Selected Letters of William Styron (21 page)

I’ve finally pretty much decided what to write next—a novel based on Nat Turner’s rebellion. The subject fascinates me, and I think I could make a real character out of old Nat. It’ll probably take a bit of research, though, and I’ve written to people in the U.S.—among them Prof. Saunders Redding (whom I saw Christmas, you remember) of Hampton Institute—asking them to pass on any reference material they might have. Perhaps you know of a book or something on Nat Turner and would be willing to get it sent to me somehow. Actually, I’d be extremely interested in anything on life around the Southside–Caroline Border country of Virginia in the 1820–1850 period. If you can get your hands on something on that order without too much trouble I’d appreciate your letting me know. I don’t know but whether I’m plunging into something over my depth, but I’m fascinated anyway.
^†G

I hope everything is going well. Best to all and keep your wandering boy posted.

Bill Jr.

The food here, as in Denmark, is magnificent, but I’m provincial enough to still miss Southern fried chicken.

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN AND
A
SHBEL
B
RICE

May 9, 1952 Paris, France

I got both of your letters on the same day, so hope you will pardon my making this a communal job.

Dear Doctor and Brice—

I have just had a long and involved conversation with my chambermaid regarding the relative prices for postage stamps, for telephone calls, for telegrams, and for
messages par pneumatique
, and as a result I am heavily exhausted. It was a fairly interesting conversation, and I got the information that I was asking for, but to tell you the truth what I
don’t
know about the French language would fill the
Encyclopædia Britannica
and a talk with a Frenchman leaves me limp and defeated. Get an American and a Frog together—both nations being lousy linguists and both thinking their language is the
only
one—and the result is usually the sheerest chaos. I wish I’d
studied
under Walton, instead of having squeezed through with a “D.” Anyway, in order not to give the wrong impression, I want to say that I’m enjoying Paris a lot and have found that springtime in this city is pretty much what everyone always said it is. A balmy sky, sunlight, pretty girls, and perpetual lolling about in the cafes. To a melancholic neurotic like myself, saddled as I am with the burden of Calvin and Knox, this has a strange effect, i.e., it’s too goddamn enjoyable to be true.
^†H
The unwritten
motto here is obviously live and let live,
toujours gai
, and it’s all definitely hard on a man with a conscience. Not that I’m doing any great soul-searching at the moment, but I must say that it’s difficult to sit in one’s room and work when so much tempts from the outside.

The contrast with England is striking, to say the least. One learns in Europe the truth of the adage about traveling on one’s stomach. I think that if any one thing in England serves to leave a final bad impression it’s the unbelievably repellent food; whereas here it’s next to impossible to get anything but a superb meal, and for practically nothing—
par exemple
, last night’s repast was an hors d’oeuvres of snails beautifully served up with garlic sauce, a beautifully juicy steak with potatoes and salad, dessert and coffee, and a beautifully amiable check—$1.10. It’s better than the Little Acorn, even.
^†I

I fled England a week after my trip to Cornwall and Lincolnshire. I found London both depressing and expensive, but loved the week’s journey in the country. The Cornish coast itself is worth a trip to England. I don’t know how I did it but I missed going to Oxford and it’s the main thing I regret about my entire stay. I did see the best of the wonderful cathedrals though—the Cambridge chapel, Ely, Lincoln, and Salisbury. My favorite is still Ely, which I think is generally ignored because it’s on such flat land that it has no commanding approach. But it’s so marvelously lofty inside, and the octagonal tower is a gem. I stayed back in London for a week before going to Denmark, and the high point of that week—if you can call it a high point—was a cocktail party which John Lehmann gave for Calder Willingham. The English have a very incestuous literary set and everyone was there—Rosalind Lehmann (John’s sister), Philip Toynbee, Peter Quennell, Alan Pryce-Jones, Henry Green, and William Samson, the last so drunk that he had to be poured home in a taxi. I myself got too high to make much sense of the whole affair but I must say that the literary chit-chat floods high at such London soirées and that the proportion
of fairies per capita is somewhat higher than on Park Avenue at Charles Role’s, if that’s possible. Incidentally, I got what by British standards are excellent reviews and yesterday learned that the book, hideous jacket and all, is going into a second edition—meaning that I’ve sold at least 5,000 copies. In substance the reviews were as confused as the American ones—no one comes alive except Loftis, only the soliloquy is any good, everyone comes alive but after all it’s so depressing, etc. etc.

