Selected Letters of William Styron (9 page)

I called up my friend at Whittlesey House today and she said that Aswell, the editor, is now reading Guy’s novel. One of the others read it, too, and his report said, in effect, that he had never seen so promising a talent wasted in such a dubious,
avant-garde
style. Dorothy Parker, my friend, said that she doubted that Aswell would be overly sympathetic, but that at least Guy could be consoled by the fact that no book has aroused so much interest over there in a long, long time. And I certainly hope Guy does not, as you seem to anticipate, throw Effie into the fire, because (a) Whittlesey House is after all, a fairly conservative outfit and (b)
Effie Garner
is a beautiful book.

I received Mary April’s wedding invitation and I suppose congratulations are due to the proud father. Congratulations! I fear that I will be unable to make it down to Durham for the big event, but my bank book doesn’t seem to have the comforting look that it had some months ago. I suppose that you and Mrs. Blackburn are quite excited about it all. I want to thank you for encouraging me so on the Trieste story, and also for kindly forwarding to me Dr. Brancomb’s words of confidence. You can be sure that they gave me a great deal of hope. I’m not too bitter any more about my failure to get the scholarship, since I can take courage from the fact that at least I have enough on the ball to elicit such words of commendation from Dr. Brancomb.

So it goes. I’m making some sort of an effort now—a rather vague one—but at least an effort, which is more than I did before. My hours of work lend a note of bathos to the words of Lear’s fool, for truthfully I “go to supper in the morning and go to bed at noon.” The clock’s turned around, but I prefer working at night and I do get enough sleep, even if it’s in the daytime. I read a foolish, well-written article the other day in
Harper’s
by a young man, twenty-four, who put out a lot of pap, saying that the writers of the “new generation” will not be tormented by the disillusionment which affected the elders of the ’twenties: Hemingway, et al.
^S
Just
what in the hell does that mean? How can you look at the newspapers these days and not despair of practically everything. If he means that the coming writers will not wallow in gloom, then that’s all right. But I take it he means the new writing will be optimistic. I don’t think so. I’m gloomy as I can be. But I think that out of a certain sorrow, resignation, or whatever you call it, a real beauty can be wrought. Perhaps even the finest beauty, and that’s about all that matters don’t you think? But I don’t think an intelligent man can be consistently cheerful these days, and I’m going to write as I see things. And I do laugh at times.

Well, I hope everything is going well with you, and that the book is shaping up all right. Give my best to all.

As ever,

Bill S.

T
O
W
ILLIAM
C. S
TYRON
, S
R
.

January 5, 1948 New York

Dear Eliza, and Pop:

I received the Christmas box in good order and was certainly pleased with the contents. The food, of course, will come in handy these cold winter nights—it has already been rapidly depleted—and
Atlantic Harvest
is fine. I’ve already dipped into the contents and it seems like very good stuff. The essays (Whitehead, Havelock Ellis, et al.) seem especially fine selections. I also noted Sedgwick’s autograph on the fly-leaf which, of course, enhances the personal value of the book.
^T
The razor’s a beauty, Pop, and I’m sure it will serve to beautify many a hairy cheek in the years to come. Thank you both for everything.

I’m sorry to hear about your current indisposition, Pop and I certainly hope that it’s nothing that will seriously disable you. Take care of yourself, and let me hear how things develop. I know the
diet
must be something of a strain.

I spent Christmas Eve working on a short story (which I just yesterday completed), and then went out with Charlie, the landlord, and had a couple of beers before bed. On Christmas day I went over to Brooklyn and had dinner with Mac Hyman and his wife. Mac’s a boy from Georgia, one of Blackburn’s students, who came to N.Y. seeking his fame and fortune, as I did. They’re both nice folks. Later on in the day I took the train for New Haven where I visited Tom Peyton.
^U
Peyton’s sister + brother-in-law live there, and the whole family was up from Crozet for the holidays. I stayed until Sunday and came on back to N.Y. It snowed 19 inches in New Haven and 26 inches here, which is about as much snow as I’ve ever seen, or shall ever want to see. Luckily, I haven’t caught cold, and now feel about as good as anyone can feel, I suppose, in New York.
^V

