Selected Letters of William Styron (71 page)

When criticism gives the impression of an inability to find virtually any value in work which many others (including those of high distinction) have regarded highly, you may be certain that the critic is deviously motivated. I know that there are all sorts of rebuttals to that proposition—the emperor’s clothes syndrome, for one—and of course there is the famous example of Dwight Macdonald’s demolition job on
By Love Possessed
.
^‖HH
But
everyone
with any real literary sensibility (including me) knew that Cozzen’s book was bloated, badly written and incredibly overrated, and we were tickled to death by Macdonald’s attack. The point I’m trying to make is that, despite the inevitable shift in values over a long period of time, there is generally speaking, a sound
instinct
abroad in both the critical and public mind as to what constitutes a major writer or a major work. The consensus is usually pretty accurate, too—the consensus among those who count, that is. In the late thirties and early forties, when Clifton
Fadiman was raking Faulkner over the coals in the
New Yorker
, I (who had just started to read books like
The Sound and The Fury
) knew in my 15-year-old head that Fadiman was a misguided imbecile.
^‖II

I will come to Norman and Irving (don’t they run a delicatessen somewhere?) in a moment, after a last reference to the kind of criticism I’m talking about. The other major (non-black) attack on
Nat Turner
came from Richard Gilman in
The New Republic
. This long piece, like Howe’s, was aggressively rancorous, and it called Nat mediocre if not worthless. Much of Gilman’s motivation had to do with the poisonous thesis (that he was then dishing out) that whites could not understand or evaluate black life and letters, and the essay revealed to me also (rather startlingly, I must say) that Gilman could barely write grammatical English. But mainly Gilman, like Howe, undercut the thrust of his argument by his refusal to acknowledge
any
value in my work at all … But in his insistent and nattering negativism he resembled Howe, and therefore—after the initial smart had worn off (one has to admit it that it
does
hurt)—I realized how easily he could be dismissed. For no one can legitimately take unto himself the authority to deem as
worthless
work in which too many other people of
taste
and
intelligence
have discovered great value.

Which brings me to Norman. His attack on you is, quite simply, weird. What is “the New Class” anyway? Nowhere does he successfully or convincingly define it, this New Class. Whatever it is, you are its spokesman and he is greatly and clearly disturbed by your “success.” Of all people, Norman being troubled by success!! Of course, his concern with your success is somewhat different from the success-obsession of Kauffmann, who, I hate to say (because I used to know and rather like him), is a failed “creative” person for whom I honestly believe success in others acts like poison. Norman’s pain over your success derives, as far as I can tell, from
ideological
considerations, and they are pretty simple-minded. Simple-minded and, I might add, very close to Philistine. His statement that the purpose of your work has been largely to offer documentary evidence “for the complacent thesis that the country is inhabited exclusively by vulgarians, materialists, boobs and boors” reminds me of those scandalously reactionary pieces that used to appear in
Time
or
Life
back in the forties and
fifties, putting down honest writers and praising Herman Wouk. Given Norman’s political and social reorientation I am not really surprised at this line, but I am amazed at how little subtlety he demonstrates. He sounds like Spiro Agnew. And indeed I think that’s the crux of the matter, and it’s such a tired situation that it borders on the absurd: an honest writer who has not shrunk from viewing life and society head-on once again being taken over the hurdles by someone who himself has abandoned literary standards even as he embraces Neanderthal social values and politics.

