Dear Pop,
I received your letter today, and was very glad to hear from you. I have not yet gotten the underwear, but I imagine that they will arrive in a day or two.
Today I fired the M1 rifle for the first time, and I am now firmly convinced that it is without a doubt the finest small-bore weapon in the world. Its accuracy and power are unbelievable until you actually fire one. The M1 has a chamber pressure of 32,000 lbs. per sq. inch, and yet it has a very slight recoil. It gives one almost a sense of exhilaration to fire one—the sense of power it gives you is uncanny. It is semi-automatic, and will fire as fast as the trigger is pulled (squeezed, I mean); it fires, extracts, ejects the cartridge, and reloads in 1/40 of a second. Of course by now we’ve learned the nomenclature and functioning backward and forward, but it is rather complicated. Even as complicated as it is, though, we can field strip completely and reassemble the rifle in less than a minute. Another interesting feature of the weapon is the fact that it not only fires a clip of eight rounds as fast as the trigger is pulled, but automatically ejects the empty clip after the eight rounds are fired. While I’ve gotten off to an excellent start, I think, in learning my positions, trigger squeeze, windage, etc., it’s going to take quite a bit of practice before I can fire expert.
I’m glad you wrote me what you did in your last letter. Frankly, I was very worried when I was in the hospital for fear I had syphilis; and of course I was very relieved when I heard that the positive Kahn came as a result of trench mouth. If I had had the disease, I wouldn’t have known where it could have come from, for, although I’m not exactly what one could term an angel, I have always taken extreme precaution about what sort of women I went out with. Last night when I first started to write this letter, I wrote a couple of pages attempting to explain my views on the idea of morality. After rereading it, I tore it up because it really makes no difference to you or anyone else what my moral philosophy is. I’m probably not old enough to have such a philosophy. I know this for a fact, though—that the morality which we have in a so-called “moral” society is the weakest leg that civilization has to stand upon. The religion of the Church, which is the basis for morality, is a religion of hypocrisy, and each man should realize that the good life is a life of Good Will, a life of Love and Loneliness (as Thomas Wolfe would say), and not the fanatical adherence to a Book, most of which is a gruesome melange of cruelty and pagan cosmology. The Bible begins with the fantastic story of Adam and Eve, continues through countless bloody anecdotes of “religious” warfare, torture, and human sacrifice, and ends with St. John’s laudanum dream of an absurd and impossible Apocalypse. In parts the Bible is a literary masterpiece. Nothing finer has been written than the story of Job and the sermon of Ecclesiastes, and I believe that if Christ was not the son of God, he approached such a divine kinship as nearly as any man ever born. But it is impossible for me to cling to a Faith which attempts, and succeeds in too many cases, in foisting upon the multitude a belief in so much which is utter fantasy. And it is such a religion which, throughout its history of corruption and strife, has promulgated its own standard for morality behind a thin veil of cant and hypocrisy. I have my own personal religion, and I believe that I am as steadfast in it as any one of our Baptist Fundamentalists. I am far from believing with George Santayana that religion is the “opiate of the poor”; but I do believe that an overdose of religious activity, in which people tend to take the syrupy tenets of the preacher and the vindictive dogmatisms of the Old Testament at face value, both deadens the mind and makes life a pretty sterile and joyless affair.n
I have probably not made myself very clear (which makes little difference), and I imagine you are not a little disappointed in knowing that your boy, after all those years of Sunday School, has not “turned out right”; but please don’t think that I have sunk into the slough of degeneracy. I have never as yet done anything which I was really ashamed of. After the war I’m going to write a book and tell people what I think. Carlyle, I think it was, said that the real preachers are not those who stand behind the pulpit, but who sit behind a writing desk. In the meantime I’m going to keep on thinking, loving Life as much as I can in a world where the value of life is only the value of the lead in a .30 calibre bullet, and loving my fellow man (which the greatest Preacher said was the finest virtue of all).
Well, I hope you don’t think what I’ve said sounds ostentatious for one who has not quite reached his 20th birthday. I might still be a college boy know-nothing with a sophomoric attitude, but I still think quite unreservedly that I have more understanding than quite a few people of my age.
I won’t be home for Christmas. I am now in the real Marine Corps, and there is no redundance of furloughs. When and if I get to Quantico, though, I think I’ll be able to get home fairly often. I’m almost positive I’ll get a furlough before I get shipped overseas.
I’d better close now. Please give Eliza my love, and I certainly hope she’s feeling better by now.
Your son,
Bill jr.
TO WILLIAM BLACKBURNo
November 28, 1944 Parris Island, SC
Dear Professor Blackburn,
I am now in the hospital, so I have plenty of time to write letters.p Now and then they call me to carry out the garbage, but that won’t hinder me too much.
I don’t know exactly why I’m in here, or what I’ve got, but it seems that I contracted a case of Vincent’s angina (euphemism for trench mouth), which set up some sort of reaction in my blood. I’ve been in here almost two weeks, and they’ve done nothing at all. I feel perfectly healthy, and spend most of my time reading Action Comics and well-worn copies of Zane Grey and Agatha Christie. At night I go to the movies with a V-12 from Franklin + Marshall who has the same trouble that I do.
