Selected Letters of William Styron (5 page)

Well, I’d better close now. Give my love to Eliza, and write soon.

Your son,

Bill, Jr.

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

July 26, 1944 Duke University

Dear Pop,

Please excuse the long delay in correspondence. I’ve been rather busy of late. My three English courses have been keeping me on the ball. Not only do we have to read the prescribed text, but we also have to do outside reading and, while interesting, it eats up the time considerably.

I’ve just finished another story. It’s real short, and while it’s not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be, it is an incident taken from “early childhood” and might prove of some interest to you.
^j
If I can find a large envelope I’ll send it and the other short sketch I was telling you about to you.

I’ve just about decided not to write any more. Each time I sit down to write I usually have a good idea in mind, but the idea turns up flooie and the story consequently ends up in a lot of drivel.

In reading a biography of Wordsworth, the author mentions that in
Wordsworth’s village there were two thieves, very brutal characters. One was a doting old man of 90, the other was his grandson—aged 3. They would steal slyly hand in hand into the fruit market and stealthily steal all sorts of fruit and candies. Unknown to them, the villagers were watching their every move and, of course, instead of condemning them, looked upon their malefactions with gentleness and pity. As an idea for a story, I don’t think this has ever been worked upon and, if I get sufficient incentive, I think I’ll try my hand at it. I can think of no more touching or pathetic a scene.
^k

Things around here are about as usual. Eat, study, sleep.

I’m doing very well in all my subjects. Made a “B” in the last Physics quiz which, I think, will take me off the black list.

I’d better sign off now. Why don’t you send me the plot of that story you were telling me about?

Give my love to Eliza.

Your son,
    Bill jr.

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

July 27, 1944 Duke University

Dear Pop,

I got your letter this morning, and agree with you that the plot has opportunities for greatness, if handled properly. However, there are a few very tough obstacles which must be eliminated. Since Mary, or “Jenny Field,” as I have named her, is a female and the central character, and I’ll have to handle the narrative from her point of view, it may prove extremely difficult to get the feeling of her character from the introspective male’s point of view. Christopher Morley did it excellently in “Kitty Foyle,” and I think I can do it too. I’ve started on the outline, and plan to do it in this manner: Make it a short novel of about 20,000 words (about
the length of “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”), dividing it into 10 chapters of approximately 2,000 words each. The story, as I see it, should fall into three parts, namely, (a) Jenny at home in Guinea, (b) her life, and the various conflicts that arise at the hospital, and (
C
) the finale in the South Pacific.
^l

But still more complications arise. In a novel of this sort, one must obey the certain rules of technicality which crop up. Not ever having been a nurse, or overseas, I would hesitate to describe life in either place. So I’ll have to do some research. First, find out from Elizabeth the following things:

The rest, I think, I can find out from the library and from my friends at Duke Hospital.

Right now, the plan as a whole seems to be taking good form in my mind, and I think that if I do a good job on it, work hard, it might turn out to be something. However, I won’t know until I’ve finished it. I’ll start on the first part, and you send me the information. With careful revision, it should be finished in a month and a half.

Thanks a lot for the idea, and I’ll keep in touch with you as to my progress.

Your son,
    Bill jr.

Ask Eliza to tell you of any typical class-room incidents which have reflected the general ignorance of a country girl. Please tell her also, that
anything
she can tell me about nurse training I can use.

Styron arrived at Parris Island for boot camp in October 1944. He was almost immediately confined to the urinary ward of the base’s hospital when his blood falsely tested positive for syphilis. After a stay of more than two weeks, Styron was informed that he actually had trench mouth and was allowed to resume training
.
^m

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

November 25, 1944 Parris Island, SC

Dear Pop,

I received your letter today, and was very glad to hear from you. I have not yet gotten the underwear, but I imagine that they will arrive in a day or two.

Today I fired the M1 rifle for the first time, and I am now firmly convinced that it is without a doubt the finest small-bore weapon in the world. Its accuracy and power are unbelievable until you actually fire one. The M1 has a chamber pressure of 32,000 lbs. per sq. inch, and yet it has a very slight recoil. It gives one almost a sense of exhilaration to fire one—the sense of power it gives you is uncanny. It is semi-automatic, and will fire as fast as the trigger is pulled (squeezed, I mean); it fires, extracts, ejects the cartridge, and reloads in 1/40 of a second. Of course by now we’ve learned the nomenclature and functioning backward and forward, but it is rather complicated. Even as complicated as it is, though, we can field strip completely and reassemble the rifle in less than a minute. Another interesting feature of the weapon is the fact that it not only fires a clip of eight rounds as fast as the trigger is pulled, but automatically ejects the empty clip after the eight rounds are fired. While I’ve gotten off to an excellent start, I think, in learning my positions, trigger squeeze, windage, etc., it’s going to take quite a bit of practice before I can fire expert.

