Very truly yours,
William Styron
TO PETER MATTHIESSEN
December 24, 1978 Roxbury, CT
Dear Peter: I’m sorry not to have been able to get together with you last week (or week before) but have been in a kind of delirium finishing Sophie which has removed all of me except my tonsils—and even they are going. Am off to Venezuela until Jan. 15 and trust we will all get together soon after that. I’m finishing Snow Leopard and it is plainly a masterpiece.nnn After my recuperation a few drinks will be in order. Keep in mind the idle delights of Salt Cay.
Love to Maria, Porterooo
TO BERTHA KRANTZppp
January 4, 1979qqq Spice Island Inn, Grenada
Dear Bert:
Hope this gets to you in time for the printer. Otherwise I’ll fix it in galleys.
Last line of book should now read (p. 889):
“This was not judgment day—only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.”rrr
Off to the Orinoco tomorrow.sss See you mid-month or thereabouts.
Fond regards,
Bill S.
TO SUSANNA STYRON
March 21, 1979 Roxbury, CT
Dear #1 Susanna:
I so much enjoyed getting your letter about Sophie. I had hoped that you would like it—you were a sort of “pilot” for the book—and the fact that it got to you, as they say, means a whole lot to me. As you must know by now I am a slow creator but I put an enormous amount of thought and energy into the work. Taking so long in a sense increases the risk—suppose it’s a Bomb after all those years? suicide time!—and although I hate to admit it I am rather anxious to know whether the book works on all the various levels I’ve sought. Your reaction (and there are not as yet many people who have read it) makes me think that I might have succeeded in the way I wanted to, and your words made me happy. One of the many things I cherish in you, my #1 daughter, is your common-sense sensibility—this is really a higher form of critical acumen than most professional critics possess—and when you tell me that the book affected you in the way it did, I know that you are being honest with me as well as being a first-rate critic (what Va. Woolf cherished as “the common reader”), and that pleases me immensely. I’m even glad that you had to look up a few words in the dictionary—shows I’m still keeping you on your toes.
I had an interesting thing happen the other night in regard to the book—or I should say two interesting things. This was when your mother and I were down at the Warrens in Fairfield, right after coming back from Salt Cay (about which more in a minute). There was an English editor there named Tom Rosenthal, who had very much wanted Sophie for his own firm, Secker and Warburg, and with whom I had been in correspondence. By this time he knew he could not have the book, having been out-bid by Cape, but was very good-natured about the loss. Of course he had read the galleys and the fact that, after having lost in the bidding, he could still rave to Red Warren about the book seemed to me to endorse the worth of the book more than anything. What he told Red in my presence was simply this (a) it was one of the finest novels he had ever read and (b) it was far and away the best work yet written about the Holocaust, better than any Jew (and he himself was Jewish) had remotely approached. This of course made me feel very good, even though he added as an aside that certain Jews in the U.S. were likely to hate the book. Which brings me to this—
Later, a foolish ass of a Yale professor of English named Harold Bloom (whom I later gave a vigorous tongue-lashing to, though for other reasons) told me that the head of the American Jewish Committee, an immensely powerful organization which practically controls Israel among other things, had told him that the word was out that Sophie was violently anti-Semitic and would be “dealt with” accordingly.
So as you see, it looks as if the next few months are going to be very lively. Can it really be that the furor over Nat Turner is going to be duplicated? Stand by for further communiqués.
You missed an extraordinary extravaganza at Salt Cay. The high point was the week spent by your beloved friend Willie Morris in company with the “3 Widows,” Gloria Jones, Muriel Murphy and Lady Hardwicke. Willie outdid himself in professional Southern sentiment, reading from old Civil War chronicles and letting the tears drain happily down his jowls while twilight fell over the sea and the Daiquiris flowed down his throat like molasses. Willie is a character, drunk or sober, and I’m sure that the piece he is going to do on me and Sophie in the Book-of-the-Month Club News will be a small masterpiece.ttt In every respect Salt Cay remains Paradise, and I hope it is not sold in the near future, so that you can avail yourself next year once again of its incredible charms. The only time it even got slightly draggy was when, toward the end, it got commandeered by an overwhelming preponderance of your people (including your three siblings) and we began to get eaten out of house and home, right down to the last bouillon cubes.