Denmark was fine but fairly dull and after a week I was ready to leave. The Danish girls are très amiable, the food wonderful and the only really unfortunate part of my sojourn there was that Calder, who is otherwise a most affable person, bounced a bad check on me to the tune of $50, the bastard. I came down on the night train from Copenhagen, via Hamburg and Bremen, but didn’t see much. Then Paris bloomed for me. What a town. I got a wonderful big sunny room at a hotel called the Liberia (makes me feel like one of Andrew Johnson’s displaced niggers) for roughly $25 a month, and sort of let the concierge know that I’ll be here for a couple of months. It’s right around the corner from Le Café Dôme, in Montparnasse, where one is supposed to be impressed by the fact that it’s the same café where Hemingway used to hang out. Not too far away are the cafes of St. Germain-des-Prés, the Flore and the Deux Magots made chic by Sartre, and I suppose that there you will find, at literally any hour of the day, the greatest floor show on earth … French, American, Arab, Scandinavian, Chinese, masculine, feminine, neuter, and in all shapes and sizes. It makes the San Remo or Marja look as staid as Schrafft’s after a Wednesday matinee. I’ve met some excellent people on my own—so far all American, since I have no way to communicate with the French. Everyone over here is writing a novel and one of them, with whom I’ve struck up a friendship, is a nice fellow named Peter Matthiessen, who is bright and witty, knows Paris well, and won the
Atlantic Monthly
“First” contest last year. I also met Sam Goldwyn, Jr., who is a nice guy, and received from him a strange invitation to drive down to Italy with him, but I had to decline on the ground that his set and mine are not likely to see eye to eye.
^†J
Through a couple of people in New York I’m supposed to look up
Irwin Shaw
^†K
and Alice B. Toklas,
^†L
but I don’t know if I will because, as interesting as it might be to meet them, I am having a perfectly contented time on this side of the river, and I’ve heard that Shaw is something of a jerk. Oh yes, finally I saw Truman Capote in the Café Flore and he was obviously perfectly furious that no one recognized him.
^†M
This about covers everything to date and I’ll write more soon. As it is, life just drifts along, even though I get nostalgic for Durum at times—Bill

P.S. I’m going to buy a Fiat for $500

T
O
E
LIZABETH
M
C
K
EE

May 14, 1952 Paris, France

Dear Lizzie,

Thank you for the letter re Nat Turner and so on. I think I told you that I have written Saunders Redding for information but I haven’t heard from him as yet. Here is what I wish you would do, though, first try to get hold of the Drewry book somehow. Maybe Columbia has it in its library, or perhaps you can call up one of those outfits that advertise in the
Times Book Review
and say they can locate any book. I’m willing to pay anything reasonable for a copy, or the loan of one, and I’ll let you, with your instinctive feeling for reasonableness, figure out just how much seems to be reasonable. The other two books I wish you’d get for me are the Aptheker book on Negro Slave Revolts which I’d like to read even though it’s not exclusively Nat Turner, and the book by Ulrich B. Phillips.
^†N
Charge
them both to my account. In the meantime I am going to write to the Virginia State Library and see if they don’t have a copy of the Drewry book. No, on the other hand, maybe it would be better if you wrote to the Va. library in Richmond about the Drewry book, simply to avoid any possibility of duplication. I hope this doesn’t sound like too much work for you, but I really am anxious to start reading up on my next project. I’m getting more and more worked up over the thing and the way I look at it is—Hiram’s caution to the contrary—that a person should write about what excites him the most, and not about what will necessarily and neatly pigeonhole him into a certain métier.
^†O
I don’t want to be known as the J.P. Marquand of Virginia or the Scott Fitzgerald of Lost Generation II, but simply as a writer who is versatile enough to tackle anything.
^†P

As for the Willingham check, just forget about it for the moment. I’ll keep on Calder’s tail by mail until he coughs up a check.

