Read Selected Letters of William Styron Online
Authors: William Styron
Aside from the egregious Gov. Gilmore I thought the evening wasn’t really too bad after all. I heard that most importantly the event raised a lot of money for the Library of Virginia. But beyond this it seemed to me the evening expressed some faith in literature, in the written word, and no one will quarrel with that.
Thanks for your various kind remarks, which bring cheer to my heart. Stay well. Spring is right around the corner.
Best, as ever,
Bill S.
T
O
B
ROOKE
A
LLEN
April 29, 2001 Roxbury, CT
Dear Brooke, One of Cynthia Ozick’s chief failings is simple pretentiousness and I think you did a fine job of exposing her on this ground.
†VVV
Thanks for sending me your review. I suppose I’m more irritated by her attacks on me than I should be.
†WWW
If there were any validity in her accusations about “Sophie’s Choice”—that it “corrupts” history by (among other absurd claims) trying to supplant the Jewish Anne Frank with the Polish Catholic Sophie—I’m sure the book would long ago have been exposed as a fraud or worse. But Ozick stands alone in her mewling complaint, refusing to
permit any historical suffering that is not Jewish. Anyway, you’ve pointed out expertly those many places in which the empress is starkly unclothed. Thanks for the good work!
Love, Bill
T
O
J
EFFREY
G
IBBS
†XXX
October 10, 2001 Roxbury, CT
Dear Mr. Gibbs,
I’m most grateful to you for your generous letter about
Sophie’s Choice
. It heartens me to get a letter like yours since I get discouraged from time to time about the future and value of fiction and about the hard job of writing; words like yours are like a good dose of adrenaline and allow me to take hope. Certain details you mention are especially pleasing to me—the pull and allure of great music, for instance. Without music I would have been unable to write a single serious line and I’m delighted that I may have helped cause your own renewed involvement with Bach and Beethoven.
There is a continuity in literature. How gratifying it is to me to think that my work may have inspired you in some way to create your own. It’s important—essential I should say—that books, which are lifelines to the future, continue to be written and read. I hope you’ll persist in your own quest to explore, as you put it, the darkest side of humanity and that you will find the right way of expressing what you have to say. I’m touched to think that my work may have helped in that valuable process.
Sincerely
William Styron
T
O
G
AVIN
C
OLOGNE
-B
ROOKES
February 11, 2002 Roxbury, CT
Dear Gavin,
We have indeed been out of touch too long—my fault—but I’m delighted to learn that you’re going to be in New York in March, and I’m sure we’ll be able to get together for a reunion. We could certainly at least have lunch or dinner and I’d like to think you may have time enough to come up here to Conn. for a visit of whatever length.
At the time I received your earlier letter (Jan. 2001) I was recovering from a horrible recurrence of my chronic illness, the black dog, which sent me to the hospital, actually two hospitals, from June of 2000 until the following November. It was a sudden major depression (induced, I’m certain, paradoxically, by the malefic effect of an anti-depressant) which metamorphosed from a mental disorder to a generalized physical breakdown that nearly killed me. I lost over 40 pounds, developed pneumonia, had an eating disorder that caused me to be fed through an abdominal tube, and was bedridden for months. I’ll fill you in on the gorier details when I see you. Fascinating to say, however, I’ve made an almost complete recovery, gaining back just the right amount of poundage to put me at the optimum weight I should have had for years. But it was an incredible ordeal which, having taken me to the very brink, makes me now feel like a lucky Lazarus. I’ve resumed my usual schedule and that includes writing, giving talks, and making flights to such far-off destinations as the Caribbean and California. I’ve given readings this past year at Howard, Yale and Princeton.
You wrote me about your memoir about traveling around the U.S. in a bus, something you also talked to me about sometime ago. I wonder if it’s in such shape that you’d like me to read it. Now that I’m in good physical condition I’d very much like to take a look at it so if you’ll bring it along on your N.Y. visit it would give me great pleasure to give it a reading.
It’s not quite true that (at least in my case) a prophet is not without honor in his own country. The enclosed photos were taken at an upscale housing project in progress in my hometown of Newport News.