I am reminded now by myself to thank you for the various H’wood publications you have sent, including the H’wood Reporter with its fanciful remarks by Swifty Lazar.uuu Such nonsense he speaks! Incidentally, I have heeded your admonitions about Swifty and given him wide berth in regard to “deals.” My agent Don Congdon has refused to have anything to do with the transaction which Swifty was trying to promote when I was out there. You may remember that Swifty had said that if Don allowed them to have a one-shot chance at selling Sophie he would get a million dollars and give Don the commission. Don’s explanation to me as to why he turned the idea down was sublimely simple: Don is almost certain that he himself can get more than a million. So much for Swifty’s dreams!
I loved your descriptions of Jimmy Baldwin and the fag Jesuit. Jim, of course, I’ve always been enormously fond of; it does my heart good to know that he still feels the same way after all these years. Do you realize that there was a year—it must have been around 1963 or 1964—when Jimmy must have been among the 5 or 6 most famous people in the world? More famous than Sinatra. Or Henry Kissinger. Or Shirley Temple. He had to wear white-face for disguise.
I’ll probably be coming out to see you in a month or so. I hope you’ll tell me more about your reaction to Sophie. Meanwhile, chin up in that “revolting” place, as you called it. You can only go on to better things. I love you beaucoup much.
Your devoted,
Daddy
TO WILLIE MORRIS
April 2, 1979 Roxbury, CT
Dear Willie:
I was deeply touched by your letter and so grateful to you for expressing yourself about Sophie in the honest and eloquent way you did. I value your judgment over and above anyone I know, and your expression of confidence truly filled me with joy. As I recollect, you were dead right about Nat Turner, and I have the feeling that your predictions about Sophie will turn out to be accurate, too. Also, I know that your B.O.M. piece will be splendid. After finishing a long work like Sophie I guess it was inevitable that I have been feeling a kind of post-parturition gloom. Bless you for turning that feeling around and helping give me the inner comfort I’ve needed. Finally, I’m tickled half to death that you perceived the book’s intrinsic Southernness. We mustn’t ever let that go.
Ever in fondest gratitude
Bill
TO PHILIP ROTH
April 3, 1979 Roxbury, CT
Dear Mr. Rothstein: Count your blessings. At least I placed your opus before that of Mr. Wouk, who is much older than you (and much more Jewish). Consider this: I could have linked When She Was Good with Irving Wallace. So you come off pretty clean. Also my new work contains the famous Jewish country club joke which you once related, although naturally I don’t attribute this to you. This is something you may also wish to take up with your attorneys. Hope to see you in late May although I may be in Albion before then and will ring you. For the first time in my life, like the Arabs, I’ve made the limeys pay a bundle.
—B.
TO WILLIE MORRIS
May 30, 1979 Roxbury, CT
Dear Willie: A small printing outfit out in California
does beautiful limited editions of short works by writers—usually 500 copies.vvv I’ve given them permission to print SHADRACH, and I wanted you to know that the edition will bear the dedication “To Willie Morris” which in three words is a way of expressing my friendship for you. It will be published in mid-summer and you will, of course, get several of the first copies.
As ever,
Bill
Sophie’s Choice was published by Random House on June 11, 1979.
TO CHARLES H. SULLIVAN
July 5, 1979 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Charlie:
Hope you’ve gotten through Sophie’s Choice by now. It’s doing extremely well, better than I anticipated + very near the top of all best seller lists and generally fine reviews, also sold to the movies (Alan Pakula, who did “All the President’s Men”) for a nice bundle.www So I’m beginning to believe the 5 years’ sweat were worth it.
On your way to New Hampshire why don’t you stop off here at my summer place on Martha’s Vineyard? It would be great seeing you again and I have an ulterior motive: I am returning to a novel about the Marine Corps I temporarily set aside to write Sophie and would be happy to pick your brains about the Corps if you would permit it. Anyway, hope all goes well with you.
Sincerely
Bill S.
TO PRINCE SADRUDDIN AGA KHAN
July 5, 1979 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Sadri:
As I opened your letter from the appropriately named M./Y. EROS I thought to myself that those sweaty afternoons with Shorty (inspiring me as she did to the subsequent love scenes with Leslie Lapidus) surely paid off. Grateful as I was to you for the Patmian adventure, I was just as grateful for your letter and for the knowledge that you liked and appreciated the book and its contents. I was also of course very touched that Katy cared for the book as she did. You two are among the tiny handful (friendship aside) of the readers I cherish.
