Selected Letters of William Styron

by William Styron

  It was interesting to hear more about Barbara Bottom’s progress through life. Luckily I haven’t run into her here in N.Y. yet. Probably wouldn’t recognize her if I did. Who’s the new man?W

  Eliza, have you written anything else in your “spare time”? I still have your story here, which this friend of mine sent to a few magazines. She got some very nice notes back about the story, but no checks. I suppose you’re partly right—magazines nowadays (even the good ones) just don’t seem to want childhood stories. Do you want me to send it back to you, or would you rather me try again? I’d still like to see some more stuff you’ve written, as I think it’s mighty good.

  Thanks again to both of you for your nice presents. Write soon.

  Love,

  Billy

  TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.

  March 31, 1948 New York

  Dear Pop,

  A much belated letter to let you know that I am still kicking and that everything is coming along all right. The little visit home, though short, was enjoyable and I’m only sorry that I couldn’t stay longer. We are still having trouble with our landlady here—though nothing serious—otherwise the scene on the domestic front is okay. An evil brood, landladies!

  I’m progressing well on the novel, although frankly it is a mystery to me how I am able to keep going from one section of the story to another. Haydn read the completed portion of the MS in class tonight and I am, to say the least, excited at what he told me (in front of the class) about the novel, to wit: “Although you can’t really say anything positively, of course, until the novel is completed, this part seems to me to stand up beside any contemporary American writer.” I nearly fell over and, of course, walked home in a daze. He said something about the fact that I have a “tragic sense” of the place and the people I’m writing about and, after class, told me he thought what I had written was “terrific.” I needn’t have to tell you that I’m terribly encouraged, because I feel sure that Haydn’s comments and criticisms are judicious and considered.X

  I can’t tell you how much this novel means to me. The process of sitting down and writing is pure torture to me, but at the same time I think about the book all the time and am in more or less a suspended state of worry and anxiety if I’m not writing. I worry, too, about the sincerity of my effort; if whether what I’m writing is not so much rhetoric, and it is only in my most now-self-critical mood that I can even come vaguely to realize that what I write does, in truth, have an element of truth in it and is, after all, a more faithful rendering of life than I believe it to be in my moments of doubt.

  The world situation is such that I—along, I suppose, with everyone else—really don’t know whether a novel, or a symphony, or anything else, is worth the trouble or not. But I suppose that if you relinquish your claim as an “individual,” no matter what your endeavor might be, or in whatever state the world is in, you might as well cease living. So I’ll go on writing, hoping that we will survive, and perhaps taking a measure of courage from the fact that in the face of disaster my story might become even more significant.

  New York is beginning to wear on my nerves, and now that spring is coming I want to leave. The novelty has worn off; the city, with all its excitement and grandeur, is a terrible place. The tide swarms on; how people manage the pretense of humanity in such a jostling, surly ant-heap is beyond me. The eye bends down from the jutting skyscraper—man’s material achievement—to gaze in horror on the pawing mess of Broadway at lunchtime and the greasy, muttering squalor of the interior of a subway car—surely the symbol of man’s spiritual decay. I hope I get an offer of an advance on royalties from Crown within the next few weeks; I think I will. And that Eastern Shore deal, if you still want to try and help me out, sounds good indeed.

  Do you think that if people learned to love one another, that if the collective human mind could be conditioned to good-will and rich laughter, the resultant effect would be boredom? That mutual hatred, a natural antipathy for his own species, is a predetermined condition of the state of man on earth? Sometimes it seems that way to me.

  Haydn’s words still ring in my ears. Wish me luck!

  Your son,

  Bill jr.

  P.S. Did you read the reviews of Haydn’s The Time Is Noon? Last Sunday’s Times and Tribune’s were fine, and the daily reviews in the same papers even better. (see enclosed)Y

  TO WILLIAM BLACKBURN

  May 28, 1948 Cordele, Georgia

  Dear Professor Blackburn,

  It has been a long time since I have written you and I am ashamed, but I have thought of you often, if that’s any consolation at all.