†YYY
The developer
has named the community Port Warwick—after, of course, the town in
Lie Down in Darkness
and Styron Square is the project’s focus with other thoroughfares named Loftis Avenue and Nat Turner Boulevard. In addition, I was asked to give names to the dozen or so streets, avenues and squares and so we have (all named after U.S. literary figures) such squares as Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner, streets named after Eugene O’Neill and James Baldwin, along with Herman Melville and Walt Whitman Boulevards. I’m sure it’s unique in America and very exciting to think of the genuine nod made to culture instead of the banal Woodbine Street and Mayflower Avenues.
I’m certainly looking forward to seeing you in March, Gavin, so do stay in touch about such matters as where you will be and how we can contact each other. It will be great to see you again.
My best to you and your growing family.
As ever,
Bill
T
O
R
EADERS
†ZZZ
Roxbury, CT
I hope that readers of
Darkness Visible
—past, present and future—will not be discouraged by the manner of my dying. The battle I waged against this vile disease in 1985 was a successful one that brought me 15 years of contented life, but the illness finally won the war.
Everyone must keep up the struggle, for it is always likely that you will win the battle and nearly a certainty you will win the war.
To all of you, sufferers and non-sufferers alike, I send my abiding love.
William Styron
To be made public at my death and published in all subsequent editions of
Darkness Visible
.
*
This manuscript does not survive. Styron probably submitted “Where the Spirit Is,” eventually published in the January 1944 issue of the magazine.
†
Elizabeth Buxton (1900–69) married William C. Styron in October 1941, becoming Styron’s stepmother.
‡
The original stage production of
Arsenic and Old Lace
by Joseph Kesselring.
Watch on the Rhine
by Lillian Hellman was eventually made into a film starring Paul Lukas and Bette Davis.
§
Thomas Wolfe (1900–38), author of
Look Homeward, Angel
, was a major early influence on Styron’s writing.
‖
Styron quotes John Dos Passos, “The Camera Eye (21),”
The 42nd Parallel
.
a
The Northern Neck of Virginia lies between the Potomac River on the north and the Rappahannock on the south. Randolph Chowning was a friend from Christchurch.
b
“Where the Spirit Is.”
c
Bill, Sr., worked as a mechanical draftsman in the Newport News shipyards.
d
Published as “The Long Dark Road” in the March 1944 issue of
The Archive
and reprinted in
One and Twenty: Duke Narrative and Verse, 1924–1945
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1945), which collected the writing of William Blackburn’s students. The story is reprinted in West, ed.,
William Styron: Letters to My Father
.
e
Leon Edwards, a childhood friend of Styron’s from Virginia. As Styron wrote to Mattie Russell on November 20, 1980: “Dr. Edwards was killed in a plane crash in 1979 and these letters were sent to me by his widow. I think that some of the letters might be of interest because they were written while I was writing
Lie Down in Darkness
and
Set This House on Fire
. Edwards was also trying to write fiction and some of the letters from me are in response to his requests for criticisms. Edwards was an almost exact contemporary of mine, we were in high school together in Virginia, and when he was going through Harvard Medical School I was in a position to lend him money enough to complete his education. Some of the correspondence deals with this matter but I think most of the interest has to do with my own reflections on writing my early work.”
f
Claude Kirk, governor of Florida from 1967 to 1971, was eventually a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
g
Schuman’s
Prelude for Voices
(1939). These are the opening lines of Thomas Wolfe’s 1929 novel.
h
Styron’s “The Long Dark Road.”
i
Urbanna, Virginia, was the biggest town anywhere near the Christchurch School.
j
“Sun on the River,” appeared in the September 1944
Archive
and is reprinted in
William Styron: Letters to My Father
.
k
Styron was probably reading George McLean Harper’s
William Wordsworth: His Life, Works, and Influence
(London: John Murray, 1916). Wordsworth’s “The Two Thieves, or The Last Stage of Avarice” is based on this story.
l
This novel does not survive. Christopher Morley’s
Kitty Foyle
, a 1939 bestseller, was narrated by a working-class woman from Philadelphia. James Hilton’s 1934
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
was set at a British boarding school.
m
Styron wrote about his hospital experience in the play
In the Clap Shack
(New York: Random House, 1973) and in the essay “A Case of the Great Pox,”
The New Yorker
, September 18, 1995, reprinted in
Havanas in Camelot: Personal Essays
(New York: Random House, 2008).
n
Styron misattributes to Santayana the statement of Karl Marx, “Religion is the opium of the people.”