Yesterday I went to the Post Library for the first time. It’s a very good library. They have some excellent poetry anthologies, and some fine novels. I checked out Crime and Punishment, and am reading it now.
I have lost my platoon, so I will have to go to the rifle range and the rest of boot camp with another platoon. I won’t like that at all, but I suppose it can’t be helped.
Bobbie Taeusch wrote and told me that you wanted to cut the “love angle” in my story.q That’s perfectly okay with me, and I wish you would make what other corrections you see fit. I can write a story, but have little faculty for criticism; so you make whatever changes you think should be made. Bobbie also said something about the Archive wanting to print the story, which is all right with me, too.
Well, I’d better close now, since they want me to carry out the garbage.
Sincerely,
Bill Styron
TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.
February 14, 1945 Parris Island, SC
Dear Pop,
I received your letter, and letters of recommendation, and also the long letter you wrote me—which came belatedly through the devious channels of the Marine Corps mail system.
I especially enjoyed the letter you wrote me—the one in which you enclosed the letter from Mr. Fleet. Naturally I was very happy to learn that my story was accepted so favorably by the Virginia Writers’ Club, and I am only sorry that my inevitable redundance of adjectives kept me from winning the prize. However, it is almost impossible for me to become what you termed swellheaded over any of my so-called literary achievements. Although I’m no scholar, I have read enough to know that my stories are very insignificant compared to what people have written, are writing, and what I myself would one day like to write. Especially during wartime, as I am beginning to find out, the futility of writing, art, of most everything—becomes more apparent. As you said, there is a story around every corner, and I see a million potential stories around me all the time. Now the crux of the situation lies in the fact that, to the writer, war is a gigantic, inexorable, relentlessly terrible panorama which, although at every hand fraught with mists of beauty and pathos, swirls about him so swiftly and chaotically that he is unable to find a tongue to utt
er his thoughts. And after the war, if he has extricated himself from the whole mess with a sound mind and body, he is usually so terribly cynical and embittered that those golden words turn to dust. To be platitudinous, it changes one’s viewpoint immensely. Like Wolfe’s Eugene Gant I see “Time, dark time, flowing by me like a river”—and that is all one can say. I intend to write some more, whenever I get a chance. That story that you have an idea for sounds very interesting, and I would like to hear the details.
Whenever I get a chance I’m going to write to Mr. Fleet and thank him for his kind words. I was astounded at the impressive array of judges who liked the story, and until I read Mr. Fleet’s letter I had no idea what competition I was up against. I also enjoyed Eliza’s letter, and please tell her I will write at length when I find time.
My application for O.C. has not gone through as yet, and I am still in a state of confusion.r This company is due to ship out for California (dread word!) sometime around the 23rd of this month, and I fully expect to ship out with everyone else, unless a miracle happens. I’m sure that, with a little prodding, the application would go through and be accepted (since I passed the physical), but at present it is lying dormant somewhere in the sergeant-major’s office—while the hour of departure fast approaches! I don’t mind going to the West Coast and points beyond if I am definitely out of O.C., but I fear that all is lost if I get to San Diego without having had any action taken on the application while I was here at Lejeune. If you have any friends who are friends of Forrestal or any of the other Navy-Marine Corps gods, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to give them the word, as I am beginning to think that I have been kicked around enough.s
If we are all not restricted to the base this week-end, I will try my very best to get up to see you. It may be the last time for quite awhile, so I will try and get a pass. If I do get off, I’ll wire you before-hand, giving time of arrival, etc.
Well, I had better close now. Again, I appreciate the fine letter; and that “pardnership of Styron + Styron” is okay with me! Please write soon, and love to all.
Your son,
Bill
P.S. You should have seen me throwing TNT grenades today. Quite a thrill!
TO WILLIAM BLACKBURN
May 8, 1945 Quantico, Virginia
Dear Professor Blackburn,
I got your note last Saturday, and was both surprised and pleased to learn that my story had been received so favorably by the judges of the Story contest. Since I was home last weekend, and saw the letter which you had written to my father, I was still more surprised to learn that the story stood among the top ten or so.t
As you might have noticed from my address, I am at Quantico now, taking a “refresher course” which will ostensibly prepare me for the O.C.S. So far it has proved to be nothing much more than a relief from the atrocities of New River, since the program here is designed more to treat us like gentlemen and future officers, and less like recruits. I am scheduled to enter O.C.S. in about two weeks, and from then on out I can only keep my fingers crossed, and hope I make it.
I have an idea for another story germinating, but I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to write it down. I also see more and more every day which might go toward that novel, and I hope to come back to Duke after the war and complete it.
Whenever I finish writing the story I have in mind I’ll send it to you for criticism, approval, and disposition. Thanks again for all the help you’ve given me, and I hope to see you sometime before very long—with bars, I hope.
Sincerely,
Bill Styron
Styron was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in July 1945. Following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945. After commanding a guard platoon on Hart’s Island in Long Island Sound, Styron was discharged in December and he returned to Duke in March 1946.
TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.
