Selected Letters of William Styron (62 page)

I hope you will tell Bill Hamilton that, grateful as I am for the gesture, I would really not want an honorary degree from Duke. I was about to say
any institution
, but this would not be quite truthful for in fact I was just awarded something called the Doctor of Humanities degree by Wilberforce University in Ohio.
^‡TT
Lest I sound inconsistent, I must add that Wilberforce (unless you didn’t know, which I didn’t) is the oldest Negro college in the USA; the president of the school had read
Nat
and had been impressed, and to have turned down the degree (plus an invitation to deliver the Fall Convocation address) would have seemed a studied slight on my part. Besides, I was very touched by this particular honor, its context, etc. But otherwise I simply do not believe in honorary degrees—from Duke or Yale or Princeton or wherever, at least for a writer. There is a formal, burlesque quality about such degrees that Mencken used to poke such fun at, and I’m rather in agreement with him. It has, you understand, nothing at all in particular to do with my feelings about Duke; it is rather a matter of general principle, and I hope you can get the word slyly to Bill Hamilton and that he will understand.

I hope all goes well with you and that you are relaxed and happy with the lighter schedule. I’ll be calling or writing you in the near future about (in fond hope) a flying visit to Durms.

All best to you.

Yrs ever

—B.S.

T
O
L
EW
A
LLEN

December 27, 1967 Roxbury, CT

Dear Lewie + Jay:

The
Bodyscope
and the
Love plaque
were the only lovely gifts I received out of all the tons of execrable junk that descended on me this Yuletide. They are both truly an inspiration and are hanging now, of course in my downstairs narcissistic bathroom.
^‡UU
I will ever be grateful for this remembrance, especially the
Bodyscope
which, whenever I enter the sanctuary, is always mysteriously turned to either “male” or “female genitalia.”

Love + happy New Year.

—B            

“Nat” has just hit 115,000—all white customers.

T
O
R
OBERT
P
ENN
W
ARREN

January 13, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Red:

I have nothing but the highest regard for the way you have touted my daughter and your god-daughter on to Milton Academy and I only hope she doesn’t end up caught with pot or LSD or something that might besmirch your reputation.

The poem on Audubon is truly fine, one of your loveliest. I’d love to see the others on him. We must get together soon since it has been all too long.

Your Russian translator’s name is Victor Golishev, Tishinskaia Sq. 6, Apt. 11, Moscow D-56, U.S.S.R. I’m sure he would be tickled pink, as they say, if you dropped him a note.

À bientôt,

Bill

T
O
J
AMES
J
ONES

January 17, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Jim:

This is what may happen to you, too, if you incur Max Geismar’s displeasure.
^‡VV
He wrote this in a shabby little Stalinist organ called
Minority of One
. Watch out,
you
may be next! Love to all—B.

T
O
J
AMES AND
G
LORIA
J
ONES

[Unknown] 1968
^‡WW
English Harbour, Antigua, West Indies

Dear James and Moss:

Me and Rose are cruising with Mike Nichols on Joe Levine’s 95-foot Jewish cocktail yacht complete with wall-to-wall carpeting in the bathrooms, shocking pink toilet seats, tape recorders in every room and a free blowjob every day before breakfast (you have to pay 25¢ for that, though). Down to Guadeloupe tomorrow where we hope to pick up a few French groceries. Get this: I have an
acting
part in Mike’s movie version of “Catch-22.”
^‡XX
If you want a part too, let me know; I think you might be a sadistic officer like me. Moss could be either a nurse or a whore.

I see
Widow-Maker
is high on the paperback lists in N.Y. Thornton Wilder
^‡YY
won the National Book Award; I guess us young squirts just don’t have the stuff.

—À bientôt Bill

T
O
M
IKE
M
EWSHAW

April 6, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mike:

I’m awful sorry not to have answered your kind letter about
Nat Turner
sooner—I appreciated your words enormously; I’ve been abominably busy of late, having had to go to Hollywood to “consult,” whatever that means, on the film version of the book (that is some scene) and then, recently to Milwaukee to look in on McCarthy at the Wisconsin primaries (I’m a delegate with Arthur Miller to the Conn. convention, both of us for McCarthy).
^‡ZZ

I’m delighted you got the Fulbright and I’m sure that you will swing in Paris; it still is one of my favorite places, and I’ve never found it anti-American, really, at all; the French are just a bit individualistically chilly and aloof (although by no means all of them) and Americans want people to slobber all over them like dogs. I’ve made a note to write to Jim Jones about you and to make the proper introduction; I think you’ll like him and Gloria a lot. But since you aren’t leaving for France until next fall it may be best for you to refresh my memory on this matter later on this summer; certainly it’ll be fresher in his memory if I write to him about you more or less around the time you plan to arrive in Paris.

My agent, like Donadio, is not taking on anyone new at the moment, but she may change her program this summer; I’ll let you know.
^§aa
In the meantime, I’ll sniff the situation in New York and see if I can come up with some other agent for you.

Nat
has just passed 150,000 copies, which of course pleases me. I never thought it would do that good. I envy you the Va. weather, but it’ll be here soon too. My best to old Slim.

PS: I’ve re-read your fine analysis of
Nat
and find it very insightful.

Yrs ever

Bill

Also I’m sorry about not responding to the invitation to come to Va. this spring. Somehow I just lost track of it and all of a sudden spring was here and it was too late.

T
O
H
OPE
L
ERESCHE

April 18, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Hope:

Thanks so much for the very informative letter and news of the nice amount of money coming in from all over.