o
William Blackburn was a renowned literature professor at Duke University who helped create the school’s creative writing program. He mentored Styron as well as the writers Mac Hyman, Reynolds Price, Fred Chappell, and Anne Tyler. Styron said of him: “He possessed that subtle, magnetically appealing quality—a kind of invisible rapture—which caused students to respond with like rapture to the fresh and wondrous new world he was trying to reveal to them.… He was unquestionably a glorious teacher.”
p
Styron’s stay in Parris Island V.D. Hospital.
q
Barbara “Bobbie” Taeusch was a classmate of Styron’s at Duke, a student of William Blackburn, and one of Styron’s first serious girlfriends.
r
Officer Candidate School.
s
James V. Forrestal (1892–1949) was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1947.
t
Blackburn replied to Styron, Sr., on January 19, 1945, “I know you are proud of William, especially since, as you say, he has chosen to be so tight-mouthed about his literary efforts. Having seen him come a long way in these efforts, I am proud of him too. He is one of the very few students I’ve had in the past fifteen years about whom I was pretty safe in saying, ‘You can become a writer if you want to be.’ ”
u
“Composition” was a seminar in creative writing.
v
Styron had hoped to finish his degree at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill but graduated from Duke.
w
Blackburn sent copies of
One and Twenty
to several editors in New York, including Hiram Haydn, who had taught English at the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. Styron’s “Autumn” and “The Long Dark Road” appeared in
One and Twenty
. Styron received letters from John Selby, an editor at Rinehart, and Haydn, who was then an editor at Crown. Haydn became Styron’s first New York mentor and the editor of
Lie Down in Darkness
, which was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1951.
x
Styron’s mentor, William Blackburn, who had urged Styron to apply, was a Rhodes Scholar and a member of the North Carolina selection committee. See Styron, “Almost a Rhodes Scholar,” in the 1993 edition of
This Quiet Dust
.
y
Styron finished his degree under the G.I. Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944), which paid college expenses and provided fifty dollars a month in pocket money for unmarried veterans of the war. Styron’s checks were issued by the Veterans’ Administration (“V.A.”).
z
This letter was written to Warren when he was a member of the Department of English at the University of Minnesota.
A
Ecclesiastes 12:12.
B
Ashbel Brice was an instructor in the English Department when Styron was at Duke. He served as director of Duke University Press from 1951 to 1981.
C
Styron was working as an editor at Whittlesey House, an imprint of McGraw-Hill.
D
One of the manuscripts Styron tossed aside was the international bestseller by Thor Heyerdahl,
Kon-Tiki
(New York: Rand McNally, 1950). Styron recalled that neither he nor his colleagues thought anyone would read the book.
E
Pitkin’s
Life Begins at Forty
was published by Whittlesey House in 1932.
F
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company built this enormous complex of low- and middle-income housing in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Styron never lived there.
G
Carter Glass (1858–1946), a native of Lynchburg, Virginia, and Secretary of the Treasury under Woodrow Wilson.
H
Greet was another writing pupil of William Blackburn at Duke.
I
Styron refers to Blackburn’s students and aspiring writers Mac Hyman and Guy Davenport. Mac Hyman (1923–63) was born in Cordele, Georgia, and was a fellow pupil of Blackburn at Duke. His novel
No Time for Sergeants
was published by Random House in 1954. Another novel,
Take Now Thy Son
, was published in 1965. After his untimely death, Professor Blackburn put together a collection of his letters,
Love, Boy: The Letters of Mac Hyman
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969). Guy Davenport (1927–2005) was a prolific poet, writer, and translator, a Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Fellow. He eventually published twenty-two original works of fiction and poetry along with a dozen major translations.
J
Edward C. Aswell became editor in chief at Whittlesey House in September 1947. He was Thomas Wolfe’s editor at Harper and Brothers in the late 1930s and assembled three posthumous volumes of Wolfe’s writing:
The Web and the Rock
(1939),
You Can’t Go Home Again
(1940), and
The Hills Beyond
(1941). Aswell was fictionalized as “The Weasel” in
Sophie’s Choice
(New York: Random House, 1979).
K
Edgar Hatcher ended up working in advertising. He was Styron’s roommate in 1947. Bobbie Taeusch worked at Union Carbide during this period.
L
Robert Loomis (b. 1926), a classmate at Duke who was Styron’s editor at Random House for nearly fifty years.
