Your son,
Bill
TO JOHN P. C. TRAIN‡y
November 6, 1952 Rome, Italy
Dear John:
I think that I was probably a very poor person to write a preface; judging from the edited copy which I got back, there were about three and a half lines of copy which seemed acceptable.‡z Being new at the preface-writing game, I am completely amenable to suggestions, and thank you for your comments, which in most cases seem to me to be reasonable enough; however, I would really quite frankly like to know where the line is which separates the rather dogmatic approach to the preface and the more informal approach of that “letter” which you suggest. In other words: I wrote a rather formal preface, a good part of which has been so completely altered or grammatically changed as to make it not “my” preface any longer, but someone else’s. This seems perfectly logical to me because, since all the editors have slightly varying points of view, and I used throughout the word “editors,” meaning “all of us,” some drastic tailoring has to be done in order to have my original beautiful prose conformed to a sort of median opinion of all the editors. However, in this case, what is finally left will apparently still appear above my name, and I don’t think I would want that too much, simply because the end result is not what I wrote.
As an alternative, then, you seem to suggest a letter to the reader. Before writing that I would like to ask you what you think should be in the letter. Again, I would like to avoid having you suggest what I should say. I think the letter idea is a good one, and one which finally solves the pompous manifesto, however I think you would agree with me that such a letter—if it is at all to possess the informality of tone implicit in a letter—has to be left intact pretty much completely, excluding, of course, two or three proofreaders’ marks. When I ask you, then, what you think should be in the letter, I am really asking: don’t you think it should be no more and no less than any friendly piece of correspondence from one so-called thinking person to another, or group of others? I have written one on the following pages which incorporates some of your counter suggestions. I do hope that it won’t be altered, since if it is it will lose its point.
As for your comments on my original preface, I do not agree with all of them, but since both my ideas and your comments upon them end up pretty much being matters of opinion, I can’t readily say that I shared them (and I’m not being harsh) “very interesting.” I did not, however, mean to imply that decadence, defeat, and decay in our literature is merely a fancy of the critics. I myself, like you, do think the times are serious, and I think that our literature is full of a concomitant despair; I only meant to say (and I no doubt simply didn’t say it clearly enough) that the shallow critics (call them “book reviewers”) assail modern writing, poetry for its “decadence,” “defeat,” “decay,” without honestly juxtaposing the despair of the literature against the despair of the times.
At any rate, the letter follows on the next pages, and I hope you and PM and GP and the others will find it suitable. As for your commentary, I found it an excellent + perceptive piece and liked it very much, perhaps one reason being that your moderate attitude toward the expatriate literary life thoroughly concurs with mine.
Tell Peter that I got his letter (and also George’s letter) and will write them soon. Sending along the MS page which Peter asked for.
Yours, ob’d servant
Bill
TO ELIZABETH MCKEE
November 14, 1952 Rome, Italy
Dear Lizzie:
Your letter was received last Monday, just a few minutes before I and a few other members of the Academy went for a three-day tour to Naples, Pompeii and Ravello, so I delayed writing until now. Business first then I’ll tell you about the trip.
First, the money from the bank was sent to the address I wrote down, as I requested, so the car deal is taken care of. They also sent $400 here to Rome; however, they neglected to tell me what branch or affiliate in Rome I can pick the money up at. I suspect that since the form letter I received has “any branch, affiliate or correspondent” at its head, it means just that, and I will be notified by the branch here that the money has arrived. But in the meantime, just to be safe, I wish you’d call up NCB and ask them what branch or bank here the money was sent to. I won’t be needing the money for a couple of weeks or so, so there’s no real hurry, but I wish you’d find out that address for me so that I’ll know where to go in case I’m not notified.
