Selected Letters of William Styron

by William Styron

  I got a very depressing letter from Brice. His troubles are truly heart-rending, and I hope that they come to a head soon, because if something definite happens it’ll take the burden off his shoulders a lot. However, I do hope, too, that nothing violent happens. I think he should give Exie the old bowling-ball group and heave her up to Main Street, but I guess that’s asking for too much.

  I have what I think must be the equivalent of 100 typewritten pages done on the novel, all of which, due to my tortoise-like “art,” will probably stand as they are with no rewriting or retouching. I’ve been harried and worried to death whether the last couple of chapters were significant, integral, but now that I’ve completed them I think they’re OK and that they’ll remain. I was very foolish, I think, to attempt such a difficult story, with all the flashbacks and complications of character; however, it’s too late now for regrets, and I have to keep beating my way through the wilderness. Doesn’t writing provide an excellent means of soul-searching? You find so much in a character that’s actually your self that it’s almost embarrassing.

  I think we beginning writers tend to worry a thing to death, though. Best thing to do is to sit back often and take it easy and consider your own very minor importance. You can do that too often, of course, but a sudden sense of humor is a great and healthy thing.

  I’m awfully glad to hear that your stories are coming along with such success. I’ll try and get a copy of the Prairie Schooner sometime when I’m in London (Christ! What am I thinking of: there was an English prof. from the Univ. of Durham, England up here last weekend, a very fine fellow who found ⅓ of the new Boswell MSS.*p That’s what caused the slip.) when I’m in N.Y., rather, but if I can’t find one I wish you’d send me a copy.

  I haven’t written any short stories in some time now. One I wrote a few months ago, concerning the Virginia School, is still out.*q I thought it was a good story, of its sort—whatever that may be—but I doubt if it’ll meet with any success, except perhaps in a little magazine. You know, there’s a great conspiracy working against unpublished writers, always has been, I guess. It’s entirely obvious to me that the Atlantic and Harper’s publish cultivated trash by prissy Englishmen and horrible crap, “folk” stuff in dialect by Kentucky schoolteachers, whereas the little magazines and quarterlies still, by and large, print the quality fiction. If you’ve got a name you can get by with most anything. Not that it bothers me too much. I’ve got a lot of patience and I know there’ll come a day … but it does seem a shame.

  I haven’t read much of Eudora Welty, but it does seem to me, from what I have read of her short stories, that the stuff is fairly pale*r She doesn’t seem to want to commit herself to anything, emotionally or intellectually, either, and thereby commits the crime, as you indicated, of women writers in general—seeing life through pastel-tinted spectacles, lovely in its way but not in clear white focus. Of course, any writer has his own particular distortion of view, but I want my figures, no matter how grotesque, to breathe at least a lot of real air. I think, too, that the Deep-South “school” of writing, outside of Faulkner, tends to go in for a lot of unnecessary baby-talk which, like baby-talk, is charming for a while, but can be overdone. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that, but I think I can point out what I mean sometime.

  Well, hell, I still respect greatly the manly art of fiction. I believe, with Forster (did you read the Harper’s article?) in Art for Art’s Sake, mainly because I’m just not versatile enough a soul to be a scientist or a doctor or an insurance executive, too. I have such a footless and indolent nature that whatever imagination I can summon up has to be channeled into writing, or else go to waste. It’s a rough job but maybe it’s worth it, bomb and all, and perhaps, too, we’ll both be famous someday and have our pictures on the front of Time, complete with warts and wrinkles and profound symbols hovering in the background.

  Best to all, and write soon.

  Your,

  Bill S.

  P.S. I’d appreciate if you’d send me Snitger’s new address.

  TO ELIZABETH MCKEE

  November 10, 1949 901 Fifth Street, Durham, NC

  Dear Miss McKee:

  That story The Enormous Window, which I sent you last summer, I imagine you have withdrawn by now from circulation. If not, I have a possibility for publication. Unfortunately there is no payment involved, but at this stage of the game I am working on the principle that publication most anywhere is better than no publication at all.

