Selected Letters of William Styron (59 page)

T
O
J
AMES
J
ONES

December 9, 1966 Roxbury, CT

Dear James:

 … Fine called me the other day to ask if I would let him quote from my letter to you (a copy of which he sent me) for purposes of plugging, advertising and other forms of commerce. I thought it over for a good while and decided not to, for the following two reasons which I hope will not offend you.

a) Most importantly, I honestly don’t think it looks good for two writers who are as well-known as friends as we are to give each other such a scratch on the back in public. I meant every favorable thing I said about the book, and more, and am willing to stand by more words, but I simply think that it lacks style and grace for me to plug you, and I would feel exactly the same if the positions were reversed. My feeling about this is reinforced by

b) the fact that you shouldn’t and don’t
need
such a plug. The book is a powerful and original piece of work, you are a famous and venerated and well-established writer; therefore, for me to give you such a plug would seem under the circumstances to be at best superfluous and at worst a
form of special pleading. The book should—and will—be able to stand by its own self.

I have no criticism of your criticism of my criticism except to say that your howls of dismay won’t budge me an inch from my stand about some minor misgivings about what to me is a major and powerful work. I certainly didn’t make my criticisms lightly or facetiously, and the fact that you call me “off my nut” and “full of shit” doesn’t change my belief that—in terms of the two or three matters I brought up—you were not in the book artistically consistent. You may be right and I may, of course, be utterly wrong, but I don’t think so, and I wouldn’t have been honest if I hadn’t told you what I thought. For me the two things I mentioned didn’t come through convincingly, that’s all. Otherwise, I think it’s a tremendously powerful piece of fiction, and I’ll stand by every favorable thing I’ve said to you about it and every passionate feeling I have for it.

Rose went to T. Capote’s masqued ball which was the shriek of New York, but I didn’t, being too involved in my own creative writing.
^‡mm
She got rubbed by a couple of masqued faggots, and danced with Henry Ford, but that’s about all.
^‡nn
Andy Warhol was there in his own face.

We had a fine time with Monique and Jean-François, both in N.Y. and up here where they spent part of Thanksgiving week-end, but I guess you all have heard the gossip by now. Great folks, I think, even if they are French.…

I hope you understand about my reluctance to quote from my letter. Again, I think the book is an absolute knockout, as they used to say in the twenties, and you should be relaxing serenely on your laurels.

Merry Christmas to all etc.…

Bill

T
O
D
ONALD
H
ARINGTON

December 24, 1966 Roxbury, CT

Dear Don:

Just a brisk, brief note on Christmas Eve to wish you all a verrie merrie Xmas and all that bullshit. Our house has turned into a hideous materialistic gang-bang of a Gehanna worthy of the wildest dreams of a Byzantine Santa Claus with tons of junk, candy canes, and all sorts of obscene trash littering the premises from basement to attic. You may read in the Putney
Bugle
of all sorts of wild, demented, violent acts coming out of our Roxbury homestead. My latest ploy is just before bedtime to tell wonderful Yuletide stories to the kiddies about Santa turning at midnight into a hideous man-eating bat and the sugarplum fairies being humped by His reindeer.

My lousy record as a correspondent may be laid to the fact that I have exhausted myself trying to finish
Nat
so it will be delivered to the Crystal Palace on Madison Avenue sometime in January.
^‡oo
I will do better after all this is over. I figure that maybe this is my last novel. They take too much out of me to be commensurate with the spiritual rewards. Stick maybe to short stories—that was a damn lovely one of yours in
Esquire
, incidentally—but even the worth of shorties is a moot point.

I’ll try to take you up on that kind invitation to visit, after this monster is laid to rest. Maybe you could find me a Vt. Snowbank to die in.

I hope you’re over your Mammoth Writer’s Block. Take it from an old hand: they’ll keep coming but you’ll always get over each one.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night,

Yrs in Kris

Kringle

Bill

T
O
M
R
. B
EAN
^‡pp

January 13, 1967 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mr. Bean:

I am old-fashioned enough so that most of my faith still comes from the poetry and passion of the Bible. So that when I recall the words—

I am moved to a belief in the eternal, in which one’s death is only a necessary part of the great design.

Warmest regards,

William Styron

T
O
D
ON
C
ONGDON
^‡qq

January 21, 1967 Roxbury, CT

Dear Don:

This is just to let you know
THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER
is finished and that I am delivering the manuscript to Bob Loomis at Random House sometime during the middle of the coming week—the 25
^th
or 26
^th
probably. Bob will be making Xerox copies and I’m sure he’ll give you one as soon as they are available. You may be interested to know that
Life
magazine is very eager to see the manuscript with the view in mind to break a precedent (except for Hemingway’s
OLD MAN
) and run fiction, in this case an excerpt as long as 7,000 words. The girl up there who is handling this matter, and who approached me about it, is an old friend named Jozefa Stuart, and she’ll be the one for you to talk to.
Harper’s
also
is definitely planning to run a really big amount (45–50,000 words) coinciding with the publication of the book next fall. I don’t know yet how that will conflict with
Life
. Perhaps that will become one of your pleasant problems.

Anyway, the book is done and I’m off to the Bahamas around February 3d, feeling somewhat like Manchester
^‡rr
at his poorest. Call me up here before then if you need any more information.

Yours,
    
Bill

T
O
C
ARLOS
F
UENTES

January 28, 1967 Roxbury, CT

Dear Carlos:

Many thanks for your New Year’s greeting card which just arrived by slow boat. It came at a propitious moment, since I have just finished
Nat Turner
and am passionately ready for a vacation. I hope I’ll be able to see you when I make my European landfall; right now, I tentatively plan to arrive in Paris around March 1
^st
. Will you be there? I noticed that your card was from Courmayeur,
^‡ss
but I seem to have lost your Paris address. If by the time I send this I haven’t found it, it will go c/o Mexican Embassy in Rome, and I’ll hope it gets to you.

