Selected Letters of William Styron (80 page)

This is a crude description. However, this is the first novel I’ve heard of which deals with that very important dilemma—the conscience of those, like myself, whose lives were directly saved by The Bomb.

In these post-war years I’ve had a very easy solution to those situations when—at a party, say—someone inveighs against our national morality and the “crime” of Hiroshima. I simply walk out of the room. My life
was
saved by the bomb, and this novel is an attempt at an explanation of that uncomplicated fact and its consequences; therefore, it is about individual survival vs. mass death, and a lot of other thorny issues.

I’ve gone on at such length—I hope not too boringly—because I
thought you might be interested in how the Marine Corps still haunts the imagination of someone like myself who—though I did not make it my career—was powerfully influenced by its effect on me many years ago.

I’d be interested in your response to this story. Naturally, since it is a novel, I’m going to feel free to depart from pure fact from time to time and go off on flights of fancy. I’d also like to think I might call on you from time to time, not just for technical advice, perhaps, but to get your feelings about the larger picture. I think this will be a very good novel if I can get it put together.

Many thanks again for the glorious cigars. Stay in touch.

Faithfully yrs as ever

Bill S.

P.S. I hope you’re in good shape after the operation. In case you’re interested—my father had a near lethal heart problem when he was about our age, recovered, never had another ill or tremor, and I buried him happy as a clam two months short of his 90
^th
birthday.

T
O
W
ILLIE
M
ORRIS

March 3, 1984 Roxbury, CT

Dear Willie:

Thanks so much for the photo and text about my narrow escape on the road in Magee, Miss. I have a drinking problem, as you know, and I would not like the world to know it but a little too much wet goods which I took on up Hwy. 49 an hour or two earlier was the cause of the near-catastrophe. Also, fortunately for the reputation of both me and her, the 19 year old darling of impact was performing upon me an illegal act known in Italian as F_LL_T_O and ran off into a hayfield unscathed and unreported by the press.

Anyway I’m O.K. now. This has been a miserable cold winter and I’m yearning for sunshine. I often think of my old pal in Oxford. Tell the Mayor I got the
Avenue
magazine he sent. I thought it was quite a fine piece on you, Willie, unlike so many journalistic portraits which betray all sorts of hidden hostilities and jealousies.

The problem with being a writer of some note is that one can fuck off forever and never get a word written, I’m not exaggerating when I say that this spring—if I had responded to all the invitations—I could have been a merry-go-round that would have taken me to eight separate countries on three continents. As it is, I do have plans to go to Japan in May (paid for with lots of Yen by Japanese Broadcasting) because my new novel is about fighting the Japanese; and that same month I am also going to East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Fortunately, I will have enough of the book done by then to make me feel somewhat freer to relax.

Sophie
has sold nearly 200,000 copies in hardback in France, hence I’m a national hero there, hence I’ve even been read by François Mitterrand (who told me “j’aime la pauvre Sophie”) hence Rose and I are going to a state dinner at the White House when he comes here in three weeks. Do you think I’ve sold my soul, when it takes all I can to avoid vomiting when President Goo-Goo (as John Marquand calls him) appears on the TV screen.

Willie, stay in touch. I miss you a lot and I’ll be looking forward to an early reunion. Your old friend,

Bill

Tell Dean how wonderful I thought her kids were (also her).

T
O
E
DWARD
B
UNKER

April 1, 1984 Roxbury, CT

Dear Eddie:

Once again, it has not been for lack of trying that I haven’t gotten in touch with you. I guess I’m the helpless product of the telephone age, and when I call a dozen times and get no answer I figure you’re incommunicado. I should know better, and place more reliance on the written word.

Anyway, I did want to say that I deeply lament the loss of your friend. My heart ached when you wrote me the news (a time I tried to call you) and I know how it hurt you, because I know how it would hurt me (and will someday); who was it said that a dog “is a tragedy waiting to happen”? The buggers—they get under your skin in a certain way. They aren’t our
species, but somehow the love we feel for them is a confirmation of our link with Nature. We certainly feel the loss of a good dog more keenly than the loss of a mediocre human being—which again has to do with our mysterious connection with the natural order. I grieve with you and join in an affectionate goodbye to old Dusty.

I’m delighted that your work is pounding away so well and look forward to reading the fruits. I think that it is wise of you to want to get this one off your back first. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make some good bucks to clear the way for the other work—I can name you at least ten fine writers who have done this, not starting with, but including, Faulkner.

Christ, writing is a horrible row to hoe. I’m coming along—well, I think—but each line is so tough, and the completion seems such a distant and impossible thing, that I can understand Conrad saying that there was hardly a day that he approached his writing desk without wanting to burst into tears. I’ll get it done somehow, but I feel such envy for those guys who can just pour it out like some bodily fluid—semen, I guess, or shit, depending on how honest or good they are.

Let’s get together in the month of April—sometime and someplace without fail. We have things to talk over and it would be great to see you again after so long.

Regards as always,

Bill

P.S. I’ll tell you about my evening at the White House with Mitterrand as dinner partner.

T
O
M
ATTIE
R
USSELL

May 24, 1984
^*hhh
Roxbury, CT

Dear Mattie: I am sending these letters to you as a curiosity—a rather sad one. The correspondent is a young man named Jerry Marcus of Queens, N.Y. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve received hundreds of these letters, written to me over the past 6 or 7 years. I never read them because they are incredibly long-winded and the handwriting is terrible. I never answer but the letters have been coming almost every week—as if I were a confessor to whom he was spilling his entire life. I send these to you merely as an example of what writers are sometimes exposed to. Sorry not to have seen you at grad. Best, B.S.

