Selected Letters of William Styron (43 page)

The Gilberts showed us around Paris’ mauve and elegiac streets, but for some reason Paris is no longer the great thing it used to be. Most of the Americans are either deadbeats, beatniks
^*
, or remittance men of one sort or another, and though the social life is incessant it seems to lack any real fun or reality. The exception is Jim and Gloria Jones whom we saw a lot of, exhaustingly. They are great folks and are in love with Paris and have just bought a $34,000 apartment on the Île St. Louis. Jim is hard at work on a new novel, parts of which he read to us, and which seems to me very good indeed.

I hope you’ll let me know how things are going. As I say, we’ll be at the Majestic in Rome until around the 20
^th
. After that, Bob Loomis or Elizabeth will know my address. Tell Jay that Susanna pines daily for Brooke, and we all hope you come to Europe soon.

xxx

Bill

^*
Speaking of beatniks, I went to a jazz-poetry reading on the Left Bank, and afterwards, completely unawares, had my picture taken for
L’Express
with Gregory Corso and William Burroughs.
ⁱⁱ
I look like an advertising man, Corso like a madman, and Burroughs like a mean, elderly dike.

T
O
R
OBERT AND
C
LAIRE
W
HITE

March 6, 1960 Hotel Principe e Savoia, Milan, Italy

Dear Bobby + Claire,

Traveling as we do like the Archduke Otto and entourage, we get little chance to mingle with the natives or brush up on the local patois, but there is one compensation for it all: we pay through the ass. We have just landed in Pittsburgh from Geneva and are ensconced for the night in a hotel that outdoes any American hostelry you can name for sheer brass, vulgarity, and assy bad taste. The Venetian blinds go up and down when you push a button, and the various servants’ bells go off like a pin-ball machine registering tilt. Milan is a hell of a city and I pine for tomorrow when our ludicrous safari of 6 (did you know we have a maid?) pushes off for Rome by way of Florence. I thought Paris had become Americanized, then I thought Geneva was the nadir, but you haven’t really seen the effects of the good old U.S.A. until you visit the bar of the Hotel Principe e Savoia and see several Milanese Rotarians buttering up a Cincinnati soap tycoon over a Very Dry martini.

In Paris, Bobby, I saw a copy of the new
Paris Review
and was appalled to see that they didn’t have your drawings illustrating the excerpt from my book. I immediately sought out the
Paris
editor, a little shithead of about 20 named Nelson Aldrich (I suspect he’s one of your cousins, since he’s kin to the Astors), who told me that, yes, he had seen your drawings and had liked them but that he had a friend who needed the commission, etc.
^jj
A long sad tale which didn’t move me a bit. I gave this kid hell, telling him
that I had explicitly wanted your drawings, but of course it was too late. At any rate, I wanted you to know how aggravated I was by this typically stupid
Paris Review
maneuver and how much I regret the fact that they weren’t included. I have been on the verge of quitting the miserable little rag for a long time, and now I think I have good reason.

Anyway, we are going on to Rome and will be at the Hotel Majestic for a week or so while we hunt up a big outrageous Parioli-style apartment. I expect to be hobnobbing only with movie stars, diplomats, Counts, monsignors, and other assorted trash, but perhaps if we can prevail upon you all to come to Rome we could have a wonderful time. So come! My book should have left the manufacturer in a couple of weeks and I’ve told Random House to send you one. If there’s any slip-up write R.D. Loomis at Random and tell him I told him to send you one. Rose and the kids are fine and all send love + kisses to you all. Love B.S.