M
Davenport’s first novel,
Effie Garner
, never appeared in print.
N
Dorothy “Didi” Parker, later Dorothy Parker Maloff, one of Styron’s colleagues at Whittlesey House. Parker (not to be confused with the Algonquin Round Table founder of the same name) was married with a son when she and Styron began a relationship. Styron nearly married her in the spring of 1951, but his travels in Europe seem to have short-circuited that plan.
O
Styron refers to his story “A Moment in Trieste,” which was eventually published in the anthology of New School writers, Don M. Wolfe, ed.,
American Vanguard
(New York: Cambridge Publishing Co., 1948), and reprinted in
William Styron: Letters to My Father
, 205–10.
P
Styron’s maternal grandmother, Belle Abraham, left money in her will to Styron and his father. Styron used this experience for the story of the slave Artiste in
Sophie’s Choice
.
Q
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a Polish-born novelist best known for his novel
Heart of Darkness
. Styron was likely sent Conrad’s letters by William Blackburn, who was editing
Joseph Conrad: Letters to William Blackwood and David S. Meldrum
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1958).
R
“A Moment in Trieste.”
S
John W. Aldridge, “The New Generation of Writers: With Some Reflections on the Older Ones,”
Harper’s Magazine
, November 1947. Aldridge (1924–2007), writer and literary critic, best known as author of
After the Lost Generation
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951). Along with Vance Bourjaily, Aldridge edited
Discovery
No. 1, which published Styron’s novella
The Long March
in February 1953.
T
Styron’s father sent him Ellery Sedgwick, ed.,
Atlantic Harvest
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), which included writing by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Edith Wharton, Alfred North Whitehead, Ernest Hemingway, and D. H. Lawrence among others.
U
Thomas Peyton III was Styron’s best friend from the Christchurch School. The two were friends for their entire lives. Styron’s only son, Thomas, was named after Peyton (as was the protagonist of
Lie Down in Darkness
, Peyton Loftis). Styron wrote to him on November 24, 1959, about Tommy: “Like his namesake, he is mean as the devil and ugly and very loud.”
V
During the storm, Styron first read Robert Penn Warren’s
All the King’s Men
(1946). He recalled the experience, and the influence of Warren’s novel on
Lie Down in Darkness
, in “Robert Penn Warren,” in
This Quiet Dust and Other Writings
.
W
Barbara was the daughter of Commander and Mrs. Raymond B. Bottom of Newport News. Her father was the owner of the
Newport News Daily Press
. Styron based the character of Peyton Loftis in
Lie Down in Darkness
in part on Barbara.
X
Styron was working on
Inheritance of Night
, the early version of
Lie Down in Darkness
.
Y
Styron attached a mixed review from the March 28, 1948,
The New York Times Book Review
as well as more positive ones from the
New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, The New York Times
, and the
Herald Tribune
.
Z
Latin for “a healthy mind in a healthy body.”
*a
An expression meaning to cause a stir in a quiet setting. A dovecote is a small compartment for domesticated pigeons.
*b
Ashbel Brice’s apartment near Duke’s East Campus.
*c
Suzie was one of Styron’s girlfriends in New York. Switzer was a friend from Duke, but Styron shared the apartment with Bill Snitger, who worked at a radio station in Durham.
*d
Patton (1906–2000) was one of the first professional writers whom Styron knew socially. Her stories appeared in various magazines, including
The New Yorker, McCall’s
, and
Ladies’ Home Journal
; her novel
Good Morning, Miss Dove
was published in 1976. Her best short fiction is collected in
Twenty-Eight Stories
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1969).
*e
Styron refers to Bliss Perry,
A Study of Prose Fiction
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902).
*f
This story does not survive.
*g
This letter was written from the family home of the de Limas. Agnes (“Aggie”) was a progressive journalist, editor, and educator. Agnes and her daughter, Sigrid, befriended Styron at the New School. Sigrid was a girlfriend of Styron’s and became a novelist in her own right. Bill dedicated
Lie Down in Darkness
to her.
*h
The guitarist and ex-convict Huddie William Ledbetter (1888–1949) did not die until the end of the year. The records Styron described were some of Lead Belly’s first recordings for Columbia Records in the 1930s.
*i
Styron refers to Sigrid de Lima’s first novel,
Captain’s Beach
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950).