—Bill
TO PHILIP ROTH
May 23, 1973 Roxbury, CT
Dear Philip:
It is testimony to your enormous gifts as a writer that—despite the fact that I am doubtless the only American male with two balls who has a real congenital aversion to baseball and who has avoided books on the subject like the plague—I read The Great American Novel (on a trip to Virginia) with the greatest delight and hilarity. It’s a wonderfully funny and good book, be proud of it and, again, fuck the reviews.
At any other time I would be glad to nominate Reynolds but I’m already nominating or seconding Peter Matthiessen and I really don’t like to get in the habit of over-exposure. One begins to look a little like Glenway Wescott or Leon Edel. But there should be no trouble in finding someone. What a “club” that is, that outfit.‖NN
Someone sent me Kazin’s new book. Although less nasty, he treats me a little like Howe treated you—the work of a lifetime dismissed in 200 words. You come off a lot better. As for Mailer, get this: “We are at his mercy.”!! Fuck them all.
Watergate saves us all. Remember when Mencken was asked why, if he hated the U.S. so, didn’t he leave, he replied: “Where else can you get a 3-ring circus for the price of a morning newspaper?” To which now add the tube. See ya soon,
Bill
P.S.: TGAN is just fine. FUNNY! A lovely book.
Random House published In the Clap Shack on June 15, 1973.
TO SUSANNA STYRON
July 16, 1973 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dearest Sue:
I received your wonderful letter and read it and am writing this while awaiting one of our typical summer Vineyard invasions. Naturally it’s another Kennedy invasion. Teddy called me up several weeks ago, saying that he and two other senators who are members of the Senate Interior Committee (Bible of Nevada, and Johnston of Louisiana) would be having a public hearing on the Islands Trust Bill on the Vineyard today, and would I mind “hosting” a clambake. So your Ma and I are hosting a clambake on our beach for about 75 people, most of them supporters of the bill. Typical Styron deal. How I get into things like this I’ll never know. Next summer I’m spending in Lacoste. Anyway the weather is really heavenly, which is one nice thing, after yesterday which saw a miniature tornado and over an inch of rain.
As usual, I came up here with the idea in mind that perhaps for once I would be free of the social nightmare. What should happen, however, a few days after we arrive is that Sinatra calls and says he’s coming up on a boat. The boat was fairly modest by Sinatra standards—100 feet but the de luxe equipment was the same—color television, seven crew members and Frank’s new valet, a grinning black man who comes a-running at the shouted command, “Abraham!” We did have a nice time, however, for a few days, moseying over to Nantucket, spending the night in one of the posh staterooms, and watching John Mitchell squirm on the color TV. To my great surprise, Frank is violently anti-Nixon, maybe because he wants Agnew to be president. Incidentally, he sent you his love and invited you and the family to Palm Springs for Thanksgiving.
He told a funny joke. A very portly Jewish fellow is running for the train, when he stops to weigh himself on one of those scales that also tell you your fortune. The card read: “You still weigh 260 pounds. You’re still Jewish. And you missed your train.”
I was a little sorry to hear that you’re not exactly ecstatic about your present abode. I gather the chaps and girls aren’t exactly topflight, as they say at posh clubs, but I also sensed that things aren’t entirely gloomy and that basically you are having a pretty good time of it. Naturally, all the gang here misses you terribly and if you want to come back earlier you will be greeted with open arms, but I think maybe you will decide to hang in there for the full stretch.
When you do come, you will find everyone in great shape—if all goes as well as they are going now. I am writing well—which is to say I eke out my painful 600 words a day—and your Ma is in fine spirits and batting the old tennis ball at furious speed. Tom is a big tennis hound too and plays a lot with Fain Hackney, who barely beats him.‖OO Polly and all of us were greatly relieved that her heart was not involved in her condition, which seems to have improved a bit. Poor sweetheart, she can’t do any great exercising still but she does get around quite actively with her friend Dinah and all the other friends who flock to the house, and drives to the beach and to parties up-island. All in all, I’d say she’s enormously better in all respects than what I gather was a bad spell in Spain. Alexandra is head of something she calls the “Max Smart Park Avenue Detective Agency” and Natalia d’Almeida‖PP (I forgot to tell you the d’Almeidas are here) and Elizabeth Hackney‖QQ and her co-investigators. Yesterday she was busily taking notes and investigating the brutal rape and murder of Lady Godiva at the West Tisbury fair. She discovered that the perpetrator was Si Bunting,‖RR who has been visiting for a few days. Alexandra immediately had him electrocuted, without benefit of trial.