About the taxes: the accountant didn’t tell me how much I should lay aside for next March. Perhaps you’d better call him up and find out what the scoop is. As you know he has power of attorney to write out checks to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (although no other power), and if he advises that I owe a certain amount to Mr. Eisenhower (or whatever crook is chosen as the new Secty of the Treasury) then I guess we’d better take his word for it. Incidentally, when does the $8000 or so start coming in from the New American Library? I hope you will arrange somehow to have that paid to me in a way which will also cut down on the tax-bite, but no doubt the accountant can give you advice on this. Also, just for general information, the money which I get from the American Academy is non-taxable and I wish you’d tell the accountant.
As for the mis-spelt Argentine edition, please send one to my father; one to Sigrid de Lima, 282 West Fourth St. N.Y.C.; one to Prof. Wm. Blackburn 6177 College Station, Durham N.C.; and one by slow boat to myself.
As for talking to Cyrily Abels about the Mademoiselle piece, I think that’s a fine idea, especially the fact that you think you can get more money than the $500 she mentioned. Tell her that I wrote you that by now I feel—or will feel in a month or so—acquainted enough with Italy to do the superficial little piece (don’t mention that) that they no doubt want filled with all sorts of chic references to people like Little Truman and writers and painters and the slanting amber light over Sorrento, and that you understand they want to order a piece (at say, about at least half again the sum they originally mentioned) and that I’d be willing to do it, just let me know, through you, and I’ll have it down presto, providing they don’t hack it to bits.
I’m really beginning to get my feet on the ground here in Rome and am going to start work as soon as I can get out from under a pile of letters that need answering. John Fischer airmailed me galleys of Jack Marquand, Jr.’s new book, “The Second Happiest Day,” under the pseudonym John Phillips, which I’ve got to read, but which I don’t know whether I’ll like, from a brief look already, well enough to comment on. Jack Fischer + Jack Marquand are both great guys and it’ll be embarrassing if I don’t like it, but since the book got $25,000 from Satevepost and is the Feb BOMC selection, I don’t think they’ll miss a blurb from me. Anyway, it’s another thing I have to do. The trip to Naples and environs was really wonderfully pleasant but while everyone else went out to poke around in the dust and ruins at Palestrum, I stayed in Ravello (the place where, unaccountably, Wagner wrote Parsifal) and just looked. It is indeed the most bewitchingly beautiful place on earth, with incredible vistas of sea and hills, and I’ve set my mind on living there next spring and summer, even at the risk of writing something as tedious as Parsifal.
Love, Bill
P.S. I received galleys from Discovery, fortunately, because I caught about 10 misprints.
TO ROBERT LOOMIS
November 21, 1952 Rome, Italy
Dear Bob,
It was good hearing from you again, though I think, come to think of it, that I was amiss—or is it remiss?—anyway I was glad to hear that everything seems to be sliding along in N.Y. with what seems to be a minimum of friction, especially glad that you and Gloria are hitting it off so well. If your prediction comes true I must say it will certainly be odd to see R.D.L. in a state of nuptial whatever-you-may-call-it, but I want to offer you, anyway, my premature congratulations.
I’m just recovering from the post-election depression, so that I feel up to catching you up on all the latest news. As for the election itself
, I think reactions to it may best be summed up in a cryptic note my father sent me, dated Nov. 5th: “Once in France, where Thomas Carlyle was asked the population of England, he replied: ‘25,000,000, mostly fools.’ ” It has depressed all of us over here, but perhaps Mr. Dulles won’t fuck up things too much.