March 8, 1946 Duke University
Dear Pop,
I just now went down and got the money order, which I appreciate very much. I will attempt to keep track of all my expenditures. For two days I was flat broke, but borrowed a few dollars from a friend of mine, Ben Williamson, who is a medical student here.
My trunk just got here, too. They held it for some time—why, I don’t know—down in Durham. So all last week I slept on a bare mattress (which I’ve done many times before) and used my overcoat for a blanket. I presume that I have a roommate—most of his clothes are on an empty bed and the man at the rooming office told me I had a roommate—but he certainly hasn’t showed up yet.
I spent my first night here with Prof. Blackburn, and the next day he helped me make out my course card. He advised me to take the minimum number of subjects, so that I may have time to write on my novel. He’s fully expecting me to write one, it seems; and although I want to—and probably will—I don’t see now one in the offing. However I’m going to start pitching in and see if I can’t finish one in six or eight months.
I’m taking Russian history, Psychology, Geology, and—of course—Composition under Prof. Blackburn.u The Russian course and Psychology both look very interesting, and the Geology—for a science—doesn’t look too hard.
Duke is the same old Duke, full of vacuous looking Long Island nouveaux riches, and odd-looking persons, dressed exquisitely in the latest in male + female fashions, who, I surmise, are here because they couldn’t get into Princeton or Vassar. It’s a shame, I think, that the current situation prevents me from going to Columbia or U.N.C., but I don’t suppose it will be too bad here.
I find that I only know two or three people here—mostly medical students whom I knew at Davidson—but, if my present judgment is correct, I don’t care to know too many of these noisy oafs.
There are three things which I wish you would try and find for me. First, a desk lamp. Duke, naturally, doesn’t provide a study lamp. Also a record player and typewriter. I don’t necessarily need a typewriter (for I can’t type) but I do need the lamp. If you can also find a second-hand record player combination, it would be fine, for I really feel the need of good music at times.
Write me a letter. Take care of yourself, and give my best to Eliza and Helen.
Your son,
WCS jr
TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.
May 6, 1946 Duke University
Dear Pop,
I am enclosing a notice from the Dean’s Office which was sent to all students in reference to entrance here next Fall. As you can see, it will be necessary to pay the $25 fee—which will be refunded to veterans—or else one loses all right to a reservation.
Please send me a check for that amount before May 10. Although it’s true I might get into Carolina, I still don’t think I’d better take any chances, do you?v Professor Blackburn, anyway, has suggested that I sweat it out here at Duke for another semester—since that’s all I’ll have to go. He said that the very fact that I dislike Duke might be a greater incentive toward my finishing the “novel,” since if I went over to Carolina the atmosphere might be too distracting. I think perhaps he’s right.
I got a letter from Crown Publishers today, which is headed by Hiram Haydn, ex-professor of English at W.C.U.N.C. Blackburn wrote him about my projected book, and Mr. Haydn wrote in return that he’d be glad to read it when I finished it. So, with Rinehart, that makes two publishing houses that I know will at least give the ms. consideration.w
I’m not progressing too fast on the ms., but I don’t mind since I think it’s best to take my time. It’ll probably take a year or more, including this summer.
I received the $65 and the clippings, both of which I appreciate very much.
Give my best to Eliza and Helen.
Your son,
Bill jr.
TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.
June 10, 1946 Duke University
Dear Pop,
I received your letter and telegram, both of which I enjoyed very much. In regard to your encouragin
g telegram, I can only say that I don’t know how “gigantic” a stature I can ever realize, but I hope I will always have the assiduousness and will-power to learn, and to work toward doing the very best I can. As each day goes by I acquire more and more introspection into my own make-up, and I know that I have many faults and weaknesses—some of them very bad—but I hope to fight toward conquering these weak spots and foibles to the best of my ability. It’s a hard job, but I can succeed.
I have two more exams, and then I leave for New York; but I’ll be back on the 26th or 27th. It will certainly be a pleasure to see Aunt Edith again, won’t it? It’s really been a long time …
I don’t know what I’m going to do for the remainder of the summer—outside of going to Middlebury—but if I stay at home I fully expect to establish for myself a definite schedule for reading and writing. By establishing such a schedule I’ll go at least part of the way toward conquering my chief fault—laziness.
I wish you would send me $25 for the trip before this Friday P.M., as I may need some extra money. I think I’ll have enough money anyway, but I would like to have $25 “just in case.” In case I don’t use it, I’ll return it. I’ll see you soon. Give my best to everyone.
Your son,
Bill jr.
TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.
October 21, 1946 Duke University
Dear Pop,
It’ll be necessary to send in with my application for the Rhodes Scholarship State committee (I passed the local board) (a) a statement certified by you before a notary public that I was born on June 11, 1925, and (b) the names of two citizens who can attest to my character, sobriety, virtue, and all that sort of thing. I don’t have to have the statements, but merely the names of two reputable and fairly prominent people who will be willing to write a short panegyric if called upon by the Committee. However, I have to have the application in by November 2nd, so please send these to me as soon as possible. My chances are mighty slim in getting anything out on this deal, but I don’t suppose it’ll hurt to try.x
Selected Letters of William Styron Page 4