  Dr. Charles I. Glicksberg of the New School is getting up another volume, second in a series called American Vanguard, devoted to younger writers. I’m fairly sure he’ll take The Enormous Window. So, if you’ll send the MS. to Mrs. Agnes de Lima, c/o The New School, 66 W. 12th St., she will see that he gets it, and I’d be much obliged. I’d also be interested in hearing what comments, if any, were passed on the story.

  The novel is about three-fifths done. With good luck I hope to have it all done before next summer.

  Sincerely,

  Wm C. Styron

  TO WILLIAM BLACKBURN

  January 7, 1950 Valley Cottage, NY

  Dear Professor Blackburn,

  I have played the two Monteverdi madrigals over and over and I can certainly understand why they are among your chiefest delights. It certainly is dark and tragic and heart-rending music, and I thank you so much for introducing me to it. All these centuries separate us from that soulful composer, but there’s no denying that when those frenzied voices shout at the tomb it is a threnody no less poignant and meaningful right now. Mr. Truman just let me know that the State of the Union leaves much to be desired, I turned him off and turned on Monteverdi, figuring that though the latter might not have had the answer his lament was sweeter and more abiding than Harry’s. Thank you ever so much for giving me the pleasure.

  I’m struggling through to the end of the book and I should, if all goes well, have it done in a month or so. It takes a lot of effort from time to time to avoid the creeping paralysis which seems to be hovering in the air these days, but so far I’ve come out on top. I’m too close to the end to be vanquished and, anyway, the pressure has given me a real sense of urgency. Like most everyone else I have a fidgety sort of feeling that my hands will be radioactive long before their work is done, but like everyone else I go on anyway. It’s really becoming a pretty good book, which I’m glad of, because it makes me go on with increasing courage. I’m practically into the last scene, which is the day of Peyton’s death, and I have no doubt that that part will be effective. Then comes the baptism at twilight and that’s the last scene of all and will be filled with a valiant, if faintly wistful, hope.

  I’m looking forward also to coming to Durham when the book is done—in March maybe, and I’ll happily take up your invitation to rest for a few days at Blackburn manor. The place sounds very nice indeed. I hope everything is going well with you and that you aren’t finding these days too tough to bear. I don’t know why but I somehow think we’ll endure; it’s hard to get rid of Monteverdi and Mozart, really, or of the people who love them so. Don’t you think?

  As ever,

  Bill S.

  TO LEON EDWARDS

  January 19, 1950 Valley Cottage, NY

  Dear Leon,

  It’s about time for me to send you an adequate reply to both of your very full and enjoyable letters, so here goes. First, let me say that I’m happy to hear that your life, connubial and scholastic, seems to be proceeding in such a fine and gallant fashion. I do hope, and know, you’ll keep up the good work. The Ph.D. Business sounds fine to me—alas! I seem to have missed the main chance long ago, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I should be on your road instead of mine—and I sort of imagine that when the sweating over my eighth unreadable novel, you’ll be the head of the Harvard English Department with a shelf full of criticism to your credit, two shelves of novels, and the Nobel prize. I admire your courage and tenacity and direction greatly, you’ll never know.

  As for me, I just re
cently finished typing what I hope is the final draft of the first half of my novel, to be known as The Death of Peyton Loftis, and to be published, I hope, in the first part of next year. I’m fairly well along on the second half and hope to have the whole business done by mid-summer, although I suspect it’ll really take me until fall, at my rate of speed. What one will behold at the end of all this, I really don’t know. I have a feeling that it won’t be as good as I think it is in my moments of exaltation, nor really so bad as I believe it to be in my periods of desperation. Let us say that it’ll be a very good first novel, and an absolute wonder in the light of who wrote it. Let us wait and see. Hiram Haydn is quite ecstatic about it, says nothing at all needs to be changed, and he gave me some much-needed money, but I think he has some sort of weird fixation on me. At any rate, I feel as good about things at the moment as is possible in one so universally morose, so hooray!

