Selected Letters of William Styron

by William Styron

  So mille mercis, mille fois. And, so I go to stick a sword in Margaret’s belly while you get on with Mr. Pike. Keep in touch.

  Yrs ever,

  Bill

  TO JAMES AND GLORIA JONES

  April 27, 1966 Roxbury, CT

  Dear James and Moss:

  I am sending you the enclosed book so that you will know exactly what we are up to in the Old Country these days.†HH I was thinking that maybe if you all stay here long enough this year we could start a wife-swapping club and have a lot of fun with some of the attractive people we know in common. This volume goes a bit beyond Drs. Phyllis and Eberhart Kornholer, as I think you will, especially in areas of oral and anal sex, in which I am especially interested. Speaking of this field, the dernier cri in the book world at the moment is a tome called Human Sexual Response by two St. Louis doctors who spent 12 years photographing people fucking with wire attached to their heads.†II I have just read it (it is outselling even Kinsey in whatever year it was that Kinsey came out)†JJ and it is extremely valuable if for no other reason than that it once and for all makes it clear that it does not matter how big the penis looks when flaccid because when a hard-on occurs practically all penises are exactly the same size—6″ give or take ¼ of an inch or so. I can’t tell you how relieved this makes me after 40 years because I remember in the Marines seeing all those big limp cocks and feeling so inferior in the light of what I thought they must be in a state of what the doctors call tumescence. Now I’m put at ease, and you should all be too, Jim, and thank God for American science.

  We are looking forward enormously to seeing you all when you arrive this summer after your wonderful tour through the Antilles. We are going up to the Vineyard House around June 20 so any time you arrive will be fine with us. Dick Goodwin has a house very close by and we’re buying a boat together, something to take a lot of people a long way with a cargo of booze, so we can have some splendid picnics on those islands I told you about once.†KK

  Stay in touch and give our love to all our Paris friends.

  Love,

  Bill

  P.S. You may have seen the enclosed book. If so, pass it on to Girodias.†LL

  Styron was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters on May 25, 1966.

  TO MIKE MEWSHAW†MM

  May 30, 1966†NN Roxbury, CT

  Dear Mike,

  Never feel self-conscious—which you seem to be worried about being. That was a good letter you wrote me and I’m grateful for it. Aside from Slim,†OO whose beauty takes precedence over almost anything mortal, your presence and guidance was the most cheering thing that happened to me during my somewhat wasted visit to the University and I do want to thank you for the attention—even if somewhat belatedly. The entire trip was made golden by your company (also by Slim’s; forgive me if I seem not to be able to get her out of my mind); you took the curse off a lot of those academics—so much that I can even forgive you for having used me as a subject for scholarly study.

  I was quite serious about you letting me see your novel when it gets to the end or toward the end. Early fall would be a good time to let me read it. God willing, I will have gotten to the end of my own by then and will have a nice big open generous mind which, however, will retain enough critical objectivity so that you will be subjected to the most earnest critical scrutiny. Then we shall go to Mexico (with Slim, of course), and wallow in those pleasures and depravities while Random House gets the presses cranking and turns you, overnight, into a Capote-style billionaire.

  My most profound thanks again for your hospitality. Keep in touch and never give up the faith.

  Ever yours,

  Bill (not Mr.) Styron

  TO DONALD HARINGTON

  June 7, 1966 Roxbury, CT

  Dear Don:

  It is of course dandy that old John D. gave you all that dough, but the interesting mysteries behind the donation might give you another kind of charge.†PP

  What happened is this. Along about March something, the Rockefeller boys wrote me asking if I would nominate some worthy writer for an unspecified amount of loot. Naturally I thought of you and wrote a hymn of praise, also recommending at the same time (get this) Malcolm Cowley, whom I had just seen and who asked me if I would recommend him for the thing inasmuch as he was putting together a volume of his own poetry. (Cowley didn’t get a grant.) They also asked for another reference and I put down the name of Loomis, and he sent a very nice letter about you.

  Well sir, I forgot about the whole thing (or put it out of my mind, as you have to do with these Tom Swifts and their Enormous Trust Funds) until two weekends ago. For some reason I wasn’t violently optimistic about your chances mainly because I knew there was a lot of politicking and logrolling and inside operating in a thing like this, and also because I knew that you would simply have, with an incredible gravy-train endowment like this, an enormous amount of competition—every little scribbler who had wrote out a third-rate short story from Maine to Oregon trying to get his mitts on some of that dough. On the other hand, I knew who the judges were, all friends or at least acquaintances of mine: Robert “Cal” Lowell, Robert Penn “Red” Warren, Saul “Saul” Bellow, and Stanley “Stan” Kunitz.†QQ I figured that they were all stout-hearted and wise men and might know a good thing when they saw it.