I expect that I’ll stay in Paris a week or ten days, then Rose will be coming over to join me, along with a couple of my multitudinous offspring, and we’ll go down to Rome for a while—though I prefer Paris at that time of the year. I don’t think I’ll try Moscow now, although Yevtushenko who was here a few weeks ago almost broke my arm trying to get me to go. Basically, I think it’s simply a matter of eating Russian pickles when I could be having coq au vin.…

I’m looking forward to the Richeburg. Please turn out the Viet Cong flags at Orly, and if you get this letter before I write the Joneses tell them that Beelly’s coming.

Abrazos,

Bill

PS. I didn’t see the Lukács article, but if you’ve got a copy of
La Quinzaine littéraire
please save it for me.
^‡tt

T
O
R
OBERT
P
ENN
W
ARREN

February 21, 1967 Roxbury, CT

Dear Red:

After many bumblings about, much confusion and Angst attending upon the completion of
Nat
, I have finally crystallized my head into some semblance of sanity and have decided to accompany the Warrens to Cairo—instead of copping out, as Rose I think told you I was doing in her last letter to you. Those pharaohs and things really seem irresistible, especially in the company of you all, so I have among other things written to Mr. Rodenbeck at the Univ. of Cairo to put me down too as a cultural emissary. I hope you will pardon my shilly-shallying and procrastination, but believe me it was book-end madness.

We won’t be able to come to Magagnosc, I’m afraid, but if it’s all right we’ll be meeting you in Rome on March 22
^nd
or anytime after. Rose tells me to tell you that our hangout there is to be the Hotel de la Ville (next to the Hassler, you’ll recall) and that is where you’ll be able to get in touch with us. Then we’ll all take off for Cairo and the old Nile. I’m leaving here for Paris next Wednesday, March 1, and my address there will be c/o James Jones, 10 Quai d’Orléans, 4e. The telephone no. there is DANton 18-50 and you should be able to call with ease if you want to get in touch about
the trip. And maybe I’ll be able to come to Magagnosc after all, if I can take off from the nit-picking last work on the MS. Rose will be coming over 8 or 9 days after I do.

Your poems which I read in leisurely fashion on a gorgeous Bahamian beach are still continuing to be the best and most beautiful you have ever done. I was enormously moved by them and I hope you will allow me to talk with you at length about them when I see you. The Valery poem strikes me as especially great, but all are wonderful and I treasure them.
^‡uu
More about them anon.

Thanks for mentioning Marc Ratner to me.
^‡vv
He has already gotten in touch with me about the book he is doing on me, and I have written him back saying that Random House would send him galleys of
Nat
when available.

First reactions to
Nat
are fine, not the least financially—the Book-of-the-Month Club just paid $150,000 for the book and that is quite a hunk of cash to earn off a slave’s black back. I hear it’s the highest they have paid for a novel. Anyway the book no longer feels a part of me, and I’ll be glad when this last minute nit-picking is done.

Best love to all and will see you soon,

Bill                        

T
O
H
OPE
L
ERESCHE

February 21, 1967 Roxbury, CT

Dear Hope:

First news first. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which of course is our most prestigious book club, has just bought
The Confessions of Nat Turner
for
$150,000
! This according to my sources at Random House is the largest sum they have ever paid for a novel (as distinct from non-fiction). Interestingly enough too, in order to get the book they had to
outbid the Literary Guild, whose offer of $100,000 was the highest
they
had ever made for a novel until then. Am I right in assuming this might be intriguing grist for Tom Maschler’s mill? Needless to say, I am both flabbergasted and delighted and I just wanted you to know.

I got your letter and noted the number of galleys that you wanted, and of course will have Random House send them to you as soon as they are ready; this should be in six weeks or so. Publication date is not definite, but it will probably be in late September or early October.

On March 1
^st
(next Wednesday) I am flying to Paris and will be staying for a couple of weeks with Jim Jones; I can be reached there. I am taking with me a Xerox copy of the edited and corrected manuscript for Michel Mohrt to read at Gallimard.
^‡ww
This is the only thing I’ve done in terms of foreign publication and I hope it meets with your approval. It is mainly for Gallimard’s general perusal; naturally I will want them to print from the corrected final galleys. They are eager to get it translated, however, and publish simultaneously with the American edition, and this is OK with me.

Perhaps I’ll be able to come to England for a brief visit while I’m staying with Jim; if not, is there a chance that you might be coming to Paris? In any case, let us stay in touch. I hope I don’t sound presumptuous when I say that everybody in whom I have any confidence here feels that the book is going to be very big indeed, and I mean everywhere.

All best wishes,

Bill S.      

T
O
C. V
ANN
W
OODWARD

April, 1967 Egypt

Dear Vann:

Traveling up the Nile to Aswan with the Warrens on an old paddle-wheeler that looks like the
Robert E. Lee
.
^‡xx
Scenery is magnificent, the ruins unbelievable, the food somewhat deficient in everything except flies. Rose and I will be staying in Italy until early May. Our address is Hotel de la Ville, Via Sistina, Rome. Hope you had a good trip to Grenada.

Love to Glenn,

All best. Bill S.

T
O
R
OBERT
P
ENN
W
ARREN

May 24, 1967 Roxbury, CT

Dear Red:

Well, we had a fine trip back to the land of the big PX, I sitting next to the most suave and elegant Italian I have ever met, a gentleman who had been (I observed) reading William James and who fell into discourse with me about chamber music. When he got off the plane in Lisbon he handed me his card, which revealed him to be the Italian manager of the Coca-Cola Export Corporation. He sure was a thousand miles from Babbitt.