As for me, I’ve been here for a little over six weeks, have not done any work, but have been struggling with the adjustment-period which seems inevitable to me when I travel around foreign places. I’m just beginning to like Rome, and Italy, and even the Academy—which is a bit harder to like. My stay in Paris ended up pleasantly, it’s really a great and wonderful city once you get to know it, and as you may know I even found that I could work there, though I don’t think the $725 for 23,000 words, which I got from Raoul Beaujolais, is exactly a lucrative deal. Anyway, it’s a great place, I can understand why the Rhoads are not happy there, though. They wouldn’t be happy anywhere, because what with their incredible parsimony (there’s a difference between parsimony and frugality) and their really frightening concentration on saving four francs, they don’t have enough time to muster the joie de vivre to be happy anywhere. Myself, my equanimity in Paris was only shaken, in its latter days, once—when I was set upon by that conniving little prick-teaser … who lured me to her suite in the Hôtel Crillon one drunken, hazy dawn, stripped naked as a jaybird, and then at the decisive juncture shut up her jewel-box tight like a clam. The trouble with her—while she does have a certain charm that I think magazines like Glamour call “fey”—is that she is still living back in dear old Bassett house, and until she realizes she’s out in a world of men and women, and not of pimply sophomores slurping up milkshakes at the Dope Shop, she’s going to be forever flitting about from one … to another, wondering why she’s so dissatisfied and unhappy.‡A
Rome is wonderful in that department. I’ve happened upon a beautiful dark-haired girl,‡B American (no language barrier) who has an apartment half-way across town; this has necessitated my buying a car—a practically brand-new Austin which runs like a charm. She and I are planning to drive up to Paris in it around Christmas time and then perhaps fly to England for the holidays. To keep my conscience clear for this junket, however, I’d have to do some work before then; I should be able to do a short story in the intervening month. For some reason time seems to pass with horrifying speed these days, and I seem to spend what should be my best writing time fidgeting and contemplating my thumbs—all of which I rationalize away as a Necessary Period of Adjustment. Actually, though, I have done a lot of traveling the six weeks I’ve been here—Florence, Siena, Ravenna, and Assisi in the North, and Naples, Pompeii and Ravello in the south; it was all quite fine and the South, especially Ravello (an impossibly beautiful town on the sea, with cliffs, clouds, bottle green water and golden light, where I’d like to spend spring and summer next year) was especially exciting. I avoid the Ruins and Monuments and look at the scenery; in the South it’s absolutely crazy with people and movement, unlike France, which is lovely, but cold and even moribund in the countryside. At any rate, I’ve gotten the traveling out of my system for a time and perhaps will be able to do some work. All I’ve been able to do this week, though, is read Jack Marquand’s book, the proofs of which Fischer sent me.‡C I think it’s a good book, ably told story, and lots of witty interludes, but unfortunately it didn’t get me excited enough to want to comment on it. No comments needed, perhaps, since it’s BOMC’s choice at $25,000. I guess I’ll see Jack down here in a few weeks.
The Academy is a fine place to work (I have two huge connecting rooms with lots of light) but not the greatest place on earth to live. Three or four of the people are fine, and I’ve made some pals, but most of them, though agreeable enough, are terrible bores—archaeologists and classicists, whatever that is. Most of my evenings I spend in Rome, which has a fine nightlife; I’ve seen quite a bit of Truman,‡D who has a wonderful apartment and a pet crow named Lola. I think he’s a fine, generous and entertaining little guy. Leo Lerman’s coming to Rome soon, so we’ll all probably have a blowout.
Drop me a line when you can and give my best to John, Gloria, John Selby if you see him, et all.
Bill
TO JOHN P. MARQUAND, JR.
November 25, 1952 Rome, Italy
Dear Old Jack,
I hope this will get to you in good shape, as I wanted to let you know right off and first hand how much I enjoyed your book, the proofs of which Jack Fischer airmailed to me just last week. I wanted to say first, unequivocally, that I think it’s really a terrific job and I stand in real awe of your achievement. It’s a real novel, big and vital and superbly written—and when I say “real” novel I mean that it leaves you with a sense of lives lived, love loved and all the rest—and it’s not simply one of those thin, pallid little abortions which first novels usually are, written by people who neither have anything to say nor any ability to say it. I’m sure you should have no worry anymore about riding to a literary heaven on your old man’s coattails—because in this book you’ve patently demonstrated a very considerable achievement and it’s clear from the outset that you are the proud possessor of a genuine and individual gift. Besides obviously having had the last say on the people about whom you’ve written, you should glory in the additional fact that you’ve also written about them with an enormous wit, tenderness and perception that hasn’t been seen since the days when old F. Scott was around; if I were you I’d be very very happy, and I congratulate you on a simply stunning performance. Here endeth the first lesson.