T
O
R
OBERT
L
OOMIS

February 22, 1985 Roxbury, CT

Dear Bob:

I just wanted to set down a few random reflections on the manuscript which you may want to tuck away for future reference. By the time the book is done I may have altered my feelings some, but I rather doubt it.

I’m afraid I feel very much as you expressed yourself as feeling on the phone. Just as you said something to the effect that this was the first time you felt you had to express a major criticism (naturally, I am not quoting you accurately)—this time in regard to the first part of the book—so I feel just as strongly, also for the first time, that your editorial sensibility has allowed you to miss the essential solidity and thrust and importance of that part of the work. I have discarded a great deal of earlier material, and struggled very hard to find this book’s architectural integrity; it is essential to that integrity that the central part of the work be framed by these two longish journal sections.

So far as I could tell you missed seeing the basic rightness of this first
section. I actually did not intend it to have the same kind of swift “authority” of the rest of the book. It is admittedly slow, deliberative, contemplative, introspective; it is the diary of a young man close to a nervous breakdown because of fear. If it does not engage the reader in a quickly unfolding tale I could not care less; however, I do believe that within its tension—the night problem, the swim, the forced march, the scene with the shrink, etc. I regret that you didn’t seem to recognize the great deal of careful writing that made this a cohesive whole. On reflection, I have not been able to agree at all with your feeling that Stingo reacts in an unconvincing way to the Captain. Also, contrary to your view, I feel that the foreshadowing is done the way it should be done, dropping the right hints concerning the future.

This is not to say that I think the section is by any means perfect. You were correct, I think, in feeling that the music store scene with Mozart strikes a jarring note after the Beethoven in the swimming scene. I’ve felt that that episode was extraneous and distracting anyway (as is the little paragraph about reading Proust) and these will be cut out.

Recently I read the long title piece of Ed Doctorow’s
LIVES OF THE POETS
, as I imagine you have.
^*iii
I admired it enormously—a static, reflective, almost monotonously self-absorbed work that has great power. His work and mine couldn’t be more different, but in certain ways I’ve strived in this section for a similar effect of irony, humor and desperation. I think I have achieved it and I’m just sorry that you apparently have not been able to perceive what I think I have successfully achieved. Of course, I could be wrong—everyone is deluded from time to time—but it is absolutely essential; it will stand just as it is, and while as always I am sure you are such a good editor—it will remain in this form as the beginning of the book. (As I think I told you, similar journal entries—though not as lengthy—will end the book, after the Bomb has fallen and the marines, as they actually did, go to Nagasaki.)

After all this is said, I am glad that you liked the way the central narrative moved. It is coming along smoothly and I think I’ll have a finished MS sooner than you might think.

I wouldn’t have written at such length if I still didn’t think you were the best editor in the business. I suppose the making of books wouldn’t be nearly so interesting if there weren’t occasionally obdurately held points of view like mine, but I did want to get it down for the record, in addition to expressing my continued admiration and respect.

In Duke’s name

Bill

PS How is Mrs. Yorke?

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

June 18, 1985 Vineyard Haven, MA

Dear Louis:

I had meant to write you long before this about
Teacher
—a fine idea, I think—but suddenly realized with dismay (and a sense of apology) that I had let a long time pass.
^*jjj
Forgive me the lapse, but I think the real reason I didn’t respond was my inability to come up with a suitable subject, hard as I might try. The sad fact is that I can’t remember any teachers who commanded my respect or devotion in the years before college and William Blackburn. The Commonwealth of Virginia, you may recollect—and I am fond of pointing out—ranked 48
^th
in education during the years of my upbringing, also during the ascendancy of Harry Byrd who put what little money the state had into a highway system to get tourists safely to Jamestown and Williamsburg.

Most of my teachers (mainly female, of course) were therefore of limited quality—many of them simply ignoramuses. There was a Miss Thorpe who taught Music Appreciation and mangled the names of all the great composers (Dworack, Saint-Sayens, Hayden), a Miss Pitts who was a decent sort and tried to teach me Latin in a totally incomprehensible Tidewater accent, an ogrish male math teacher in his 50s named “Coach”
Kriegler whose interests were obviously in football; and, most memorably, the eponymously named Miss Ball, a real looker who I’m still convinced, in full view of the class, aroused herself (I’m sure unconsciously, after all this was the 1930s) by pressing her groin against the corner of her desk. All of my teachers seemed to be characters out of
Kings Row
, with the mentality of Ronald Reagan.
^*kkk

I’m sorry to send you this depressing report—so belatedly—but that is the real and honest reason I don’t think myself qualified for your excellent venture. I wish you good luck on it, though, and would love to read the final essays.

Hope all goes well with you.

All best,

Bill

P.S. In case you’re interested, there will be a 12,000 word excerpt from my new book in the August issue of
Esquire
.
^*lll

T
O
P
HILIP
C
APUTO
^*mmm

October 6, 1985 Roxbury, CT

Dear Phil:

I’ve read your piece and this is just a brief note to tell you that I think it is just fine—poised, sensitive, intelligent, with a nice undertone that I can only describe as abrasively witty. Very nice indeed. I take no exception to anything and feel you were (despite worries) quite discreet. Naturally,
I’ve lost your phone number, or left it on the Vineyard, so do call me when you get a chance and let me express my feelings more directly and in detail.

All best,

Bill

Roxbury: 203-354-5939

Styron admitted himself to Yale–New Haven Hospital for suicidal depression on December 14, 1985
.

T
O
P
ETER
M
ATTHIESSEN

December 16, 1985 Roxbury, CT

Dear Peter:

I’ve gone through a rough time.
^*nnn
I hope you’ll remember me with love and tenderness. I wish I’d taken your way to peace and goodness. Please remember me with a little of that zen goodness, too. I’ve always loved you and Maria.