Hatcher + I are getting evicted from this apartment on the 15
^th
of this month, due to the fact that the landlord, Charlie, is so in debt that he has to sell the house. Fortunately, however, we have found a large apartment
right next door
, at 1455 Lexington, and we’re moving in early next week. So you may send any mail, until then, to this address. Incidentally, Bill Bowman, whom you both remember, is moving in with us, since it’s a three-man apartment. Bill has a pretty nice job now, as reservationist with Eastern Air Lines. So old friends get together after all.

An extraordinary opportunity has come my way. Since you, Pop, read my story about Trieste I have written two others—both quite long. Hiram Haydn at the New School (editor of Crown Publishers, you remember, and also editor of the
American Scholar)
has read all three of them, and liked them so well that he has offered me an advance of a substantial sum
of money if I write a novel. Of course, since I haven’t written anything on the novel he can’t offer me a contract right now. But he was so enthusiastic over the stories that he called me down to his office at Crown and told me that he had informed the publishing director (the big shot) at Crown that he had so much faith in my potentialities that he suggested that they break their rule (against giving advance-on-royalties to unknown writers) in my case. The publishing director finally agreed, after a lot of rhetoric by Haydn, so now all I have to do is write the damn novel. I have to write a first chapter and outline and Haydn said he’d do all he could to help me along with it so it would be met with approval by his associates. Of course all this doesn’t mean that it’s in the bag and I wouldn’t like it to be rumored about that Styron has finished the great American novel; but it has inspired me with such confidence that I know I can write a good novel.

It was interesting to hear more about Barbara Bottom’s progress through life. Luckily I haven’t run into her here in N.Y. yet. Probably wouldn’t recognize her if I did. Who’s the new man?
^W

Eliza, have you written anything else in your “spare time”? I still have your story here, which this friend of mine sent to a few magazines. She got some very nice notes back about the story, but no checks. I suppose you’re partly right—magazines nowadays (even the good ones) just don’t seem to want childhood stories. Do you want me to send it back to you, or would you rather me try again? I’d still like to see some more stuff you’ve written, as I think it’s mighty good.

Thanks again to both of you for your nice presents. Write soon.

Love,

Billy

T
O
W
ILLIAM
C. S
TYRON
, S
R
.

March 31, 1948 New York

Dear Pop,

A much belated letter to let you know that I am still kicking and that everything is coming along all right. The little visit home, though short, was enjoyable and I’m only sorry that I couldn’t stay longer. We are still having trouble with our landlady here—though nothing serious—otherwise the scene on the domestic front is okay. An evil brood, landladies!

I’m progressing well on the novel, although frankly it is a mystery to me how I am able to keep going from one section of the story to another. Haydn read the completed portion of the MS in class tonight and I am, to say the least, excited at what he told me (in front of the class) about the novel, to wit: “Although you can’t really say anything positively, of course, until the novel is completed, this part seems to me to stand up beside
any contemporary American writer
.” I nearly fell over and, of course, walked home in a daze. He said something about the fact that I have a “tragic sense” of the place and the people I’m writing about and, after class, told me he thought what I had written was “terrific.” I needn’t have to tell you that I’m terribly encouraged, because I feel sure that Haydn’s comments and criticisms are judicious and considered.
^X

I can’t tell you how much this novel means to me. The process of sitting down and writing is pure torture to me, but at the same time I think about the book all the time and am in more or less a suspended state of worry and anxiety if I’m
not
writing. I worry, too, about the sincerity of my effort; if whether what I’m writing is not so much rhetoric, and it is only in my most now-self-critical mood that I can even come vaguely to realize that what I write does, in truth, have an element of truth in it and is, after all, a more faithful rendering of life than I believe it to be in my moments of doubt.