I really don’t know if I can make it to London, due to a crowded schedule over here. Just
possibly
I may be able to come to London between the seventh of May and the fourteenth, but I really can’t be more definite than that at the moment. The book over here has slipped from its #1 spot on the list but is still doing well and I think has passed 160,000 or thereabouts. There is a lot of agitation among the left-wing Negroes here, who have concluded that
Nat Turner
is distorted history and racist and all that; they’ve kicked up a minor tempest in Hollywood, threatening to boycott the film version and picket, but I think it will blow over. Martin Luther King read the book just before his death, and admired it very much. We are going to get an endorsement to that effect from his widow, which I think will pretty much squelch the opposition. A Negro playwright, Louis Peterson, is doing the screenplay and is off to a good start. I was out in Hollywood a few weeks ago and was much impressed by the director (with whom I did a rough treatment), Norman Jewison—his last film,
In the Heat of the Night
, you may have seen won the Academy Award.

The Cape edition arrived safe and sound and is very handsome; my thanks. Also thanks for news of the varied publicity the book will be getting. I hope it will do well.

Faithfully,

Bill

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN

April 19, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Professor:

I am 6′0″, weigh a svelte 167#, and have a head size of 7 ¼″. I hope they outfit me in something fancy.
^§bb

By June I will be able to show you an amazing book, published by Beacon Press, called
William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Negro Writers Respond
. I’ve read the galleys and it is one long hysterical polemic from beginning to end: I’m a racist, a distorter of history, a defamer of black people, a traducer of the heroic image of “our” Nat Turner. The whole thing is a wildly contradictory diatribe, damning me for making Nat too brutal, at the same time too timorous. The whole thing utterly failing to understand the purposes of literature. Incidentally, you might look up the current issue of the
Nation
for an exchange of letters between me and Herbert Aptheker, the Communist theologian, in regard to the question of Nat. I think I did a fairly good job of rebutting his dreary charges. The colored folk are on the verge of losing all the decent allies they ever had.

I’ll be there to lunch after the Commencement and am looking forward eagerly to the whole week-end—as does Rose.

Yours ever,

Bill

T
O
L
OUIS
D. R
UBIN
, J
R
.

May 1, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Louis:

A long time ago I might have gotten very upset by Gilman’s piece, but it is so obviously the work of a pompous literary politician rather than a critic that it left me fairly indifferent.
^§cc
It is also so appallingly subliterate in terms of such simple things as grammar that it vitiated itself before it
even got started. I think the worst thing about it, though, was its terrible naivete—that is, his allying himself with the Black Power people who are calling the book distorted, perverted, historically inaccurate, etc. He apparently does not have enough real critical competence to understand even the basic essentials about the inter-relationship of history and literature, the artist’s freedom to deal as he likes with historical matters, and so on. By Gilman’s implied criteria, a book like
War and Peace
would be an irresponsible fraud. But it is a poor piece of writing and the kind of thing that will necessarily rebound upon him sooner or later.

It was good of you to trouble to write the letter, you made some excellent points, and if Gilman reads it—which I expect he will—I rather imagine he will be squirming. Thanks for sending me the copy.

I’m looking forward to my trip to Durham on June 1 and to seeing you all.

Best,

Bill

Styron was notified that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
.

T
O
A
RTHUR
S
CHLESINGER
, J
R
.

May 15, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Arthur:

I see by today’s
Times
that Praeger and Dutton have agreed not to publish Solzhenitsyn’s book, so it looks as if that problem is taken care of.
^§dd

I regret we missed (by a few minutes) getting together in Roxbury the other day but I’m looking forward to a tête-à-tête before too long. The
Black Panthers are after me but Gene Genovese is going to cook their goose in a forthcoming
N.Y. Review of Books
piece.
^§ee

As ever,

Bill

T
O
D
R
. F
REDRIC
W
ERTHAM
^§ff

June 18, 1968 Roxbury, CT

Dear Dr. Wertham:

I have before me a transcript of a section of
Newsfront
, a television program on which you appeared on the night of June 5
^th
, and during which you made several remarks about my novel,
The Confessions of Nat Turner
. I did not see this program but several people reported to me, in some chagrin and distress, that you said what the transcript does indeed verify. Your words, among others, were “Now all the intellectuals and reviewers, they praise this book
The Confessions of Nat Turner
—that’s an invitation for lynching and I have talked to many people about it who have read it. I have gone over it—this is—we teach the people to lynch. We tell them this is a good thing.”

Ordinarily I would not respond to your words, nor to anything written or spoken about my book, but I found it especially disturbing in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination that you should choose to speak in this way about my work and link it—by implication at least—to the atmosphere of violence which surrounds us and which I deplore as vehemently as you do. From what you said, I cannot tell whether you have read
The Confessions of Nat Turner
or not—if not, I suggest that you do. But if you have read the book I find it even more upsetting that an authority of your reputation should find within its pages “an invitation for lynching.” Inasmuch as no responsible literary critic (and this includes presumably the
distinguished body that awarded the book the Pulitzer Prize) discovered any such incitement to violence in the novel, I find your charge reckless and without foundation.

For years you have distinguished yourself by your sound and well-reasoned attacks on the proliferation of senseless violence in the mass media. I find it all the more painful, therefore, to have to deplore your totally unsubstantiated charge about a work of literature. There is some violence in
The Confessions of Nat Turner
but it is certainly but a single facet of the work as a whole and in no way dominates the book; nor is the violence purely gratuitous, any more than the violence is gratuitous in the works of Sophocles or of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans (indeed it is far less gratuitous than, let us say, some of Webster) or the novels of Dostoievski.