Selected Letters of William Styron (87 page)

I’ll be back in 10 days or so and will call you for another walk, dinner, whatever. Stay
warm
.

Love,

Bill

T
O
M
IKE
H
ILL
^†GGG

August 6, 1996 Vineyard Haven, MA

Dear Mr. Hill,

I’d be glad to participate in your film on Apollo 8, which sounds exciting indeed, and I thank you for the invitation.

The essay in question was the introduction to a book of photographs taken by various astronauts on several flights.
^†HHH
This book was published at least 10 years ago by, I believe, the firm of Clarkson N. Potter and was edited by my friend Carol Southern, who now has her own imprint under her name at Random House. Oddly enough, I’ve forgotten the name of the book (the copy I have is in my house in Connecticut) and I’d also
forgotten that the essay had been reprinted in
Final Frontier
. If you have a copy of the full essay, that’s fine. I mention the publishing history of the piece only to point out that the original could be found in that book and, I’m sure, located by contacting Carol Southern at Random House.

In any case, as I say, I’d be quite willing to read the essay for you. I’ll have considerable free time here on the Vineyard this summer, and will probably be back in Connecticut by mid-September and will have time there, too. What I guess I’m saying is that I’m flexible and can, within reason, tailor my time to suit your schedule. I think the best thing might be for you to telephone me here on the Vineyard so that we can set up a time.

As you can tell, I was incredibly moved by that mission and so I’m very happy to be able to help you out.

Sincerely,

William Styron

T
O
G
AVIN
C
OLOGNE
-B
ROOKES

August 29, 1997 Vineyard Haven, MA

Dear Gavin,

I’m sorry to have been out of touch for so long but your kind letter gave me an opportunity to re-establish lines of communication. I hate to say it, but I’ve gotten so accustomed to telephones and faxes that letters are becoming a bit strange to me; I gather that’s a fairly common symptom nowadays.

I’m glad your domestic life is thriving and that fatherhood is such a happy estate for you; it is something very special, and without it I would have felt quite foreshortened spiritually (despite the frequent hecticness). Also I’m pleased to hear about your various writing projects. I enjoyed reading that introduction to
Writing and America
, with its attention to
Nat Turner
. President Clinton has been vacationing on this island and I’ve seen quite a bit of him; in fact we had him to dinner. At one point, when
Nat
came up in conversation, he blurted “Surely I come quickly …” and you could have knocked me over with a broomstraw, hearing that line from the last part of the book. He then went on to tell me how he’d read
Nat
in 1969 and how it had been a “transformative” work for him; needless to say, I was tickled to get all this from the Prez or POTUS (“Pres. of the United States”) as he is designated by the Secret Service.

I thought you might be interested in the enclosed journal, published by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jim West’s biography is going to be published in the late winter of the coming year and I think it’s quite a good job. Needless to say, I have mixed feelings about being focused upon in such a way. I think it best that writers’ biographies appear not while they’re alive but gone to the great writers’ colony in the sky. I really dread all the attention the book is going to get, with all the attending bullshit. (“Mr. Styron has always been a somewhat problematical figure in modern American letters,” etc.)

Best news at the moment is that my daughter Susanna has just finished directing (and written the script for) a movie based on my story “Shadrach,” starring Harvey Keitel and Andie MacDowell. It was filmed down in North Carolina, where I saw some of the production. I think it may turn out to be a terrific film.

Best of luck to you on your writing. What pain it is! But also what joy eventually, when it turns out well. I’m sure you’ll prevail.

All best to you & your fine family,

Bill            

T
O
P
HILIP
R
OTH

November 16, 1997 Roxbury, CT

Dear Philip,

After I called you, several weeks ago (getting no answer) I learned from our pal Dick Widmark that you had gone back to N.Y.C., “to be among my people.”
^†III
I do hope you are feeling more congenially situated in your own ethnic group than in this washed-out enclave of Wasp yokels. All October I was on the talk trail—Arkansas (will you believe it? Arkadelphia, home of Jim McDougal & Whitewater), Tennessee, Cincinnati and
Boston, plus Richmond—making enough to pay for the new kitchen here in Roxbury. Big bucks.

I had wanted to mention the loathsome du Plessix. Although she always irritated me I never quite shared your rage—that is, until I read an odious piece she wrote for
The New Yorker
following the demise of Diana.
^†JJJ
You doubtless saw it: how she, du Plessix, having always eschewed the cult of celebrity to the point of taking
People
magazine to the garbage “with ice tongs,” found herself “bawling” over the loss of one who was a paradigm of all suffering women who had been repeatedly betrayed by cads, etc. etc. Even for du Plessix it was sickening, and when I read it I finally understood your, shall we say, animus and I realized that the woman is utterly lacking in both taste and shame.

I hope we can discuss this and more savory matters in the near future and trust you’ll contact this web site when and if you return to the Hills. Stay in touch.

Bill

P.S. I’ve misplaced your N.Y. address and am sending this to Cornwall Bridge for forwarding.

T
O
G
AVIN
C
OLOGNE
-B
ROOKES

[Unknown], 1997 Roxbury, CT

Darkness Visible
is in its 19
^th
paperback (Vintage) printing.

I get “you-saved-my-life” letters like this almost every day.
^†KKK

This letter was handed to me by a very young woman at a party at a writers’ conference in Idaho, ironically at the house where Ernest Hemingway shot himself.

T
O
R
OBERT AND
C
LAIRE
W
HITE

January 9, 1998 Roxbury, CT

Dear Bobby & Claire,

I’ve been reading Stanford White’s letters with a lot of pleasure.
^†LLL
He was a wonderfully gifted writer and probably would have made a fine writer if he hadn’t turned to other fields. Architecture was much better appreciated than writing in those years so he plainly made the right choice.

