Selected Letters of William Styron (51 page)

December 27, 1962 Milford, CT

Bennett Cerf knows what it all means but he won’t tell us.

Bill, Rose, Susanna, Polly, Tom

T
O
C. V
ANN
W
OODWARD

January 16, 1963 Roxbury, CT

Dear Vann:

Many thanks for letting me read this book, which I did at one long day-long sitting.
^*ss
Mainly because it is inscribed, I am hastening to send it back to you. I shouldn’t want anything to happen to it.

All in all, I think it’s a splendid job. Every now and then I must confess I got a little hung up on some of the more recondite psychoanalytic allusions, but this was more than overbalanced by Erikson’s own almost intuitive insights. In terms of Nat Turner the effect is, as you surmised, quite startling. Read for instance the paragraph I have marked on p. 66 (I have left your margins otherwise intact): if you substitute the word “master” for “father” and think of the passage in terms of a rebellious slave rather than Luther, then Erikson’s last phrase—“a deadly combination”—has connotations which send a chill up the spine.

At any rate, my very great thanks. I’m sorry you couldn’t make it this week-end, but either Rose or I will be in touch again very soon.

Best regards,

Bill      

T
O
R
OBERT
P
ENN
W
ARREN

January 22, 1963 Roxbury, CT

Dear Red:

Thanks for the communication about the National Institute.
^*tt
If it’s O.K. with you, I’ll sort of gradually ease up on it, and assemble some quotable quotes from the thick-headed critics. So far as I know, they’ve never said anything nice about me in England (seriously), but as for France—
quelle merveille
! Anyway, I’ll try to get them arranged, and I do appreciate your thinking about me in this way.

Yours in Christ,

B.

PS: The poems were
truly
fine. Rose, indeed, was so bemused and impressed that she stayed up half the night writing a poem of her own.

T
O
J
AMES
J
ONES

April 22, 1963 Roxbury, CT

Dear James:

Mainly on account of the fact that I’ve got to get Nat Turner done, and I write so exceedingly slow, I’ve decided to forgo Plimpton’s invitation to Lago di Como, although the prospect of being there with you would be very pleasant. I had great fantasies of dallying with Moss on the poop deck of a little
barca
while you were bubbling away somewhere in the depths of the lake. But art comes before pleasure, and so I have regretfully and manfully made this decision. Is there any chance you will be coming through New York on your way to the Caribbean, or on your way back. We’d like to get a chance to see you.

I was at an awful sort of literary festival at Princeton this past weekend, full of pimply sophomores and dew-snatched little girls from Vassar waiting for the Answer. Why I do this sort of thing is beyond me. I also
saw Mailer at a party. We didn’t speak but at one point he sort of jostled me, and muttered “Excuse me”—a pointless bit of 10-year-old childish hostility. Fuck him.

There is a guy I grew up with in Virginia, my age, who is a surgeon in the Army at, I believe, Orleans. His name is Leon Edwards, he’s very well read and bright, most simpatico, and I think you would get along very well with him. He’s only been in France six or eight months, I think he’s a major now, and he’s only in the Army because they’ve footed the bill for his surgical training ever since he left Harvard. Anyway, I’ve taken the liberty of telling him to get in touch with you. Ordinarily I wouldn’t sic strangers on you but this guy is, I think, someone rather special—his wife’s fine too—and I hope you get together. I expect he’ll be in France for another year at least.

Love to all your gang, and let me hear from you if you come over to this continent by way of New York or vicinity.

Love,

B.

Ps: Schwartz’s Calliope record has come through, and they did a fine job, very handsome too.
^*uu
You should be getting yours soon.