Despite the disclaimer to the contrary, Podhoretz really resents your treatment of the Jews and I would say that this resentment is at the heart of both his and Howe’s assaults on your work. Had you not written
Letting Go
and
When She Was Good
it would have been difficult for both of them, but it immeasurably helps their strategy (part of which, or I should say a
major
part of which is to damn you for bearing false witness against Jewish life) to be able to say in effect, “Look, we are not after Roth for his nasty portrayal of Jews, because see how ugly he paints WASP life too.” At least that’s my reading of the matter. Howe’s mind is vastly more penetrating and complex than Podhoretz’s and of course he possesses, basically, a finer literary sensibility. But I can’t get over the feeling that the rather well-hidden but overriding animus in Howe’s piece has to do with your treatment of Jews. I don’t mean to say that Howe is so unsophisticated as to think that Jewish life, any more than that of any other minority, should be exempted from the writer’s right to portray it with as much severity as is compatible with his vision of the truth. I do think, however (and I’ve seen it in the pages of
Dissent
) that Howe is, quite unbeknownst to himself, possessed of an old-fashioned Jewish
defensiveness
which caused your work (despite his early praise of it) to stick in his craw as painfully as it did in the throats of those rabbis.
Literarily
speaking, the intensity of his attack on you rarely makes much sense and he often seems to lapse into arcane double-talk when he runs out of logic in trying to make a point. His entire attack on
Portnoy
, for instance, is to me nearly incomprehensible since it fails to acknowledge the fact that whatever its defects the book
works
; the animating spirit behind the novel is of such vigor as to make it quite academic whether the book is a group of skits, or has imperfect “development,” or whatever. This is why earlier on, rather self-indulgently, I made the comparison with the Gilman treatment of
Nat
. The point is
that, whatever its flaws,
Nat Turner worked
in a very special way for people, and it totally begs the question whether, as Gilman insisted, I had found the “wrong voice” for Nat, just as it begs the question that Howe is offended that Portnoy “never shuts up.” For most people the book worked beautifully—whatever the mystery behind it—and throughout his piece Howe gives himself away by protesting too much. Also I think his taste has become degraded. I thought
Last Exit to Brooklyn
, with which he compares you unfavorably, was one of the most shrill, turgidly overwritten books I’d ever read.

At any rate, at too great length, these are my reflections, for what they’re worth. In regard to Howe’s piece, and on the purely mundane level, it is still curious to me that I’ve not heard a single person—in the great literary jungle we all sometimes venture into—mention a word about it, nor indeed about
Commentary
, where, if memory serves me right, that Macdonald attack on Cozzens was published. And I recall with what noisy glee that piece was received everywhere! I would only suggest that the crashing silence surrounding Howe’s “reconsideration” of you means that, if many people read it at all, which I doubt, the unfair and hectoring tone which Howe adopted so bored people—as it did me—or turned them off, that they simply lost interest.

Well, you’re forty now and old enough to know you’ve just got to take such shit. Wait till you’re forty-seven
^‖JJ
(I can barely write it), boy, then you’ll know what the wintry touch of mortality really feels like. However, we can get our walking sticks out when you come back in the spring and hobble through the Connecticut woods, in the late summer of life for you, I in the early autumn.

Yours in the slime we sometimes find
ourselves up to our asses in—
Bill

T
O
M
IA
F
ARROW

February 7, 1973 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mia: I received your nice cards warning me about calls from your agent, but Mr. McIlwane (is that the way you spell it?) was most pleasant on the telephone, and I now have recently had the opportunity of getting together with David Brown, who also has struck me as a capital fellow, really. Seems that he and Mr. Zanuck have a movie company or something and they would very much love to do a movie with you starring and me writing the script. The idea sounds good to me.

But before I met Mr. Brown (David, that is) I came up with another notion. I know that when you and I talked last you spoke of your disaffection with some of the kooky roles you had played in the fairly recent past, and I could understand your feeling. However, I also wondered if this weren’t the perfect moment to cast you in
Lie Down in Darkness
, of course as Peyton, who was a little kooky, but, more importantly, tragic and potentially a splendid role for an actress of your caliber. Over the years
LDID
has been optioned more times than I can count, and there have been many treatments and several scripts, but for various reasons (usually cowardice and inertia on the part of the producers) nothing ever panned out.