I made the mistake of allowing my name to be carried in the Paris
Tribune
“Who Is Where” lonelyhearts column and have received about a dozen letters from people whom I haven’t the vaguest desire to meet. One of them, however, was a very nice note from K.S. Giniger of Prentice-Hall and I guess I’ll look him up because he sounds like a nice guy, though I don’t know.

I am leading a clean, well-ordered life, but won’t be entirely happy until I start writing + working again. Tell Didi I miss her very much, + will
write today or tomorrow, and also that I’m having dinner with Irwin Shaw, if that’s of any interest.

Love + Kisses—Bill

P.S. I hope you sent the other copies of the English edition to the people I listed

T
O
W
ILLIAM
C. S
TYRON
, S
R
.

May 20, 1952 Paris, France

Dear Pop,

If I don’t forget, I’m enclosing a copy of the review of
Lie Down
in “Punch,” which was sent to me from England.
^†Q
Excellent reviews in England, I’ve been told, but not much in regard to sales.

Dorothy wrote me that I was runner-up in a
Saturday Review of Literature
poll concerning Who Should have Won the Pulitzer Prize. Not bad, all things considered.

Thanks for the list of books on Nat Turner. Things seem to be getting a bit out of hand, however, in my search for background material, since I’ve written to a couple of other people—namely my agent and Prof. J. Saunders Redding, the Negro professor of English at Hampton Institute—for material, and I’m afraid that all sorts of unnecessary duplications might result. Would it be asking too much to have you either call Mr. Redding (his number is in the Hampton phone book) or talk to him, and in any case get together and figure out just what each of you are going to send? He wrote me that he had a bunch of stuff he was going to send and I don’t know just how much of that might be on the list you sent from the State Library. At any rate, I think you’d enjoy very much talking to him—a striking, forceful, but thoroughly affable gentleman whose only
difference from any other human, so far as I can tell, is in the pigmentation of his skin—and I think also that he’d be in a good position to tell you which items on the list are valuable, which ones are not, and which ones, if any, he’s already sent me. Pop, don’t exert yourself over this thing, but if you find that it’s no strain, and that you enjoy doing it—including seeing Mr. Redding, whom I think you’d like—well then that’s fine. For my part, I would like to have photostats of practically all the articles on the list, if you can do it without too much trouble. #1 Redding says he’s going to get for me. I think you can ignore #7, since I have no particular desire to read a fictionalized account, and #6, which I’ve already read and is rather slight. #10 is starred as unavailable for loan, so you can forget that; but all the rest look interesting and I’d like to have them if possible. Perhaps Mr. Redding could tell you which ones of the other items are intrinsically valuable and which ones merely repeat.
^†R

Pop, one thing I wish you’d do for me and that is not to bruit it about too much concerning what I’m planning to write about. I don’t mind anyone knowing that I’m working, but for some reason I really prefer to be a bit secretive about the nature of the project; could you just say from now on, to people who don’t already know, that I’m doing something “historical” on “Virginia in slave times,” or something like that?

As for the article in the
Michigan Alumni Bulletin
, I enjoyed it very much; it was one of the few things Cousins ever said that made any sense.
^†S
This idea about “noble themes” does have some truth in it; the only catch is that a writer never must search for noble themes; he creates the noble theme himself. Nat Turner, for instance, is on the surface pretty much a bastard through and through; however I subscribe to the theory that all people, no matter how bad—and that includes the Loftises—have a scrap of nobility in them; it’s not the writer’s job to particularly exalt humans or make them noble if they’re not all noble, but the writer is shirking his duty, and is not much of a writer, if he fails to show that scrap of nobility, the scrap varying in size according to the person. I hope that when I’m through with Nat Turner (and God, I know it’s going to be a long, hard job) he will not be either a Great Leader of The Masses, as the stupid, vicious
jackass of a Communist writer might make him out—or a perfectly satanic demagogue, as the surface historical facts present him, but a living human being of great power and great potential who somewhere, in his struggle for freedom and for immortality, lost his way. And that is the human condition and no one is even half-noble unless he deserves it and
no
one is all noble, even a saint. Which is where Mr. Cousins is wrong.