  I have been down here on the river with Mac and Gwendolyn for something less than a week and if I could I believe I would stay here forever. It’s a wonderful place, isn’t it? I think I nearly killed myself during my last bleak neurotic weeks in New York, staying up until dawn and sleeping miserably until the waning hours of afternoon. So, in desperation, I cunningly contrived to escape the city and took the “Southerner” to Atlanta, anxiously pondering a sour sort of guilt as I sat in the barren club car all night; and only when I arrived in Cordele and was installed in my room in this marvelous place on the river did I begin to breathe human breaths again, feel blood and not the city dweller’s fetid sluggish fluid flow through my veins once more. In a week I have possessed myself of an incredibly healthy sense of well-being. The Georgia sunlight, I’m sure, contains more vitamins per cubic centimeter than all the synthetic, “niacin”-fortified bread north of Baltimore and for the first time in many months I am positively witless with virility. Mens sana in corpore sano.Z The Hymans, of course, are wonderful. They send you their love.

  I have signed a contract with Crown for my novel. The advance is $500; $100 now and $400 when I get a substantial amount of the book done. Mr. Haydn is a wonderfully sympathetic and human person and seems to be as enthusiastic about the novel as I am about the possibility of having him as an editor. I understand that you get a cut of the proceeds on the sale of the book, so I am sure we shall both soon be millionaires. The novel, as projected, concerns Newport News and the people there in general; in particular a girl, my age, who comes to no good end. It’s all very melodramatic and morbid and tragic and I’m sure it will shake the foundations of the literary world—“cause a flutter in the literary dovecotes,” as it were.*a I’m already thoroughly dissatisfied with what I’ve written so far, even though Mr. Haydn likes it, and I fear that the book as a whole will be the most fearful mélange of stylistic apings and posturings ever seen.

  In case you hadn’t heard, American Vanguard, the New School anthology, is just off the press. I am represented—“a humble and sad” writer, it says in the introduction—by my Trieste story, a startlingly reactionary piece in a volume made up of inflammatory appeals for social consciousness, solemn fellow-traveler essays, and trouble “messages” by confused innocents. I am sure to be called a “callow armchair liberal” by some squat mustachioed female on the Daily Worker or PM, and am waiting, in a real tizzy, for the reviews to come out. I’m sure the book will sell all of 150 copies.

  A Christchurch friend and I are planning a trip to England late in June, although we’re still in the planning stage. If we go we’ll leave from Montreal on a freighter, having learned that one can secure passage from that port for only $120, which is sure enough reasonable. Should the thing materialize I’d certainly like your advice on what to see, and where. I’ve always taken the advice you gave me to heart, and I remember your saying, in effect, that I might as well see England, and Europe, now, before life becomes too complicated.

  I plan to stay here until around the middle of June and then I’m going to New York and pack up my things and remove myself from that most monstrous travesty of civilization. I don’t feel I’m escaping, beaten, because I did make a mild success of my year there. I just heartily believe that anyone who stays there when he doesn’t have to is a damn fool. On my way I hope to stop in Durham and I want to see you, if you
are going to be there. I wish you’d drop me a short note and let me know. Please give my best to Mrs. Blackburn, and everyone.

  As ever,

  Bill S.

  Styron left New York in July 1948 to live and write in Durham, North Carolina.

  TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.