In 1962, John Frankenheimer took an option on the book, and lined up Natalie Wood to play Peyton and Hank Fonda to play the father. A friend of mine, Richard Yates (author of a fine first novel,
Revolutionary Road
), wrote the screenplay.
^‖KK
Then something happened; the story goes that Natalie’s agent persuaded her that the role of Peyton would destroy her virginal, all-American image, and when Natalie backed out so did Fonda and eventually Frankenheimer. All that was left was Yates’s script—a good one, I think.

I recited the foregoing history to David, and it interested him enormously. He has of course asked to see the script, and I am in the process of getting it into his hands. I have not re-read the script in the intervening ten years, but I do remember it being strong and faithful to the book, and
especially sensitive to the nuances of Peyton’s rather complex character. I spoke to Yates over the phone (he now teaches in the Midwest) and he still expresses his faith in the script, with the reservation that it was, after all, written ten years ago and would doubtless need some revision, if only to take advantage of the more liberated situation movies find themselves in in A.D. 1973. I would doubtless collaborate in whatever rewriting and revisions are necessary.

At any rate this is a tentative feeler, pardon the expression, to ask you if this interests you and maybe excites you as much as it does me and, apparently, David Brown. I have a feeling that Dick Zanuck will be taken by the idea too. You are one of the very few actresses who has the range and subtlety to grasp a sad and complicated girl like Peyton Loftis, and I believe the time is ripe for the film …
^‖LL

T
O
B
OB
B
RUSTEIN

April 23, 1973 Roxbury, CT

Dear Bob:

Enjoyed your last letter and, needless to say, your visit to New Haven—all too brief as it was. Now the play is, as they say, history but I hope it won’t be embalmed in history, since I’m looking forward to a few more productions here and there from time to time. The Random House edition, incidentally, will be appearing imminently, complete with photographs, and I’ll airmail you a copy as soon as I get one.

Good to hear about your Vineyard arrival although you seem to be having such a fine time that only a pleasant retreat like our island could ease the re-entry shock into the Citadel of Democracy. A weird atmosphere prevails here now—a kind of obverse side of the radical violence
scene, with apathy on the campuses, political and otherwise, nostalgia for the 50’s, etc. Indeed, I think in certain respects the 70’s might resemble the Eisenhower years.

My novel about the Marine freak hero is coming along well, though at a time when Poirier proclaims Mailer the equal of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and potentially as great as Faulkner I feel very weak and humble as a writer.
^‖MM
I’m possibly taking a week off early in June to tour Holland with Rose and Bobby and Claire White (she’s Dutch-born). Plans are skimpy so far, and iffy, but iffy I do come I might stop by in London for a fort with you chaps. I’ll let you know well in advance.

You
should
enjoy writing your
Times
pieces since they are very elegant jobs indeed. We all enjoyed the piece on English actors enormously. Right on. I’ve done a long piece for
The Book Review
on Malcolm Cowley’s farewell look at the Lost Generation, and have been told it will be on page 1. I’ll send it to you in May, if you don’t get it anyway.

A stupid boat bill is enclosed, but necessary, I think, in order to preserve the metal on the darling
Diabolique
. Just send a check at your leisure, anticipating, however, at the painful moment of check writing some lovely hours to come at Tashmoo, etc. Love to all from all of us.

—Bill

T
O
P
HILIP
R
OTH

May 23, 1973 Roxbury, CT

Dear Philip:

It is testimony to your enormous gifts as a writer that—despite the fact that I am doubtless the only American male with two balls who has a real congenital aversion to baseball and who has avoided books on the subject like the plague—I read
The Great American Novel
(on a trip to Virginia) with the greatest delight and hilarity. It’s a wonderfully funny and good book, be proud of it and, again, fuck the reviews.

At any other time I would be glad to nominate Reynolds but I’m already
nominating or seconding Peter Matthiessen and I really don’t like to get in the habit of over-exposure. One begins to look a little like Glenway Wescott or Leon Edel. But there should be no trouble in finding someone. What a “club” that is, that outfit.
^‖NN