By the time you get back they will, I think, have closed in on Nixon, and if he is not impeached he will certainly have his powers—which were tending in a very malevolent direction—seriously impaired, perhaps allowing Congress to exercise some of its powers which have been fumbling and subordinate for too long under Tricky Dick.
Anyway, be good and tranquille until you arrive. The Diabolique will be ready to take you on many picnics—especially to Lake Tashmoo which will soon have to be called Lake China, but that is a sad story, too long to go into here.
Much love from all of us, but especially from your
dear old dad
Xxx
P.S. I paid your phone bill. Also I’m enclosing proof of your Vineyard riches. Buy me a beer in Oak Bluffs.
TO CHARLES H. SULLIVAN‖SS
May 15, 1974 Roxbury, CT
Dear Charlie:
I have often thought over the years since Quantico that you may have been the single most important factor in my having ever gotten a commission. You were clearly Number One from the very beginning and I through the accident of alphabet was always in close proximity to you. As a result I’m almost certain that I squeaked through PCS largely because I was hanging onto your coattails, or dungaree tails. Oh, I suppose if I had been a complete foul-up I would never have made it, but I’m certain that the fact that we were mates helped a great deal.
At any rate, I was happy to hear from you again after all these years. I was also most appreciative of your reaction to my work, and I thank you for troubling yourself to express your feelings. Your observations about blacks in the service are most perceptive and telling, and if the plantation analogy you make is depressing it is obviously true. Inside the service and out, the same thing applies—stagnation.
I was never really cut out for military life, but once a marine always a marine, as you doubtless know. The Corps still holds for me a strange fascination; it is a very special place, and although I’m glad I chose another career I am not being at all fatuous when I say that I am a better man for having served in the Marines. It was plain from those Quantico days that you would make a great success at it, and how glad I am that you found a good life there.
May your life in retirement (my God, military people retire young!) be just as good. I hope to have another book out soon, and will appreciate your reaction, pro or con. Meanwhile, once more thanks for the words after all this time.
Sincerely,
Bill Styron
TO LOUIS D. RUBIN, JR.
July 8, 1974 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Louis:
I should stop giving interviews.‖TT The one you saw was not a terribly good one, mainly because I was in France suffering from a surfeit of exhaustion, wine and oysters, and I said some rather unconsidered things which you rightly caught me up on. However, I have since then been in receipt of the MS of the interview that Ben Forkner sent me and have submitted it to some pretty drastic editing. I sent it back to Ben and I do hope that I will also be able to see a final draft. Please tell him this
if you see him, since I do not know if I really edited it harshly enough. Oddly enough, though, although I would rephrase it more gracefully, I find the part that you quoted me in your letter the least offensive of the things I said.‖UU I mean the stuff about Nat being “ignorant of his own pride” etc. Because I actually think that the real Nat, the Nat I was referring to, was ignorant of his own undertaking, the enormity of what he was doing and so forth. I really do. I think that there is a great deal of a posteriori evidence (and there are several historians who have commented on this) that Nat may not have been dumb, in your words, but that he was very definitely a psychopath, dangerously over the edge, who hadn’t the faintest notion of the way to foment a workable revolt. In other words, I’m saying that in actual fact my book did give him the complexities and nuances of character and intelligence which the historical Nat lacked. I’m afraid I’ll have to stand by that, but you may be absolutely correct in saying that the flaw in the interview lies in the way I said all this. I thought that I had cut out what might be the most offensive parts, but if you will re-read what I have sent to Ben and tell me specifically how I can further improve it, I would appreciate it.