I thought you’d like to have this calendar.
^†MMM
I am the pin-up boy for May, as you will see, even though Claire and I are June children.

Have a Happy New Year.

Willum

T
O
P
HILIP
R
OTH

March, 1998 Roxbury, CT

Philip: My father always said: Beware of Jews with crystals.
^†NNN

BS

T
O
E
DGAR
L. N
ETTLES
^†OOO

May 24, 1998 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mr. Nettles,

I’m most appreciative for your generous letter with its many touchstones of memory for me. I remember “Miss Cosby” so well from sixth grade and hope you will give her my very best wishes after so many, many years. You might tell her that not too long ago, after I gave a talk at a college in Florida, I was approached by a lady who had been a colleague of hers at the Hilton School. This was Virginia Saunders, who I believe had taught me in third grade. So it has been rather wonderful to have contact with these most influential people in my past.

Your memories of my father also touched me, and I thank you for sharing them. He was indeed an extraordinary man and one to whom I also owed a great deal. He supported me wholeheartedly in my struggles to become a writer, and I was tickled by your description of his presentation of “Nat Turner” to the barber. A moment like that was my spiritual payback for his faith in me.

Please also tell “Miss Cosby” that like her, I have a vivid memory of being Marley’s Ghost in “A Christmas Carol.” I remember wearing white grease paint and my appearance (I guess I must have been about 12) scared the daylights out of the little 6-year-old tykes in the front row of the auditorium.

Hilton Village, with its river and pier and sycamores, was a paradise for a kid. Thanks once again for helping me to summon up memories, and for your thoughtfulness in writing me.

Sincerely,

William Styron

T
O
A
MELIE AND
B
ERNEI
B
URGUNDER

July 13, 1999
^†PPP
Vineyard Haven, MA

Dear A&B: I appreciate greatly your gift of that perfectly beautiful linen shirt. Cotton I’ve got, wool I’ve got, but linen is a swank new addition to my summer wardrobe—here on the Vineyard which, according to
New York
magazine (which is my authority on all things) is a “center of high fashion.” Love, Bill

T
O
J
AMES
L. W. W
EST
III

August 10, 1999 Vineyard Haven, MA

Jim:

This is the eulogy I gave for Willie at the Methodist church in Yazoo City last Thursday.
^†QQQ
It was even hotter than at Faulkner’s funeral in 1962, if that’s possible. Willie would have been amused that for the mourners the heat was a near-death experience.

B.S.

T
O
B
OB
B
RUSTEIN

February 11, 2000 Roxbury, CT

Dear Bob,

You must be insane. By now you should know that the only people who are given the Nobel Prize are large American Negro mammies and 87-year-old Salvadoran poets. But I must say it was terribly sweet of you to think of me in that way and to shoot off that letter to the weird trolls in Stockholm who handle such matters.

In an indirect way your endorsement (in the profoundly unlikely event of my copping the prize) would very likely hasten the demise of America’s most famous playwright. For according to our friend Philip Roth, it is only the prospect of the Nobel Prize that keeps Arthur Miller alive October to October. Were the garland to descend on me, in this or any other year, my Roxbury neighbor—according to Philip—would not last another month.

You’d have more than some of your snotty reviews to answer for.

But I am grateful to you for the loving thought and send my love in return.

Ever,      

Bill S.

In the spring of 2000, Styron’s depression returned, much more seriously than ever before. He ended up having shock treatments against his will and was contemplating suicide
.

T
O
E
DWARD
B
UNKER

June 14, 2000 Roxbury, CT

Dear Eddie,

That was a half insane idea of mine and of course one that would put you in jeopardy.
^†RRR
Forgive me for the loony thought and I hope you still consider me

Your devoted Brother

Bill

P.S. Do call me, though, I’m suffering.

T
O
J
AMES
L. W. W
EST
III

June 15, 2000 Roxbury, CT

Jim, Read this
after
reading M
S
.
^†SSS

Dear Jim,

The depression makes it hard for me to write but I did want to tell you of the plans I had for ending the novel.

The book is
not
unequivocally pro-Bomb. It ends with a confrontation between Paul and the Reverend and Isabel, in which Paul maintains that Truman could have been held culpable if the Japanese were on the verge of surrender. But since there is no evidence of this, Truman was perfectly justified in his decision. The novel ends on a note of reconciliation, with Paul asserting to his stepmother and the minister:
Let History be the judge
.

B.S.

T
O
E
DWARD
B
UNKER

June 16, 2000 Roxbury, CT

Dear Eddie,

I’ve gone quite daft with my depression—can hardly write a letter—but as a follow-up to my postcard/letter which you may or may not have received by now, I want to ask your forgiveness for suggesting to you that you partake in any such harebrained scheme.
^†TTT
I value your friendship more than almost anything and now hope that you will pardon me for putting your own well-being in jeopardy.

If you don’t answer I’ll certainly understand but hope you will call me sometime.

Ever,

Bill

T
O
E
DMOND
M
ILLER

January 30, 2001 Roxbury, CT

Dear Ed,

I must say it was brave and generous of you to travel all the way to Richmond and back to Wilmington in a major blizzard, all to participate in a black tie event, much of which must have been pretty boring.
^†UUU
The governor of Virginia, incidentally—he of the
Lay Down in Darkness
line—was at my table, and allowed as how I was among the first to know in advance that he was to be chosen as Chairman of the Republican National Committee, I really felt I’d hit the Big Time.

I do appreciate your concern for my health. I was still a little wobbly that evening, having been not long out of the hospital. But now after two more months I think I can safely say that I’m nearly 100
%
restored, and have gained back enough weight to be, at 170 pounds, just where I should have been for many years. It is a vile and detestable illness whose only saving grace is, as I’ve noted in print, that it is conquerable. I really feel fine.