The world situation is such that I—along, I suppose, with everyone else—really don’t know whether a novel, or a symphony, or anything else, is worth the trouble or not. But I suppose that if you relinquish your claim
as an “individual,” no matter what your endeavor might be, or in whatever state the world is in, you might as well cease living. So I’ll go on writing, hoping that we will survive, and perhaps taking a measure of courage from the fact that in the face of disaster my story might become even more significant.

New York is beginning to wear on my nerves, and now that spring is coming I want to leave. The novelty has worn off; the city, with all its excitement and grandeur, is a terrible place. The tide swarms on; how people manage the pretense of humanity in such a jostling, surly ant-heap is beyond me. The eye bends down from the jutting skyscraper—man’s material achievement—to gaze in horror on the pawing mess of Broadway at lunchtime and the greasy, muttering squalor of the interior of a subway car—surely the symbol of man’s spiritual decay. I hope I get an offer of an advance on royalties from Crown within the next few weeks; I think I will. And that Eastern Shore deal, if you still want to try and help me out, sounds good indeed.

Do you think that if people learned to love one another, that if the collective human mind could be conditioned to good-will and rich laughter, the resultant effect would be boredom? That mutual hatred, a natural antipathy for his own species, is a predetermined condition of the state of man on earth? Sometimes it seems that way to me.

Haydn’s words still ring in my ears. Wish me luck!

Your son,

Bill jr.

P.S. Did you read the reviews of Haydn’s
The Time Is Noon
? Last Sunday’s
Times
and
Tribune
’s were fine, and the daily reviews in the same papers even better. (see enclosed)
^Y

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN

May 28, 1948 Cordele, Georgia

Dear Professor Blackburn,

It has been a long time since I have written you and I am ashamed, but I have thought of you often, if that’s any consolation at all.

I have been down here on the river with Mac and Gwendolyn for something less than a week and if I could I believe I would stay here forever. It’s a wonderful place, isn’t it? I think I nearly killed myself during my last bleak neurotic weeks in New York, staying up until dawn and sleeping miserably until the waning hours of afternoon. So, in desperation, I cunningly contrived to escape the city and took the “Southerner” to Atlanta, anxiously pondering a sour sort of guilt as I sat in the barren club car all night; and only when I arrived in Cordele and was installed in my room in this marvelous place on the river did I begin to breathe human breaths again, feel blood and not the city dweller’s fetid sluggish fluid flow through my veins once more. In a week I have possessed myself of an incredibly healthy sense of well-being. The Georgia sunlight, I’m sure, contains more vitamins per cubic centimeter than all the synthetic, “niacin”-fortified bread north of Baltimore and for the first time in many months I am positively witless with virility. Mens sana in corpore sano.
^Z
The Hymans, of course, are wonderful. They send you their love.

I have signed a contract with Crown for my novel. The advance is $500; $100 now and $400 when I get a substantial amount of the book done. Mr. Haydn is a wonderfully sympathetic and human person and seems to be as enthusiastic about the novel as I am about the possibility of having him as an editor. I understand that you get a cut of the proceeds on the sale of the book, so I am sure we shall both soon be millionaires. The novel, as projected, concerns Newport News and the people there in general; in particular a girl, my age, who comes to no good end. It’s all very melodramatic and morbid and tragic and I’m sure it will shake the foundations of the literary world—“cause a flutter in the literary dovecotes,” as it were.
^*a
I’m already thoroughly dissatisfied with what I’ve written so far,
even though Mr. Haydn likes it, and I fear that the book as a whole will be the most fearful mélange of stylistic apings and posturings ever seen.

In case you hadn’t heard,
American Vanguard
, the New School anthology, is just off the press. I am represented—“a humble and sad” writer, it says in the introduction—by my Trieste story, a startlingly reactionary piece in a volume made up of inflammatory appeals for social consciousness, solemn fellow-traveler essays, and trouble “messages” by confused innocents. I am sure to be called a “callow armchair liberal” by some squat mustachioed female on the
Daily Worker
or
PM
, and am waiting, in a real tizzy, for the reviews to come out. I’m sure the book will sell all of 150 copies.