T
O
J
AMES AND
G
LORIA
J
ONES

March, 1960 Hotel de la Ville, Rome, Italy

Dear James + Moss:

Well, the last of the big spenders has really just about gone completely through his National City Bank travelers’ checks, having stayed in more exorbitant hotels than he ever cares to count or remember. We are now at this big inn in Rome and have already been billed $25.00 for the upholstery they (the kids) ruined with butter, minestrone, and modeling clay. If this traveling doesn’t stop soon I’m going to go flat-and-straight out of my mind. Right now we are looking for an apartment and we seem to have several good leads; they don’t appear to be hard to get and, from the examples I’ve seen, some really rather sumptuous ones are available at not too high a price. In spite of all the miseries of hotel living I’m getting a really big boost out of Rome and so is Rose. It is of course totally different from Paris and has its lacks, but what a really spectacular place it is, after all! The light and the buildings—they’re all still here, and it’s as if the city didn’t mind it a bit when I left here seven years ago. We haven’t been here long enough to tell the calibre of the social life but I am trusting that it will be somewhat less hectic than in Paris. Rose and I really had a ball in
Paris, seeing you and Gloria especially, but I think a few more 4 A.M. soirees with those Left Bank cats would have left me limp as an old tampax. Both of us hope you will come down here for a visit soon. Get on a jet in Paris and you’ll be here in less than two hours. Rose asked me to tell you that her mother is arriving here on Mr 31, staying with the ambassador, and then on April first she is leaving for Greece and won’t be back until April 17. But anytime you want to come will be fine with us. We’ll line up a hotel for you and by that time we will be in socially to the hilt with various counts and countesses, movie no-counts, diplomats, and all sorts of other trash, so you may expect to have a good time. We do hope you’ll try to make it.

I’ve gotten several advance comments on my new book which are so ambiguous as to tend to depress me far more than if they had been violently unfavorable. John W. Aldridge doesn’t much care for it, I gather, but Max Geismar thinks it’s swell, though not as good as “Darkness.” This pre-publication period is a depressing drag and sometimes I really know it would have been better to go with B.B.D.+O.
^kk
Besides, what does it all mean? What does it all mean?

Hope you will write soon (this address, but it will be forwarded) and we’ll see you. The kids are fine and send slobbery love to all.

Bill

T
O
M
RS
. F
RANZ
J. H
ORCH

March 12, 1960 Hotel de la Ville, Rome, Italy

Dear Maria,

I got your letter yesterday, and appreciated it, and want to take the opportunity now to tell you how I feel vis-à-vis the French publishers. As you well know, I was first offered a proposition by Robert Laffont, when at that moment I was told by an acquaintance, Annie Brierre who works for Plon, that Plon would very much like the book. So I sent back the Laffont contract and signed a contract with Plon for publication of
The Long
March
and an option on
Set This House on Fire
. However, when I got to Paris I discovered several
malheureux
facts. First, through Mme. Brierre, that the readers at Plon were far from unanimous in their enthusiasm for the book. Second, that they wished to publish the book only after making extensive cuts. Third (this acquired by talking to people who know French publishing well), that Plon was notoriously slow in publishing, even to the extent of violating the time limit in contracts (Bellow’s
Augie March
, for instance, was not published until five years after acceptance). Naturally all this made me very unhappy, and in the meantime I met Jean Rosenthal of Laffont, who had wanted to publish the book in the first place. He was still most enthusiastic about the possibility of Laffont publishing the book, and I was so impressed by his attitude (a verbal promise, for instance, that Laffont would make no cuts at all) that I could not help but wish that I had
not
changed my mind and signed with Plon.

Naturally, I don’t want any cuts made in my book and I am most disappointed with Plon’s entire attitude toward the book. Further, after getting your letter, I am extremely opposed to Plon’s really outrageously binding option clauses. So I have written Mlle. Bataille in Paris, telling her that as much as I regret causing all this trouble I hope she will do everything she can to prevent Plon from taking the book. Possibly she will have to be adamant about not allowing cuts, or perhaps she will have to set a prohibitively high price on the book. At any rate, I hope Laffont gets the book, as I think they are in every way more capable, more enthusiastic, more everything. There is of course the
possibility
that Laffont will refuse the book after reading it, but I do think that this is a
slim
possibility indeed, and in any case Gallimard or someone else would doubtless take it eventually.

I hope this is not too confusing, and now I dearly wish I had signed with Laffont at first, but I think you can understand how completely in the dark I was about Plon. But I wanted you to know the situation. Are you coming to Europe this year?