  However, as I say, I put it out of my mind. Then two weekends ago there came to visit at my country home here in the green Litchfield hills my good friend “Cal” Lowell and his wife the Boss-Lady intellectual of New York, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Hardwick. Well, “Cal” and I were chewing the fat one night about various things—Russian poetry, John Donne, mortality, pussy, literature as a Way of Life and so on, and we got onto Southern fiction. “Cal” and I agreed that the Jewboys had done a good job recently fiction-wise, but “Cal” also averred that by no means should Southern writing be sold short yet (as so many of the Jewboy critics, among them Alfred “Al” Kazin and Norman “Slim” Podhoretz, seem anxious to do) and used as an example to back up his claim a novel he had just read for the Rockefeller Committee called THE CHERRY PIT by a young Arkansan named, as he recollected, Harington. It was a terrific novel, he had thought, and not only that the other members of the committee—“Red” and “Saul” and “Stan”—had thought it terrific too. Did I know the book? As a matter of fact, the committee had all thought so highly of the novel that it had been among their first five choices—high praise considering the fact that there were 20 grants in all and that the committee had winnowed these 20 finalists from a field which had been close to 200 writers and poets. So that is how I learned that the choo-choo would be coming up to Putney.

  This little episode is simply intended to illustrate a great 18th-century truth, namely, that excellence will in the end find its reward and that though fate may at the outset deal harshly with a good book like PIT it will not be put down forever but like a glittering fish will pop to surface, puffing and flopping and a little out of breath, a little behind the big slick commercial blowfish and carp, but dazzling those rare wise watchful Izaak Waltons waiting patiently on the bank.†RR What I have described to you should (even if it cannot totally erase from your spirit the memory of the “non-reception” of your “non-book,” as you put it with justifiable bitterness) make you aware of how really impressive (in the direct, transitive meaning of the word—to impress) your talent was in that book, and how it shone through to people it was worth shining through to, and how you should go on to THE FINE ARKANSAS GENTLEMAN with confidence and faith in your gifts. And of course that $7,200 U.S. don’t hurt much either.

  So that is the saga of D. Harington and the Rockefellers. It should make you rest easier in the cool of the evening.

  Yours in Nelson and Winthrop’s sweet name,

  Irving Howe

  TO ROBERT PENN WARREN

  June 30, 1966 Vineyard Haven, MA

  Dear Folks

  This is a memento of our party at Will
ie Morris’ last spring, in case you haven’t seen it.†SS It was published in The Texas Observer, Austin. We are all happily ensconced at the beach and I am trying to get the book finished this summer in my snappy little studio behind the big house, a kind of slave quarters I should say. We miss seeing you but at the same time envy your sweet situation on the Île. Do you see any of the nudists? Please inform, as I am tired of reading Playboy for edification. All sorts of people are here this summer: Goodwin has a house next door, and of course Lillian is here, “Dean” Brustein, Phil Roth, Jules Feiffer and even, God help us, John Updike, who is arriving soon.†TT I think I’ll move to Nantucket or Port-Cros where the literary gumbo isn’t quite so thick. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Bennett and Phyllis†UU are due to arrive next month in Frank Sinatra’s jet—with Frank. You need not mention our acquaintance if you so choose.

  Love, B.

  TO JAMES JONES

  September 3, 1966 Vineyard Haven, MA

  Dear James: I thought you might like to know that ETERNITY, along with DARKNESS, was included in a book called 100 Great American Novels, a kind of book of synopses subtitled “The masterpieces of American fiction in one portable volume,” published by New American Library.†VV It also has Melville, Hawthorne, Papa and Faulkner. This means that for 95¢ the students can now avoid reading our work. I am sending you some plastic bottle stoppers by separate mail. Unfortunately, I could only find four. Goodwin did steal those cigars, and is on my shitlist forever. WIDOW-MAKER just arrived and I’m looking forward to a good read after Labor Day when the creeps depart.

  Love to Moss and Kids.

  —B

  P.S. I’ll be back in Rox. Sept. 15th

  TO DONALD HARINGTON

  September 12, 1966 Vineyard Haven, MA

  Dear Don:

  I wanted to drop you a note before I return to Rox., which will be this coming Thursday. I hope we’ll be able to get together this fall. I also hope your Pike-Arrington chronicle proceeds apace. I have had very good work this summer, despite social distractions; in fact it has been the best summer for writing I can remember, having written exactly 100 pages from the point the book broke off when you were reading it. For me, prodigal proflicity. I have only now to develop the relationship between Nat and Margaret Whitehead and so the insurrection itself (which I’m going to make fairly brief, in order to tone down all the bloodshed) and I’ll be practically done. So if God is willing (and He told me He would be willing if I was good) I will have the whole thing done late this fall or early winter. It has near about killed me, and I’m beginning to feel as black as Stokely Carmichael.

  Thanks for the leads on the various historical volumes.†WW I have read all but James’s THE OLD DOMINION, which I think, however, I will eschew until I finish writing this book. By now I’ve got the whole thing so firmly fixed in my head that I’m a little leery of any further outside influence.

  Good news about your selling a piece to Esquire.†XX I’ll be looking forward to it. It is still a very good podium upon which to establish your further presence to the great reading public—far better, say, than Playboy or one of those jerkoff magazines. The orgasmic reception of GILES GOAT-BOY is an example of our present-day fashion for unreadability (I was happy however to see a reviewer in The New Republic call it a “750 page snooze”) and more of your stuff in print will help redress the balance.†YY

  Take care of yourself and keep Vermont green.