  July 11, 1948 814 Sixth Street, Durham, NC*b

  Dear Pop,

  Suzie sent all my stuff—records, books, etc.—down from New York, so I am now prepared to move into the apartment that Bill Switzer and I have rented. The apartment, just in back of the Woman’s College Campus, is in the first floor of a private home—two medium sized rooms, kitchen, bath, and large back yard, $40 per month. It is not furnished, and that is the big difficulty; we plan just to buy bare essentials at first—beds, chairs, kitchen utensils—and get the rest later. I’d appreciate it if you would send me a check for $150 as soon as possible, as I figure that is about what it’ll take to supplement the money I already have to pay the first month’s rent and buy a bed and maybe a lamp or two, besides food.*c

  Switzer and I have, in the meantime, been staying with Brice. I have done some work on the novel, but I find it pretty rough going. I don’t seem to have the innate confidence in myself or my work which I suppose is a part of genius; consequently I am diverted too easily into less favorable channels—like reading Time magazine. Every word I put down seems to be sheer pain, and although I often am a victim of sloppy writing I have nonetheless too much of what I suppose is called artistic integrity to put down something I know is not true or merely a half-truth. Because of that, I suppose my sessions at the desk are doubly painful in that where someone else might put something—some idea or word-picture—to paper merely for the effect, I have to ponder and ponder and reject anything I sincerely believe at the time hints of fraudulence. Even so, I know there are many things in the work I’ve already accomplished that I didn’t mean to say. I think the crux of the issue is merely that I don’t know enough yet about people to be writing a novel. But I’m at least giving it my earnest application, and trying hard to put myself on an inflexible schedule. I realize that I’m among the favored few, that there are not many people my age who’ve been given the sort of encouragement I have and that it would be both sinful and weak not to attempt to live up to the faith that has been put in me. I’ll have a novel finished next year this time—I hope a good one.

  Durham is an ugly town but many of the people I know here are very fine. Last night, for instance, Brice had Frances Gray Patton*d over. She’s married to a Duke professor of history, is an O. Henry short story prize winner (see “One and Twenty”) and is now a regular contributor to The New Yorker. A very charming lady. She lived as a girl in Newport News. Her father was editor of the Daily Press and Times Herald in the early twenties.

  Write soon, and please don’t forget the check.

  Your son,

  Bill jr.

  TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.

  August 3, 1948 Durham, NC

  Dear Pop,

  It was nice seeing you the other week-end, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I and the others did. You and Mr. Switzer seemed to have gotten along fine, struck a common chord. Bill said that he hadn’t heard his father talk so much in years.

  The novel is coming along at about its usual slow but steady turtle’s pace. I read part of it to Dr. Blackburn and his class, and he seems to be immensely and sincerely pleased by what I’ve done so far. It’s a tedious and agonizing process and I loathe writing with almost a panic hatred, but as I’ve said before I’m always restless when I’m not working at it. If ever I become well-known because of my writing, it may honestly be said by whatever person that chooses to tell about me: “he wrote in spite of himself.” I know that what I’ve written so far on this book is good, but that it is far from maturity or perfection. I’ve noticed the maturation process taking place in me and I know I’ve barely started growing. I do hope to get the book finished by next summer, but I just don’t know, at the rate I’m going. A man just doesn’t realize, I believe, what self-doubt and despair are until he’s tried to express himself in a work of art. Perhaps that is a self-conscious and adolescent statement and maybe I use the word “art” too freely, but it’s the way I feel now. My moral and intellectual values are as yet far too undeveloped for me to be able to assess the worth of this novel I’m writing in terms of its conception. I hope when I’m finished with it people will read it, and I hope it’s at least a good start. Beyond anything, though, I hope that the writing of it will somehow enrich my own mind in that it may teach me perseverance and calm thought and make me more of a man. Writing a novel of course involves a good deal of contemplation—most of it, it is true, false or worthless—but it is my constant hope that this pure fact of contemplation, which wise men so cherish, may lead me into sunnier and wider avenues of the spirit. I don’t say that with pretension. I have somehow already felt vague intimations of the satisfaction that can come from working hard, sweating blood, indeed. If I come through it will only be at the price of a great deal of anguish, that price, I suspect, being worth the reward.

  To get down to more practical matters, I would like for you to send me $50, if you will, as soon as you can. The first of the month brought a number of bills—telephone, milk, etc—which I’m unable to pay in my present financial status. So if you’ll send a check as soon as possible, I’ll be greatly obliged.