  If you are at all like me, this is the way the symptoms of novel-sickness manifest themselves: At first, as I have pointed out, you waver between hysterical joy, and suicidal despondency. Of course, this is common to neurotics in general, but is increased a thousand times in people foolish enough to write a book. On a more minute and casual plane this manic state applies to the slightest word or phrase you venture to put on paper. You ponder a sentence. Perhaps by most critical standards the sentence is good. Perhaps it isn’t, but let’s say it is in this case. The monstrous thing is still the fact that, being good, it could be better and you know it. The metaphor is concise and handsome but it could be conciser and more handsome. That worries you. Then there’s the problem of “pure art.” There are a lot of things, thousands of things, you’d just love to put down, but you know you can’t or at least shouldn’t, because it would hinder the narrative or because it’s simply out of place. That worries you, because you wonder if such a beautiful inspiration will occur at another time. This has been a constant bother to me, because my book is complicated enough to begin with, feeble enough in its structure, to be saddled with sheer extraneous prose. Then there’s the problem of honesty, which I mentioned to you, I believe, at another time. It’s very important to me that I don’t try to exceed myself, which I seem to do, nevertheless, each time I put pen to paper. The old incessant upsurge of banalities, pseudo-poetry, emotional excess. A constant threat. I could go on and on: the threat of fame, or lack of it, wondering whether this will be read by important people or not (a very nasty symptom, to be got rid of as soon as your temperature goes down); the impulse to rush, to see yourself in print (also a nasty syndrome, as the psychologists put it); and the final horror: is it really worth all this trouble?

  Answer: I guess it is. I seem to be dealing in stock attitudes tonight, but that does seem to be the answer. It’s worth it if it’s inconceivable to you that you could live out the rest of your years without doing it; so, merely because of that, you do it. Actually, I’m quite happy, really very happy, and all these things are merely a very facile way of getting things off my chest.

  The approach of maturity has been for me long-coming. Only recently do I think I’ve seen the first glimmering signs on the horizon. It’s a very pleasant thing, in a way, to know that gradually you can really begin to take stock of your possessions, examine yourself. Because I believe that before maturity itself comes, there is this wayside station—when you begin to question your own motives, when you wonder what ends your coming maturity will be directed toward. It’s an almost palpable state for me, and hard to describe! You don’t quite possess level judgment, wisdom, and sympathy, yet you know they’re at hand, and in my case it’s merely wondering what’s to be done with them when I’ve got them. Incidentally, I should like to discriminate between “maturity” and “experience” as related to art. I’m aware that there is such a thing as an ivory-tower, but I believe, too, that the better parts of maturity are merely imagination and contemplation, and that you can subsist forever, artistically, upon the accretions of experience gained during the first twenty-one years of your life. That time limit admittedly is arbitrary, but I do believe, despite edicts to the contrary, that one can settle down to creating at a fairly early age and the earlier the better.

  I think the foundations of artistic achievement rest perhaps on your legs, the legs themselves being the real touchstones: despair and joy, talent and hard work. Despair and joy coexist and seem to me to be almost the same. I think perhaps you have to be able to live, in the same minute, the wildest despondency and the giddiest joy, to be able to really create. A sort of synthesis of egotism and humility. Talent itself is obvious; you’ve got it or you don’t, and I think that, given the breaks, hard work can make that talent genius. I don’t value genius for itself; I do value what it implies, and in many cases, it seems to me, that genius is merely talent transcended, a sort of self-imposed slavery whereby, through toil and discipline—discipline mainly, so hard for Virginians—and through undeviating effort toward a single goal, you expose yourself for what you are—a man who has grown, a man who has become a man. I happen to think that in this age of tiny, tiny things there are more ignoble objectives than to try to grow through art, no matter what pain it causes one.

