only a marine can be truly aware of another marine’s suffering; you gave me a nice jolt of good cheer. Thanks from the depths, I’m pleased and proud of your friendship. Do write or call.

Yours ever

Bill S.

T
O
D
ONALD
H
ARINGTON

April 13, 1986 Morne Trulah, St. Lucia

Dear Don: I am writing this from the isle of St. Lucia, a beautiful, rather less well-known speck, 40 miles long, about halfway down the Antillean chain, just south of Martinique. I’ve been to these islands many times but this is my first visit to St. Lucia, and the weather is perfect this time of the year. I’m leaving in a few days so I’ll probably mail this from New York.

Part of my visit has been recuperation. Your letter (along with your address) passed away from me last summer, disappearing as my life almost did, and that is why I never answered your kind words about the piece in
Esquire
.
^*ooo
I didn’t quite realize it at the time but I was being swallowed up in a fearsome mental illness known as depression—“the black dog,” as Churchill called the relatively mild version that seized him from time to time. Mine progressed very slowly albeit inexorably through summer and
fall until in mid-December I was hospitalized at Yale–New Haven with about as serious a form of the malady as it’s possible to get. I was there for nearly seven weeks.

I’m happy to report that I’m close to fully recovered. Depression in fortunate cases (the majority, really) seems to be self-limiting and runs its course until the victim comes out the other end of his nightmare more or less intact. In the meantime, however, it’s Auschwitz time in the heart of the soul—a form of madness I wouldn’t wish upon a literary critic. They give you drugs and a rather innocuous and simple-minded type of psychotherapy, but the real curative is rest and time. Depression—aside from crushing any joy whatever—destroys the health by destroying sleep, appetite, libido and all the other things that make life worth living. It’s a long way back but (and I hope it doesn’t sound trite) one is somehow made stronger by the crucible of the experience. I’ve begun writing again during the past four weeks (depression also wrecks the intellect, for a long time I was incapable of reading a daily newspaper) and feel very close to normal. Hallelujah, I say every morning now, because for many mornings last winter, I didn’t think I’d last the day.

I would be very pleased indeed to read your lost cities of Arkansas book and also let you know my reaction.
^*ppp
Do send a copy of the galleys to Roxbury, where I’ll be in a few days. It sounds like just the kind of book I’d love to sink my teeth into, and you’ll certainly get my response which I’m virtually certain will be positive knowing your feeling about Arkansas and the depth of your empathy.

If I’m lucky and can husband my new-found strength, I’ll finish that Marine Corps book within a couple of years and ask you for
your
blessings on it, along with that of Jesus.

Yours,

Bill

T
O
P
HILIP
C
APUTO

July 4, 1986 Vineyard Haven, MA

Dear Phil:

Life down there with all that fishing seems so idyllic that I’ve got half a mind to chuck this Vineyard scene and come to Key West. But I do imagine that the heat is a little intimidating at the moment, so if I do take you up on your suggestion and come, I’ll doubtless do it in the fall. Anyway, it was good to hear from you. The Statue of Liberty event which I’ve been following on TV seems such a gross piece of commercialism that it makes one lose the vestiges of one’s patriotism. A wonderful Alabama lady,
^*qqq
age 84, who lives up here in the summer quite rightly and indignantly asked why the TV coverage of the Liberty show couldn’t have been government sponsored, with no beer commercials. The gov’t, she also said rightly, should have paid for the restoration of the statue instead of having Lee Iacocca hustle the project. It would have cost the taxpayers ¼ the cost of a ballistic missile.

All my depression has disappeared, even the vagrant shadows that were hanging around when I saw you, and I’m well into a revised version of the book along the lines I spoke to you about. I feel good about the new version, and work is slow as usual, but fairly steady.

I’m pleased that you and
Esquire
are pleased about the article.
^*rrr
I’ve reread the Xerox of the piece which you sent me and I’m sure your revisions will fit in well. In the draft that I’ve read I only have two or three small items that I’m concerned about and which, as a favor, I wish you’d eliminate in the final version. I think when I was getting deep into my illness I may have mentioned them to you but much of that time is fuzzy to me so at risk of repetition I’ll mention them again. On p. 26 there is my criticism of William Gass which I wish you’d get rid of.
^*sss
I do feel that way but I honestly don’t think there’s any need to alienate a fellow writer in print. Also, I wish you’d tone down my observations about academics. “Creeps”
they are—many of them—but that’s too strong a word for me to want to be quoted as calling them. Finally, in the last few paragraphs I’m not too happy about that very ambiguous reference to “skullduggery.” I don’t want to suggest that either of us censor what I might have told you in a perhaps indiscreet moment but I’m not happy with the way that remark stands at the moment.