I trust you are finding Paris gay and entertaining—you deserve it, and I hope you and Matthiessen unleash a celebration that hasn’t been rivaled since the return of Louis Philippe. I’m still poking around, trying to get to work and though I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to go on the near-eastern junket with you right now, I will welcome you to Rome at any time and will present you with whiskey, hospitality, rides in my new automobile, and a brand-new self-starting 14-carat good-looking woman whom you may couple with on balmy Roman nights. Paris is dandy, but Rome is home, so come on down and try it on for size.
Best,
Bill
P.S. It’s not true about me and T.C.,‡E but he’s going to be absolutely livid with envy when “The Second Happiest Day” is published.
TO ROBERT LOOMIS
January 24, 1953 Rome, Italy
Dear Bob,
I’ve settled down enough after my long and arduous trip to Paris to be able to keep you up on recent developments, such as they are. The trip itself was great fun. We—myself and this composer and his wife and my girl Rose (she’s from Baltimore, beautiful, and I’m getting very serious about the whole matter)—drove up in this nice English Austin I’ve bought. We went up by way of the Riviera, which was warm and sunny, and came back via a pass through the Alps, which was cold as hell and clogged by the worst snowstorm in 24 years. We were stuck in the snow for five hours, with visions of starvations, avalanches and the like, but were finally hauled out by a couple of English-speaking Italian horses. I don’t recommend driving around Europe in the middle of winter. But the holidays in Paris were festive. I saw a lot of Marquand and Tom Guinzburg and we all stayed appropriately polluted, except for a three-day spell during which Rose and I flew to England and stayed sober in London for a whole night.‡F
Life at the Academy is about the same, which is to say that it’s fairly tolerable an existence as long as one steers clear of the aging spinster archaeologists and the rest of the bores. I eat practically all my meals out, preferring musical trattorias to the long institutional table where these freaks mumble about Etruscan iconography between mouthfuls of spaghetti. There’s a story about one young novice archaeologist, female, was digging around some Roman ruins and came across the big bent prick of Jove or Apollo or someone, and promptly identified it as a knee. But there are lovely people here, too—my composer friend and wife, a wonderful fellow, an art historian named Cooke who drinks like a whale and can tell you m
ore about Piero della Francesca than Berenson, and a great fellow named Robert White (Stanford White’s grandson) who also is a close friend of the Canfields and knows Marquand.‡G All in all—in spite of the predominantly tedious oafs—it’s a good place to work. I’m getting started soon on something Big and Significant. Which for some reason reminds me, in case you’re interested, that if someone were to ask me finally what I thought my most significant impression, culturally speaking, of the difference between Europe and America, I would say an almost complete lack of chatter about psychoanalysis and the ills of the brain. It struck me like a brick just the other day: I haven’t seen hide nor hair of a head-feeler since I’ve been over here and when someone mentions Freud it’s as if he had spoken of some obscure entomologist, so little is one’s consciousness in the psyche. You might mention this to some of your ulcerous acquaintances, and tell them I recommend that they come to Italy for the Cure.
I don’t know what got me off on that item. Maybe because I was thinking, god knows why, of Brice, who wrote me a monstrously long letter recently, which was an identical transcript of an earlier, just as lengthy letter he had written, describing his trip to New York, all the sex that went on in the room adjacent to his at the YMCA, the boys who tried to pick him up at Mary’s, etc. Poor Brice, so infinitely small is his tiny little mind that he can write two letters, weighing half a pound each, and containing the exact, trivial contents.
Selected Letters of William Styron Page 19