  In the meantime I hope everything goes well with you and that I’ll get to see you sometime soon. Regards to all.

  Your son

  WCS jr

  TO ELIZABETH MCKEE

  October 12, 1948 901 Fifth Street, Durham, NC

  Dear Miss McKee:

  Here is a carbon of what I have finished, or rather typed, so far on my novel. I hope you will enjoy looking at it, although if you have the sense of miserable failure upon reading it that I have it probably won’t make you too happy. There are a few good things in it, but I’ve found that one never gets around to saying the things he wants to say.

  The story, in short, is nothing but that of a modern upper South middle-class family, and the daughter of the family, named Peyton Loftis. I’ve got no drum to beat, political or otherwise. I just want to give a picture of a way of life that I have known, and of the people therein. I probably have a moral purpose—the late Bliss Perry said that you had to have one—but it hasn’t quite yet emerged.*e Anyway, Peyton, who is twenty-four and something of a bitch, has just died violently and I must say horribly in New York and is being returned to her home town for a hasty and unpublicized interment. What transpires on the one day of her burial is the burden of the novel. Gradually, through their memories, you get a picture of Peyton and, I hope, of the “way of life” of which I was speaking. If the story seems morbid it’s because I’m probably morbid myself, although I’ve got some good ghastly humor later on. Well, I’ll let you read it yourself, and I’d be most happy to hear what you have to say about it. Of course, there are probably incidents in this first part which don’t seem to tie together, but I plan to fill them out later on.

  Thanks so much for relaying the comments on AUBREY CRUMPLER.*f I hope we have success on that one, but if we don’t I hope I’ll have others for you soon.

  Sincerely,

  William Styron

  Styron was in New York for the holidays and decided he should return to the city in 1949.

  TO WILLIAM BLACKBURN

  January 13, 1949 Valley Cottage, NY*g

  Dear Professor Blackburn,

  I want to thank you for the book of folk songs you sent me Christmas. It was indeed thoughtful of you, and you can be assured that it has been well-thumbed already. Now if I can just work up enough courage to learn how to play a guitar, I might turn professional. There’s a wonderful old guitar up here, made in 1880, a sort of Stradivarius among guitars, and I’ll have only myself to blame if I don’t learn how to use the thing. Incidentally, have you heard Leadbelly? I heard an album the other day of his, and went
overboard for him. He’s the Louisiana negro convict who died just recently. If you can get a couple of records of his—especially “Midnight Special” (“shine your ever-lovin’ light on me”) and “Irene, Good-night,” I think you’ll see what I mean.*h

  Well, half of the novel is all-typed, and Haydn has read it. As I wrote Brice, he thinks it’s very fine stuff and gave me an additional advance, which wasn’t much but better than nothing. I’ve sent a carbon to Brice and I’d be honored to have you read it and give me your opinion of it, provided you have time for such a frivolity. I’ve been so “close” to the novel all these months, that re-reading it gives me a severe sort of expression, so I’d be interested in hearing what you, a spectator, have to say about it. I’ve begun the second half of the novel, which I hope will progress a bit easier than the first half, now that I’ve gotten the sights lined up pretty well on all my characters. One thing I’m certain of—I shan’t ever attempt such a complicated theme again, until I’m well aware of what I’m doing. But even having plunged so recklessly into this novel, I’m glad I did it. It’s been rather a strengthening thing, like swimming up the Colorado, or going into battle.

  Sigrid and I both enjoyed seeing you when we were down in Durham. The breakfast you gave us on our departure was very heartening and enabled us to get all the way to Colonial Heights, Va., without hunger pangs. Hope that we can all get together again soon. Sigrid’s book is getting promoted with much exciting hoopla and everyone’s waiting breathlessly for the reviews which I think are bound to be good ones.*i The final coup is the fact that the book has already been accepted in England by Eyre and Spottiswoode where, I understand, Christopher Morley’s brother is editor. Isn’t that fine?