All the best,

Bill Styron

T
O
E
LIZABETH
M
C
K
EE

March 12, 1960 Hotel de la Ville, Rome, Italy

Dear Elizabeth:

I got your letter yesterday at the Majestic, which is on the Via Veneto and exceedingly noisy it is too. So we have moved here, where we’ll be for another week or so, I imagine. I have arranged, however, to collect any mail which you may already have sent to me c/o the Majestic or Mrs. Zellerbach. We expect to get an apartment soon. This hotel traveling a la the Duke of Windsor is straining my bank account fearfully.

I read the letter to you from Mark Hamilton and as far as I can see it looks very good. So you may tell Mark Hamilton that I accept Jamie’s offer. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised at the £1,000 advance. That’s $2,800 and will pay for quite a few hotel rooms. Indeed, I thought that for England the whole proposition was quite O.K. In Paris I saw the Hamilton catalogue and though to be sure they were jumping the gun, the stuff they wrote about the book made it appear that this time they may get off their asses and go all out for
S.T.H.O.F
. So bully.

I’ve run into a few complications with my French publishers. Plon wants extensive cuts and naturally I don’t want any made, but I’m putting the whole thing in the hands of Franz Horch + Mlle. Bataille in Paris.

Write me here with any news, good, bad or indifferent, and I’ll let you know later my final address. Rose + the kids are fine + send love. B.

T
O
J
EAN
R
OSENTHAL

March 13, 1960 Hotel de la Ville, Rome, Italy

Dear Mr. Rosenthal,

I thought you might like to know that recently, while I was in Geneva, I wrote to Mlle. Bataille, telling her that I hoped she would take every measure possible to see to it that Plon did not publish
Set This House on Fire
, and that you should get a chance to see the book as soon as it could be arranged. In a
very few days
there should be bound copies available in New York, and I have instructed my editor at Random House that you receive a copy by airmail at once. I need not describe again to you my extreme
disappointment with Plon. Also, since I saw you my agent in New York sent me a copy of Plon’s contractual terms and they seem to me—as to my agent—almost ludicrously unacceptable, tying me up by option for not just my next book but the next
three
, etc. Also, they still definitely wish to make extensive cuts. Needless to say, I was most impressed by your own attitude toward such matters as mutilating a book in this manner, so I do hope you like the book and will decide to publish it.

I will be here for another week or so, but after that should you care to get in touch with me you may send any communication here and it will be forwarded to my permanent address in Rome. It was a pleasure meeting you in Paris and I hope we shall see each other again.

Sincerely,

Wm Styron

T
O
M
AXWELL
G
EISMAR

April 4, 1960 Via San Teodoro, 28, Rome, Italy

Dear Max:

Though I suspect that my erstwhile pal, Norman Mailer, would consider a letter like this simply another example of literary politicking, I wanted to write and tell you how really pleased I was by your reaction to
SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE
. Bob Loomis delightedly sent me your quote and I think I can say without qualification or sentimentality that it touched me like nothing in a long time to see how you responded to the book, and how you understood it. Though I’m all too well aware that the book has its faults, in my better moods I believe in this work, and think it will eventually get its just due and recognition; you have been one of the very few people who professionally has cared for my work, and has spoken up for me, so I would like to think that this new book—and your understanding of it and belief in it—will eventually prove to be vindication for both of us. Loomis tells me that John Aldridge didn’t particularly go for the book, having gotten hung up on, of all things, “Mason’s repressed homosexuality,” an infinitesimal factor in the book which here perhaps reveals a lot more about the secret life of Aldridge than it does about Mason, or the book. Naturally, and as usual, I am looking forward to
being ignored by the
Partisan
highbrows, etc. In an age when horrifying anal fantasies like
The Naked Lunch
are all the rage, I have no doubt that the schoolmasters will find this book of mine too broad, too “social,” in short, too full of life. But most of the time I find myself feeling so much faith in the book that it really doesn’t matter. I can only sense a certain kinship with Stendhal and say to myself: “My work is
there
. Try to move it, you bastards, try in vain.”