T
O
J
OHN
D
ODDS

May 8, 1963 Roxbury, CT

Dear John:

I know full well that in California the accent is on youth, and the most callow stripling is granted powers which in a saner, sager age were reserved only for the mature; nonetheless, I think that for these Hollywood lawyers to expect the signatures of my children is a bit much—and probably even illegal. Susanna, just turned eight, could manage some sort of ragged scrawl, I guess, but I have grave doubts about Polly, who if you give her a six by eight sheet of cardboard can get a semblance of her first name down
in orange crayon, but the orthography of “Styron” is still beyond her. As for old Tom, now three, he can make a splendid runny mess with a melting Popsicle, but I’m afraid that the manipulation of anything so complicated as a fountain pen exceeds his present capabilities. Kindly convey to Henry Jaffe Enterprises, Inc., this information, stressing the fact that though they are Connecticut children, and consequently retarded by California standards, their father is all the more determined not to submit them to such a ludicrous ordeal. And that is that.

I can make hardly more sense of the
second
letter about sending notices and payments to a specified address. Will you try to figure this out, and let me know what kind of letter they want me to sign.

All the best,

Bill      

T
O
J
AMES
J
ONES

June 6, 1963 Roxbury, CT

Dear James: Perhaps the following communication won’t interest you in the slightest, but I thought I’d tell you nonetheless.

This afternoon I got a phone call from Gay Talese (the
N.Y. Times
fellow who rents me my N.Y. apartment, and who writes a lot for
Esquire
); his tone was of high dudgeon and outrage.
^*vv
He told me that he had gotten an advance look at the forthcoming July issue of
Esquire
, which has our interview, also another nobly-conceived dissection of his fellow writers by Mailer.
^*ww
Apparently this time Mailer has stooped to an all-time low, even for one who has been flopping around in the gutter as long as Norman.
The Thin Red Line
according to Talese comes off relatively clean and
unspattered: you are no longer “the world’s worst writer of prose,” or something like that, and the book in the end is highly praised, if most grudgingly. The bulk of Mailer’s hatred is reserved for me. An all-out, slavering attack on
Set This House on Fire
: but Talese said the thing that bugged and horrified him the most was the personal venom, which has to do with both you and me. I am paraphrasing Talese’s paraphrase of the article, but the gist is this: during the time Norman lived up here in Connecticut, and we saw something of each other, I spent a great deal of time ridiculing
Some Came Running
, running the book down in general and poking fun at it. Well, maybe I did. I was quite nervous about you in those days—not knowing you, for one thing—and besides being exceedingly envious of someone who had muscled through with such prodigious energy that second-novel barrier. My wife Rose, the wife, who is so honest about such matters, is not at all sure: she distinctly recalls Mailer’s hatred and envy of you (she has always been one of the greatest fans of
Running
) and remembers a two-hour argument with Mailer in the kitchen … in which she defended the book vainly against Mailer’s snarls and sneers. All this, if I’m not mistaken, took place during the time before I got to know you at all well, and after Mailer had written you whatever swinish thing it was he wrote you, and was still in a dreadful stew about you.

I had not intended to make this letter even this long. I want to make a couple of points though. My wife Rose, the student of human nature (and by God she really is), has always felt that Mailer’s pent-up homosexuality has always been directed at you, you being the cock-object, or maybe he likes to take it up the ass, who knows; anyway, I believe this is true and I also believe now that the real reason for him having written me that dreadful letter five years ago was that you and I were becoming friends, and he was insanely jealous. This is awful stuff to talk about, but we are dealing with a lunatic. At any rate I’m convinced that this jealousy, combined with a bitter envy of both of our talents, has been at the root of his hatred.

Talese said that, to him at least, the article looked like a foolish attempt to break up a friendship, and that the whole thing looked especially grotesque in the light of our mutual interview in the same issue. Also, according to him, what seemed to bug Mailer was the reference in
The Thin Red Line
to “Styron’s Acres,” hence his loathsome little faggoty reference to the time many years ago when we sat around “Styron’s Acres” ridiculing
Running
.

All I wanted this letter to do is to take some of the curse off reading such foulness in print, cold, for the first time, as you will when you get a copy of the magazine. My feelings about Mailer are too low to have him demean me into a position of having to protest my enormous admiration for your talent and great affection for yourself. So, love to you and Moss and my young mistress Kaylie.