  Now I’ve said enough about credos. Every time I write you I seem to want to state a credo. Anyway, I hope you have been an indulgent listener. Despite my probably obsessive worry with what I’m writing, life is fine down here. I haven’t been reading as much as I should, but I’ve managed to get started on the new Putnam translation of Don Quixote, and have read at random a considerable amount of Gide’s Journals.*s I think Gide is highly overrated as a creative artist, but as a journal-ist he’s absolutely first-rate. There seems to be a lot of deadwood in the Journals, but there’s much that is stimulating, and I think you’d find them interesting to read, if you haven’t already. I just recently re-read Babbitt and thought it was great stuff.*t The sophisticates are currently sniffing at Lewis, but of all the writers of the twenties, including Hemingway, I think he’s most likely to survive.

  I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to come to Boston anytime soon, but I’d love to. Incidentally, if you come through New York by any chance, the telephone is NYack 7–1806-W. I dearly look forward to seeing you all before long. In the meantime, don’t be overwhelmingly shy that you wait eight months to write me. That’s shameful, you’ll have to admit. Send me a picture of Geoffrey, if you have one; I hope to God that he looks like Marianne, to whom I send love and greetings.

  As ever,

  Bill

  TO WILLIAM BLACKBURN

  February 23, 1950 Valley Cottage, NY

  Dear Professor Blackburn,

  I seem to have mailed my last letter to you just before I received yours, but anyway I want to thank you for your nice words of praise and the criticism, too, which was accurate and to-the-point and appreciated. I’m very glad that generally speaking you looked upon the book and found it good, for although I like to feel myself Olympian and aloof from either criticism or praise—in the manner of the grand artiste—I know that I’m really not that at all, but actually just dying to hear a good word spoken, especially from you, whose words are always so just and right. In general I think that so far I’ve accomplished what I set out to do at the cost of a lot of effort, but worthwhile effort. I think that my next work will be a little easier to write on account of all this present strain and toil. The rhetorical passage about Peyton’s beauty, which you mentioned, was already noted by Haydn and by others, including myself, and consequently I plan to change it in the final version. Outside of the choruses, which are grandiose and which I really plan to dispense with eventually, this passage is the only one I’m not satisfied with. Of course, when I read the MS over myself I’m often not satisfied with anything, but that comes only in moments of overcritical and over-reproachful despair; actually, I just don’t think I can change very much at all, except for a few minor phrases and the passage I mentioned. My natural bent seems to be rhetorical and in this book I have to fight against the inclinat
ion all the time, realizing, as I finally do, that the scope of this particular novel, despite my visions of grandeur, is too limited to allow many “purple patches.” However, I’m not a devotee of the Hemingway tight-lipped mumble school, as you know, and eventually when I mature and broaden I expect to use the language on as exalted and elevated a level as I can sustain. I believe that a writer should accommodate language to his own peculiar personality, and mine wants to use great words, evocative words, when the situation demands them. I believe in infinite artistic restraint, but I also believe that the “lean, spare style” of our time can be, and is, just as artificial as the more orotund and high-flown passages in Tom Wolfe. Somewhere there’s an in-between and I aim to find it. As for this novel again, my only over-all worry is that Peyton won’t emerge, treating her as I do so objectively. But maybe that’s what I’m really trying to do: leaving her out, except as a background figure, so that finally in the doomsday monologue (which I plan for the end of the book) she becomes a symbol of suffering and lost youth and all eternal tragic misunderstanding.

  Thanks again for the guitar-book. I’ll do my best so that next time we meet we can make the music of the spheres. And thanks again for your letter: it means a great deal to me.

  As ever,

  Bill S.

  TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.

  April 13, 1950 Valley Cottage, NY

  Dear Pop,

  Whenever I look at the calendar it always seems that it’s this part of the month that I write you, and that I’ve been most dilatory in writing you anyway. I hope I can beg your indulgence for my neglect, this month at least, for actually what with one thing and another—forging ahead, as the phrase goes, on my novel, and finishing a short story—I look back and find that in weeks I haven’t written to anyone at all. Not that that’s much of an explanation.