Alas, upon reading the interview I found most of that part that you felt to be “fascinating” etc. to be unacceptable, and have deleted most of it. My reason is very very simple (and again due to my weak state in France): NO writer should reveal such a detailed outline of a work-in-progress, it’s absolutely asinine, and therefore although I’ve retained a good hint of the plot and theme I’ve cut out all those details which at this stage of the game is to cut my own throat.
But thanks for the good interest and suggestions and I’ll try to improve the abortion even further.
Yrs,
Bill
TO SUSANNA STYRON
July 19, 1974 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Sue:
We thoroughly enjoyed your long letter about your life as a pedagogue in Spain. Although much of it sounds like a drag, a lot of it indicates that you are also somehow managing to enjoy yourself. I would figure that life in Spain can’t be all bad.
Polly showed up a couple of days ago all wreathed in smiles, feeling very good, and ready for the Vineyard whirl. The horse from Amenia is being brought up tomorrow, and I think your sister is looking forward to being an equestrienne again—though why I don’t know, since I find those dumb beasts insufferably boring. Otherwise la famille is doing its usual Vineyard bit. I like it up here of course, but I am beginning to think that maybe these island summers constitute something in the nature of a rut. I am contemplating perhaps a single summer away from here—Malaga maybe—in order to break the too monotonous sameness of the routine. The post office, picking up the Times at Leslie’s, putting up with Lillian—it gets to be a bit much, or a bit much of the same. One little diversion is nice: Tommy and I have become mad “Jarts” aficionados—you know, that game which is half darts, half horseshoe pitching. I generally beat old Tom, but he is still nutty about poker and usually skins his Hackney and Dahl pals, which makes up for his defeats at my hands in Jarts.
Your Mama told me about your letter in which you were brooding over taking off a year at Yale and concentrating on the film. I think we should wait until you get back here next month before any final decision is made. I am not precisely dead set against your plan—as a matter of fact I think it has some points—but I do think we should talk it over carefully. Apropos of which, I wanted to mention Armand Deutsch, a gentleman with whom we had lunch yesterday.‖VV Mr. Deutsch, who is called Ardie, is the man who plucked you out of the water some years ago when you almost committed suicide by swimming out to Sinatra’s yacht. He remembered the incident well. At any rate, he is very rich, a cousin of Phil Stern’s, and lives in Beverly Hills where he is partly associated with the film business. He is a partner in fact of David Wolper, the documentary film maker who was briefly connected with Nat Turner, and he told me that if you are really serious and decided to spend next year making films he thought there would be no trouble getting you the kind of job you might want with Wolper. I said to him that I’d pass this along to you for what it’s worth. At any rate, let us keep this in mind and go over all the pros and cons when you get here in August.
We all miss you and are anxiously awaiting your return to this little bower of Eden. Next week-end Willie Morris is throwing a Dixieland party down in East Hampton, and your Mom and I are going—staying with the Stantons—after which Jim and Gloria will come up here to stay for a week or 10 days. Maybe you’ll get here in time to see them. I know to you it is like coals to Newcastle, but I have made a fantastic gazpacho and want you to try it out.
Be good and pray for your famille from time to time. Miss you very much.
Much much love,
Papa
TO FREDERICK EXLEY
Spring, 1975 Patmos, Greece
Dear Fred: I’m staying here on this island where St. John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation. It makes it real weird for a lapsed Episcopalian. The Aegean here must be as beautiful as Hawaii. My host is Sadri Khan (son of the Aga) and we live rather well indeed. I’ve been able to get some work done, and hope to be back in the U.S. and on Martha’s Vineyard around the end of June. Hope you can pay Rose and me a visit this summer.
Your pal,
Bill
TO CARLOS FUENTES
January 4, 1976‖WW Hotel Meridien, Martinique
Dear Carlos:
I am writing you from French soil in the hope that this portends that I may soon come to “the mainland” and pay you a visit.
We missed you on the Vineyard at Thanksgiving but drank several toasts in memory of your and Sylvia’s visit last year.