B.

PS: I am having to prove, through endless documentation, to some God damned Swiss insurance company that the God damned Mercedes really lives no longer in France, but gradually we are straightening the matter out.

T
O
L
EW
A
LLEN

June 11, 1963 Roxbury, CT

Dear Lewie: I write you this after midnight, in the grisly first hour of my 38
^th
year, though I’m not asking you to sympathize with me. Actually, all I wanted to say was that I thought
Flies
a simply splendid movie. I saw it when Al showed it to the Rumsey kids and was deeply affected by it. I’ll wait until I see you next to blurt out all the details of my enthusiasm, but I do think you really did yourself and Golding and everyone who cares for good films proud.
^*xx
I’ll never forget that touching Piggy, and that kids’ choir singing the
Kyrie
is an absolute triumph. Other things, too, which I’ll talk to you about, but meanwhile it was swell and I also hope you make beaucoup $$$$$$.

—Wm.

T
O
R
UST
H
ILLS

June 11, 1963 Roxbury, CT

Dear Rust,

About a week ago, quite a few days subsequent to my talk with Byron Dobell
^*yy
about doing a popular music column for
Esquire
, I had a conversation with a girl at the University of Connecticut, who lives near here and who had taken copious notes on Mailer’s speech up there a month or more ago. The first part of this speech is in
Esquire
this month; according to this student, the piece in
Esquire
—which I read—is a literal transcription of what Mailer read at Storrs, and therefore it is logical to assume that the second part will be more or less a literal copy, too: at least I am going on this assumption. Having spoken at the University myself a few weeks after Mailer, I was hardly left ignorant of the substance of this speech/article. I know he attacks
Set This House on Fire
with great gusto and style, all of which rather pleased and tickled me, inasmuch as at least part of the book is an assault on everything Mailer represents. (The French, I might add, have been the first to point this out, for although they don’t know Mailer from Adam they know all too well and from deadly experience the effects of his perennial philosophy, and that is why I know—from far right to far left—they have dug the book.) So I needed no more proof than that Mailer had leveled an onslaught against the book to reinforce my feeling that I had hit him where he lived. Therefore, although it is never really pleasant to have your work attacked, from whatever source, I could not really feel unhappy that Mailer was lambasting the book, and could even welcome his sneers.

Until I had talked to this student, however, I had not realized that the article carries a lot of disgusting and poisonous baggage about myself, and “Styron’s Acres,” and Jim Jones—all written, so far as I can gather from the girl’s notes, in Mailer’s most engaging Westbrook Pegler cum Joe McCarthy style, and serving no other effect than to try and humiliate and disgrace me personally and to undermine my friendship with Jones. I have not read the article as yet, so perhaps I am off base; the girl, however, who
is a combination of fresh young naivete and stony shrewdness, said: “He sounded like a vicious little faggot.”
^*zz

You may wonder where this prolix introduction is leading. At first I must admit that my indignation at
Esquire
was quite intense, but it quickly wore off. My respect for free speech—and all the pious banalities attending thereupon—is so great that my initial reaction, which was and in a way still is one of revulsion, was tempered by a kind of grudging admiration that
Esquire
should allow a convicted wife-stabber and, to my mind, moral imbecile so captiously and naggingly to lucubrate on the conduct of others. I intend no reply to Mailer, personal or in print, for unless I am mistaken or have been misled, Mailer is now spinning out the kind of rope whereby men hang themselves. Nor do I have any final complaint against
Esquire
, which I don’t think I need say has my considerable respect. But the fact is that I simply cannot write for a magazine, and retain my self-esteem, when I am exposed to this kind of personal abuse and viciousness. Therefore, I wish you would let it be known, with all good-will possible, that I will not be available as a contributor so long as Mailer is writing for
Esquire
. I’m sorry that this happened just at the moment when the project that Byron Dobell and I were working out seemed so interesting and exciting; but I suspect it won’t be forever.