Selected Letters of William Styron (56 page)

As for J. Dodds, I wouldn’t give it a second thought if I were you, since the simple fact is that at the time of that party he was secretly getting ready to quit the agent business anyway.
^†uu
I suppose you know that he kicked over the agency and is now vice-president at G.P. Putnam’s. It surely had nothing about it personal, nothing to do with you. I was as shocked as you were to learn he had quit, mainly because he had been for me a truly excellent agent and I felt his departure severely. Von Auw, incidentally, is reputed to be top-notch, so consider yourself in good hands.
^†vv

I will soon have two-thirds of Nat Turner or thereabouts finished and as soon as I get it copied on Arthur Miller’s Thermoplex machine and then typed up I will send it to you for your appraisal and sage counsel. I blow
hot and cold on the bastard—as I do with everything I’ve written—at one moment certain it has things in it as good as anything being done now, and at other moments thinking it’s the kind of pretentious junk that little pricks like that guy on
The New Yorker
will (justifiably, this time) have a field day with. Ah well, see for yourself, I’ll try to get it to you in the next month or so, and hope you will be kind with it.

Take care of yourself and trust in Jesus.

Yrs Faithfully
    
Bill

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN

February, 1966
^†ww
Roxbury, CT

I shall certainly not expect to see your shining face at this event, which I am told is a Godawful bore. However, I did want to apprise you of my election to this august body, which was adorned by Mark Twain, Eugene O’Neill + Faulkner and was shunned (doubtless wisely) by Hemingway, Mencken and Edmund Wilson. I only can hope that this does not mean my premature fossilization among the Alexandrian poets and ancient architects, but I think at least it is interesting that my personal statistician has uncovered the fact that I am the only live graduate of Duke to be honored and maybe the only graduate period. Could this astonishing albeit very unimportant fact be true?

T
O
J
AMES AND
G
LORIA
J
ONES

February 28, 1966 Roxbury, CT

Dear James and Moss:

The enclosed clipping will describe what I’ve been up to lately, politically.
^†xx
It was an incredible evening, with a huge crowd of peace-lovers sweating in the armpits—and that was the trouble, it was preaching to the faithful and the already-converted, but anyway I don’t think it could have done any harm, and if it got noticed in the foreign press (which has the mistaken notion that intellectual opinion in the US&A cuts a lot of ice) then so much the better. Brother Norman was there, as you can see, but we managed to keep out of each other’s way, though I accidentally got close enough to notice the fact that, aside from his obesity, he has a case of mean malevolent halitosis.
^†yy

We received Moss’ snotty little postcard, which made us guilty, and also the letter about your being surprised in the act of coitus by Louis Malle and Marlene Dietrich.
^†zz
What you never explained was whether you disengaged yourself enough to put down the telephone and ask them over for a drink. Such items are important. We never get such kind of calls up here. We hear from the school principal every now and then, and Tom Guinzburg calls every now and then, wanting a date with Rose, but that’s just about it.…

I’ve been working my ass off on this novel (every time Jim sends word about having finished his 45
^th
chapter it sends me into spasms of productivity), and am now very close to what is loosely called the home stretch. I have had to fuck around with the plot quite a bit, and change the setting to Kansas and bring in a quadruple shotgun murder,
^†AA
but basically I’ve kept the integrity of the book intact and it should sell quite a few copies.

That was an absolutely lovely time in Jamaica and we have missed you
very much. We can’t wait for your sojourn with us at Martha’s Vineyard. After three years of legal shenanigans, the house became ours today and this is a sort of celebration. Please keep us informed about your arrival in June, etc. It seems a long time off, but God how time passes.

We’ve done very little socializing recently, mainly, because of the book. We did go to one party at Steve Smith’s in N.Y. (JFK’s brother-in-law); the whole clan was there, Bobby, Teddy, Jackie etc., and someone made a perfectly horrible and true remark about Jackie: “She is the most interesting 16-year-old in America.”
^†BB
I had a long talk with Bobby, and God knows it’s hard to believe but I think he is shaping up as a kind of fantastic committed liberal politician who just might be the one who will get us out of Viet Nam. I don’t mean to say that I’m completely sold on him yet, but he’s certainly come a long way and is weirdly impressive.

Rose told me to tell you what she has written to Jerry what’s her name Gibbs at Bonwit Teller and that you should get the refill for your toilet tissue dispenser very soon directly from the store. If you don’t, let her know.