I’m glad you wrote me what you did in your last letter. Frankly, I was very worried when I was in the hospital for fear I had syphilis; and of course I was very relieved when I heard that the positive Kahn came as a
result of trench mouth. If I had had the disease, I wouldn’t have known where it could have come from, for, although I’m not exactly what one could term an angel, I have always taken extreme precaution about what sort of women I went out with. Last night when I first started to write this letter, I wrote a couple of pages attempting to explain my views on the idea of morality. After rereading it, I tore it up because it really makes no difference to you or anyone else what my moral philosophy is. I’m probably not old enough to have such a philosophy. I know this for a fact, though—that the morality which we have in a so-called “moral” society is the weakest leg that civilization has to stand upon. The religion of the Church, which is the basis for morality, is a religion of hypocrisy, and each man should realize that the good life is a life of
Good Will
, a life of Love and Loneliness (as Thomas Wolfe would say), and not the fanatical adherence to a Book, most of which is a gruesome melange of cruelty and pagan cosmology. The Bible begins with the fantastic story of Adam and Eve, continues through countless bloody anecdotes of “religious” warfare, torture, and human sacrifice, and ends with St. John’s laudanum dream of an absurd and impossible Apocalypse. In parts the Bible is a literary masterpiece. Nothing finer has been written than the story of Job and the sermon of Ecclesiastes, and I believe that if Christ was not the son of God, he approached such a divine kinship as nearly as any man ever born. But it is impossible for me to cling to a Faith which attempts, and succeeds in too many cases, in foisting upon the multitude a belief in so much which is utter fantasy. And it is such a religion which, throughout its history of corruption and strife, has promulgated its own standard for morality behind a thin veil of cant and hypocrisy. I have my own personal religion,
and
I believe that I am as steadfast in it as any one of our Baptist Fundamentalists. I am far from believing with George Santayana that religion is the “opiate of the poor”; but I do believe that an overdose of religious activity, in which people tend to take the syrupy tenets of the preacher and the vindictive dogmatisms of the Old Testament at face value, both deadens the mind and makes life a pretty sterile and joyless affair.
ⁿ

I have probably not made myself very clear (which makes little difference), and I imagine you are not a little disappointed in knowing that
your boy, after all those years of Sunday School, has not “turned out right”; but please don’t think that I have sunk into the slough of degeneracy. I have never as yet done anything which I was really ashamed of. After the war I’m going to write a book and tell people what I think. Carlyle, I think it was, said that the real preachers are not those who stand behind the pulpit, but who sit behind a writing desk. In the meantime I’m going to keep on thinking, loving Life as much as I can in a world where the value of life is only the value of the lead in a .30 calibre bullet, and loving my fellow man (which the greatest Preacher said was the finest virtue of all).

Well, I hope you don’t think what I’ve said sounds ostentatious for one who has not quite reached his 20
^th
birthday. I might still be a college boy know-nothing with a sophomoric attitude, but I still think quite unreservedly that I have more understanding than quite a few people of my age.

I won’t be home for Christmas. I am now in the real Marine Corps, and there is no redundance of furloughs. When and if I get to Quantico, though, I think I’ll be able to get home fairly often. I’m almost positive I’ll get a furlough before I get shipped overseas.

I’d better close now. Please give Eliza my love, and I certainly hope she’s feeling better by now.

Your son,
    Bill jr.

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN
^o

November 28, 1944 Parris Island, SC

Dear Professor Blackburn,

I am now in the hospital, so I have plenty of time to write letters.
^p
Now and then they call me to carry out the garbage, but that won’t hinder me too much.

I don’t know exactly why I’m in here, or what I’ve got, but it seems that I contracted a case of Vincent’s angina (euphemism for trench mouth), which set up some sort of reaction in my blood. I’ve been in here almost two weeks, and they’ve done nothing at all. I feel perfectly healthy, and spend most of my time reading Action Comics and well-worn copies of Zane Grey and Agatha Christie. At night I go to the movies with a V-12 from Franklin + Marshall who has the same trouble that I do.

Yesterday I went to the Post Library for the first time. It’s a very good library. They have some excellent poetry anthologies, and some fine novels. I checked out
Crime and Punishment
, and am reading it now.

I have lost my platoon, so I will have to go to the rifle range and the rest of boot camp with another platoon. I won’t like that at all, but I suppose it can’t be helped.

Bobbie Taeusch wrote and told me that you wanted to cut the “love angle” in my story.
^q
That’s perfectly okay with me, and I wish you would make what other corrections you see fit. I can write a story, but have little faculty for criticism; so you make whatever changes you think should be made. Bobbie also said something about the
Archive
wanting to print the story, which is all right with me, too.

Well, I’d better close now, since they want me to carry out the garbage.

Sincerely,

Bill Styron

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

February 14, 1945 Parris Island, SC

Dear Pop,

I received your letter, and letters of recommendation, and also the long letter you wrote me—which came belatedly through the devious channels of the Marine Corps mail system.

I especially enjoyed the letter you wrote me—the one in which you enclosed the letter from Mr. Fleet. Naturally I was very happy to learn that
my story was accepted so favorably by the Virginia Writers’ Club, and I am only sorry that my inevitable redundance of adjectives kept me from winning the prize. However, it is almost impossible for me to become what you termed
swellheaded
over any of my so-called literary achievements. Although I’m no scholar, I have read enough to know that my stories are very insignificant compared to what people have written, are writing, and what I myself would one day like to write. Especially during wartime, as I am beginning to find out, the futility of writing, art, of most everything—becomes more apparent. As you said, there is a story around every corner, and I see a million potential stories around me all the time. Now the crux of the situation lies in the fact that, to the writer, war is a gigantic, inexorable, relentlessly terrible panorama which, although at every hand fraught with mists of beauty and pathos, swirls about him so swiftly and chaotically that he is unable to find a tongue to utter his thoughts. And after the war, if he has extricated himself from the whole mess with a sound mind and body, he is usually so terribly cynical and embittered that those golden words turn to dust. To be platitudinous, it changes one’s viewpoint immensely. Like Wolfe’s Eugene Gant I see “Time, dark time, flowing by me like a river”—and that is all one can say. I intend to write some more, whenever I get a chance. That story that you have an idea for sounds very interesting, and I would like to hear the details.