  Yrs in the name of Unohoo,

  B.S.

  Speaking of Unohoo, I finally saw the St. Matthew movie and thought it remarkably effective.†ZZ

  TO ROBERT PENN WARREN

  September 19, 1966 Roxbury, CT

  Monsieur Robert Penn Warren

  I was about ready to call Albert to see if he had your new address when, behold, your letter came with all of its pleasant description of sun and sea and Gabriel & Rosanna nautical activity. My envy of you at the moment is so intense that my back teeth ache—as once I heard Jim Jones describe his emotions when jarred by the sight of a particularly Bikini-unclad blonde by the pool at Biarritz. The south of France is still all magic for me in my recollections, and you make it all too real to be quite bearable. We all had a great summer at the Vineyard—much too social as usual, but fine nonetheless. As you no doubt know, it was otherwise a typically insane summer in the American commonwealth what with several particularly untidy mass murders and Lyndon amok at the mouth, the more intolerable hypocrisy about Vietnam, but somehow we struggled through cheerfully and are now back here in the pleasant late summer awaiting the birth of Leo or Irving or whatever the hell our next born will be called. Your god-daughter is opting for the name Myron, which in full context will be euphonious at least.

  Don’t worry about our being left out as dedicatees to that fine poem in Encounter. I have been shafted so many times by the English that I can only assume that it is simply another example of their assiness. No matter. The poem you sent, “Internal Injuries,” is just wonderful, I think. All that close, almost unbearably intense observation, that terrible urban stink and clutter, combined with your usual wrenching historical grab at the whole tragedy. I think especially of touches like zinnias down South being called nigger-flowers, and the “nigger, nigger burning bright” verses, the plane overhead, the subtle irony of being run over by a spick. And the whole scene is wonderfully summed up in the 7th section—“We love you, we truly do”—; it’s a truly fine piece of sustained emotion. I have read the poem several times now and it grows on each re-reading which I believe is the acid test.

  I am planning to make my escape from here once Rose can abandon offspring #4 temporarily and once the book is finally done, which should simultaneously be sometime early next year. So haul out the Pernod and stand by. I had a very, very good summer in terms of writing—got over 100 pages done cold and to my satisfaction, and am now headed in toward that final bloody climax that I’ve had to circle around for so long during the rest of the book. But it is coming along well still, and steadily, and I foresee no real blocks or difficulties. I am beginning, after this immersion in negritude, to feel almost as black as Stokely Carmichael. Partisan Review is running a short excerpt in their next issue and I’ll send it to you; the piece is so much a little vignette (unlike anything else in the book) that I think you might like reading it even though I suspect you (like me) are not too hot on reading excerpts.‡aa

  Give Eleanor and the kids a big embrace from all of us here, including your god-daughter who in shiny boot and snap-brimmed patent leather cap, combined with shorter skirt, is suddenly the disgrace of Litchfield County. Stay in touch and toast the sea for us now and then, and the mountains, and France.

  À bientôt,

  Bill

  TO C. VANN WOODWARD

  September 25, 1966 Roxbury, CT

  Dear Vann:

  I thought your dissertation on Messrs. Genovese and Aptheker was just great, and I thank you for sending it to me.‡bb It was wide-ranging and witty and plain ordinary engrossing, and I wish I had been there when you gave the talk, in order to see the reaction among the brethren. One really startlingly original insight—to me, at least—was the proliferation of black leaders, like Carmichael, coming from places like Trinidad and the historical ground and responsibility for this, and why their point of view really doesn’t work here in the U.S. I’ve been brooding over something like this for a long time, especially after reading Red Warren’s piece on Carmichael,‡cc but totally missed the historical reason, which you’ve now made clear. I think this is an enormously important point, and I do hope you elaborate on it, in a loud voice, soon.

  Let us talk more before long. I think Rose has a plan going to get you all up here early in October. Maybe she’s been in touch already, but if not she will. Yesterday reached p. 500 in the true and authentic revelations of the life of Hon. Nathaniel Turner, Bart., so am feeling rather heady. I had a real good summer’s work and am fairly confident I can polish off the rest (another 50–75 pages or so) by ear
ly winter.

  See you soon,

  Bill

  TO JAMES JONES

  October 2, 1966 Roxbury, CT

  Dear James:

  An unspeakable case of the influenza shits, from which I still haven’t fully recovered, allowed me ample time off from Nat Turner and enough of a jaundiced point of view to read WIDOW-MAKER with both the leisure and detachment I wanted and needed. I finished it yesterday, quite wrung out and excited, and decided to write you now and without delay, while it was all still fresh in my mind. I presume of course that my opinion is wished-for, if not exactly asked for, else you wouldn’t have strained Delacorte’s budget to the extent of the $2.76 it took to send it to me by the post. Don Fine must be sweating over that item.‡dd

  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.