Together with two others, Rose and I (plus son Tom and Alexandra) chartered an 80-foot sailboat and sailed down here from Antigua—a week’s trip, with stops at Guadeloupe and the incredibly primitive island of Dominica.
The French accomplished their de luxe style much better on the mainland than in their far-flung outposts. This hotel is straight out of “The Clockwork Orange,” a super-Hilton all tricked out in plastic with hordes of package-tour trippers from Paris + Lyons (plus a large sprinkling of Italians), wretched service and (most profoundly ironic) abominable food. However, I did manage to climb to the peak of that splendid volcano, Mt. Pelée, at risk of near-total exhaustion but with an exhilarating thrill of triumph somewhat like that of Hillary and Maurice Herzog.
Belated thanks for the photographs you sent some time ago. Rose was especially appreciative since they were very flattering. I don’t know when there will be a Styron visit to Paris—we feel a little déracinée since the Joneses moved away from the Île St. Louis—but do not be surprised if you receive a visitation within the next few months. I am eagerly anticipating not only seeing you both again but a delectable taste of those tamales Suzette.
Rose joins in fond regards to tout Fuentes.
Abrazos,
Bill
TO BURKE AND EVANGELINE DAVIS‖XX
April 9, 1976 Roxbury, CT
Dear Folks:
That was a very lovely time you showed us, as they say in the vernacular, and me and my wife Rose are still glowing with the warm aftermath. Many, many thanks for your combined generosity.
Primary things first. Somewhere near Emporia, Va., we stopped at a Stuckey’s to let the girls pee, and I bought for $1.45 a bag of shucked pecans, idea in mind to fulfill the eggplant recipe. To make a long story short: it was everything you said it was. Up here in Roxbury last night we tried it out and it was a triumph. It is so good that it will have to go into the standard repertory.
We received the books (incidentally, Burke, all the way down Rt. 301 Rose read your Jefferson book to the kids and now I know more about T.J. and Virginia than I ever did; however, three miles beyond Skippers, Va., I didn’t feel that ozone fix you said I would passing the N.C. line, smelled more like hydrocarbons & tobacco); they arrived the day we got back and we are most grateful.‖YY I have th
e Va. Quarterly Review here in my studio with young Burke’s story and will write him my reaction as soon as I read it in the next day or two.
My falling-down ankle, the result of those pre-revolutionary streets, is perfectly well now, after a brief swelling that night in Goldsboro. I just walked seven miles today to prove my resilience.
My dear old daddy is, at 86, pretty spaced out. After being in his great years a Jacksonian Democrat, he is now in his ancient age reverting to old ancestral fears, and thinks the niggers are going to do him in. Says one of them, named William, whom he hired to clip the hedge, has stolen the clippers and has sold them—a godawful thing he broods about 24 hours a day. Wants to kill the black sonofabitch. He used to be very gentle, an egalitarian.
Please come to see us on the Vineyard this summer. Any day, any time. My wife Rose will write you. Much thanks again for everything and fond best,
Bill
TO ROBIE MACAULEY
August 9, 1976 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Robie:
I want to thank and congratulate you on the neat and, indeed, eloquent way in which your reply dealt with Ms. Ozick and her hysteria.‖ZZ She is clearly a True Believer and the only way in which she can be handled is through words like yours: cool, temperate and wise. I’m glad you underlined the fact that nowhere did I minimize the terrible suffering of the Jews. But you did me a favor and you also did a favor to people in general by pointing out that where totalitarianism is concerned everyone suffers ultimately and that it is not only shallow and naive but extremely dangerous to think otherwise.
Sincerely
Bill Styron
TO SUSANNA STYRON
October 17, 1976 Roxbury, CT
P.S. I forged your signature on the automobile deed and Mrs. Vanderhoop is sending me the check next week, which I will deposit in your acc’t in Dry Dock.
Dear Susanna:
I love your letter from Heathrow, especially its safe and satirical remarks upon the Briddish—how completely I agree! Do send me more letters—with comments, please, upon the Spanish and the French, both of which I like more than the beastly Briddish with their mediocrity.
Selected Letters of William Styron Page 53