How goes your work at the moment?
Well
, I hope. In the next life I’m going to have a Pontiac dealership instead of writing novels. I’ve been reading a lot more recently about the Vietnam war. Bill Broyles’ book on his return to Vietnam (
Brothers in Arms
) is quite remarkable, I think, as a retrospective document by a combat veteran.
^*ttt
Have you read it? Also, I just finished another good but depressing (pardon the word) chronicle about Vietnam vets,
Payback
by Joe Klein. I imagine you’ve read it; as a matter of fact, Klein uses a quote from
A Rumor of War
as an epigraph to one of the book’s sections. I’m trying to get a line on some work dealing with the most badly wounded survivors of the war. Do you know of any such book? There’s an enormous amount already written on the psychological damage (I’ve just read
Wounds of War
by a psychiatrist, Herbert Hendin) but if you could suggest anything in particular about physical casualties, I’d like to know.
^*uuu
I suspect you can understand my reason for wanting this kind of information, since as I told you a horrible wounded Marine figures centrally in the version—the new version—of my book.

In case you ever want to chat about anything my number up here is 617-693-2535. I intend to be here at least until mid-September and probably past that.

Keep pulling in those big fish and stay in touch.

All best

Bill

T
O
P
ETER
M
ATTHIESSEN

October 18, 1986 Roxbury, CT

Dear Peter,

I had never noticed, until I saw the extraordinary jug handles in the David Levine cartoon in
NYRB
, what gigantic ears you have but this does not lessen my belated appreciation of
Men’s Lives
. I was too fogged up to read it when the galleys arrived last winter, and too dilatory this summer, but I read it recently and think it’s just splendid. Some of the best stuff I’ve ever read on men of the sea, laboring men, and I’m sure it’ll become both a classic and a monument to the folk you’ve so eloquently written about. A truly fine book.

I also thought the Indian presentation the other night at PEN was an eye-opener and very successful in its general appeal and informativeness. How did the deposition go?

Let me know if I can help (though I don’t know how) and keep in touch.

Ever,

Porter

T
O
W
ILLIE
M
ORRIS

May 15, 1987 Roxbury, CT

Dear Willie:

I’m enclosing a couple of articles from
The N.Y. Times
for your perusal. One of them, as you can tell, is by yours truly—it came out last Sunday.
^*vvv
The other, by Tom Wicker, is about a Mississippi native and is self-explanatory. Joe Ingle, who is the minister who runs the Southern Coalition in Nashville (and whom I visited on my way down to Oxford) asked me to bring the plight of Johnson to your attention in the hope that you might be able to pull a string or two to help save this poor fellow. It really does appear that this is a case of another truly innocent victim. I wonder
if that friend of yours in the legislature, about to become the next Speaker, might pull enough weight to at least get the governor to delay the execution so that a full examination of Johnson’s case might be made. It seems to me that it would be horrible if in this instance an innocent man should be gassed at Parchman.

Speaking of Parchman, I wanted to chime in and endorse the feelings in your recent letter that that trip we took (and indeed the whole visit to Miss.) was one of the most memorable events in recent years. Tom had the time of his life. He is of course one of your greatest fans among a legion of fans, and keeps talking about the trip as one of the greatest experiences he’s ever had … Furthermore, I was absolutely bewitched by your adorable Jane Rule. That picnic she threw in the Charleston cemetery, at the foot of the grave of Mr. James Crow, was one of the paramount picnics in a lifetime of grand picnics; please tell her for me how much I admired that wonderful provender, as well as admiring her, for herself, boundlessly.

I’m greatly looking forward to
Taps
. I don’t really know what to say about the Korean War, except perhaps that it remains one of the most completely forgotten military conflicts in Western history. It would be a terrible thing to die in any way but most wars leave at least a mark on history. Korea left no mark. To have died in that war would have been to perish in total oblivion. I suppose there was some merit in America helping save the South Koreans from the Kommunist Menace—but
why always Americans
, thousands of us?

I’ve distributed the Elvis T-shirts from Graceland to various girls. They were more effective than caviar or Rolex watches.

Stay in touch and thanks again for a glorious visit.

Your ole buddy,

Stingo

P.S. I greatly appreciated the note from Gov. Winter—an admirable man whose fame still spreads far and wide in Yankeeland.

T
O
C
HARLES
S
ULLIVAN

August 1, 1987 Vineyard Haven, MA

Dear Charlie:

I’ve been intending to write you—about, among other things, getting you to look out for the August
Esquire
—but realized I’d left your address in Roxbury. I would have telephoned you but figured (obviously incorrectly) that you had already fled the St. Pete heat. Anyway, I’m glad you got the
Esquire
with my reasonably healthy-looking mug on the cover.
^*www
It was a pretty good issue to appear in, since I gather this one has received quite a bit of attention and has sold out in many places.