A final note: Professor Herbert Ruhm called me up the other night from that veterinarian’s school over in New York State to tell me that he has been fired. I told him that I couldn’t care less and that as for you (he was worried about your reaction), you would probably be delighted. Then I told him to fuck off and he cried a whole lot. These academic creeps are the fucking limit.

We miss you. Keep in touch. Say hello to Mimi, Kaylie, Jamie and all the gang.

Love, Bill

T
O
J
AMES AND
G
LORIA
J
ONES

March 16, 1966 New Milford, CT

Rose enceinte la quatrième fois les hivers de Connecticut sont terriblement froids
^†CC

Bill

T
O
D
ONALD
H
ARINGTON

March 24, 1966 Roxbury, CT

Dear Don:

 … I don’t want to get your hopes up prematurely, but I’ve put you up for a grant of some kind with a worthy, well-known outfit (whose name I can’t divulge) and they might come through with some loot. I say “might” simply because there is no certainty at all but we can both pray to Jesus for his aid. Also, I am about to enter Valhalla as a junior member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which really means a form of permanent embalmment with 80-year old classical architects and arthritic painters who were once disciples of Childe Hassam and Winslow Homer.
^†DD
However, I have been told by those who are in the know that the Institute does have the singular advantage of possessing a lot of money, which is doled out at intervals rather freely to people like yourself. The sole object in becoming a member, then, is to recommend artists and writers for largesse and so as soon as I can worm my way into the inner circle I am going to try to get some of that lucre on the first train to Putney, V-T. All of these machinations will take some time, as you may imagine, so don’t expect any miracles right away.

Your test in class about
Set This House on Fire
I found wonderfully amusing but it does seem authentic and revealing. The book has gone recently
into a third edition in Germany, which pleases me, and helps corroborate your test.

I still have a few pages to go before completing the ⅔ds mark on
Nat
but expect to have it typed up before too long. I’ll send you a copy. There is a small excerpt in the current
Paris Review
which you may have seen.
^†EE
After the recent Supreme Court decision I’ve been busy taking all the “hells” and “damns” out of the manuscript.
^†FF

Keep cool with Jesus.

Yrs Bill

T
O
D
ONALD
H
ARINGTON

April 22, 1966 Roxbury, CT

Dear Don:

Your letter on
Nat
was very valuable to me. In case, God forbid, that you ever decide to cease being a writer of fiction you could surely take up the trade of critic and beat everyone now working in the field by a mile or more. Speaking of critics, while I think of it Bob Loomis called the other day to say that he had seen an advance copy of the
Herald Tribune Book Week
, in which John Aldridge’s new collection of criticism is reviewed by Robie Macauley.
^†GG
It seems that that
Playboy
essay on me which you read (and I didn’t) is included in the book, and Macauley really takes out after Aldridge because of the piece, using it as example of critical revisionism and sloppiness at its worst. That tickles me, because it only goes to show how personal animosity and jealousy in a critic
will
get found out after all.

But to get back to your letter—it was
fine
, really excellent and I appreciate it. Appreciate it not because it scratched my back or buttered me up but because it did neither of these things and was an honest, pointed and above all deeply understanding critique of the book. No one I know could have as well comprehended what I am trying to say in this work, and it gave me a great glow of hope when I saw that you, whose judgment and sensibility I have come to trust so well, had absorbed the plan and the structure and the spirit and had been affected by the story. Also I’m grateful to you for two other things—the words of criticism which were absolutely just (I shall certainly eliminate that bothersome occasional trait of Nat referring to the reader as “you,” also I will clear up the question of Rev. Eppes being bugger or buggee, and other such matters as you brought up), but even more importantly the way in which you have so clearly seen how all of this background stuff prefigures as necessity in the killing of Margaret Whitehead. Your theory about
I love you, but I am forbidden to put it into you
, etc. seems so sound as to provide an almost miraculous solution to Part III, and I would be indebted to you for that if for nothing else. Doubtless I would have arrived at it through toil, but how much nicer it is to have the obvious stated so simply, as you have done. It leaves me free to address myself to 1000 other technical matters.

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

T
O
J
AMES AND
G
LORIA
J
ONES

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
.

T
O
M
IKE
M
EWSHAW
^†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.