From remote Patmos you were doubtless unable to get much of an idea of Sophie’s progress (it was only published a couple of weeks ago) but I am pleased to say that it is doing exceedingly well, surpassing at least my own expectations. The book jumped from nowhere to 2 on the N.Y. Times best-seller list, where it remains this week, and I only have to dislodge a moronic thriller by someone named Ludlum to reign supreme (at least for a while). In the meantime the novel is 1 on the local scene in Boston, N.Y., and Washington. The paperback sale, to Bantam (owned jointly by a Kraut publishing firm and Fiat, so much for our WWII enemies), was for $1,575,000—not quite a record for fiction, but close to it. So I think all this indicates that one can still make a success with quality as well as trash. The reviews have been in general extremely good—the only notable dissents coming from The N.Y. Review of Books, where the book was raped by a totally obscure academic from Queens College, and, predictably, from The New Yorker with a contemptible little kiss-off which told much more about The New Yorker than it did about Sophie.xxx I am enclosing some material for your inspection. The editorial from The Washington Star, incidentally, was read aloud to me over the phone by Teddy Kennedy, who called me up in great excitement at 10 P.M. to say that he had never seen a novel given such attention in a national newspaper.
Your sympathetic letter meant a great deal to me. No matter what the reception a book gets (that is, in the media) the important reaction is from a friend whom one truly trusts and I could easily tell the intensity and the perception you gave to the book. One of the big surprises (you alluded to this matter) is that I have received no noticeable backlash at all from the Jews. As a matter of fact, you could have knocked me over with a broomstraw when I opened (with some trepidation) an envelope from Commentary and discovered therein no snide warning of coming controversy but a warm letter from Norman Podhoretz—who certainly must be the archbishop of the Jewish right wing—telling me that the book was “marvelous” and wishing me every success. So I am delighted to report that everything so far has come up smelling, as they say, like roses. (No word from the Poles as yet, I think some problems there eventually.)
I hope that I’ll be able to come to see you in Geneva toward the end of August or a bit later in September. I’ve been invited to go to Yalta by the Soviet Writers Union—an invitation I may or may not accept. In any event, I want to come to Europe on general principles (nostalgia); also Sophie is being published in England in September and I’ve tentatively agreed to be there. However, I’ll keep you posted. Maybe you’ll save a room for me—I think Rose might link up with me later in September. We miss you both very much and are panting with envy over your return to Patmos, especially aboard that lewd vessel, the Eros.
Much love to you both from us folks here,
Bill
TO BEN CROVETSyyy
September 1, 1979 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Mr. Crovets:
That was an amazing letter you wrote me about Sophie. It is a small world indeed. The reason I’m certain that “your” Sophie and “mine” must be the same girl is that I did know her in 1949 (not 1947, as I wrote in the book) and also she did live, as I did, in a rooming house on Caton Avenue—something I did not mention by name in the book.zzz Those two facts clinch her identity. The story about the boyfriend was spooky indeed. I met a boyfriend, who seemed harmless enough, and if it’s the same boyfriend you mentioned I must have sensed something violent in him. But practically all of my book is invented, so to speak; I never really got to know Sophie very well and in fact I left the Caton Avenue house after only a few weeks’ residence, and never came back.
I do thank you for writing me such an interesting letter. Should you dredge up any other memories of Sophie, or have any idea as to what might have eventually happened to her, I’d be fascinated to hear from you. Meanwhile, my best thanks for what you wrote me.
Sincerely
William Styron
TO GEORGE TARGETAAA
October 16, 1979 Roxbury, CT
Dear Mr. Target:
Thanks very much for your long, rich, vivid and appreciative letter. It is good indeed to get such a reaction—especially from England where I’m afraid my literary fortunes have never fared too well. I’m rather tickled that you were driven back to The Joys of Yiddish, since that is the book I used to forge most of my Yiddish in the first place. Also I was flattered that you should link me with John Fowles—a most impressive writer. Thanks again for your message. It helps to know that one is making contact with a truly receptive reader.
Best wishes,
Wm Styron
TO CHARLES SULLIVAN
October 22, 1979BBB Roxbury, CT
Dear Charlie:
I received your letter (also the earlier one) in addition to the extremely useful material on the Marines in Nicaragua. This, together with other bits and pieces I’m beginning to accumulate (plus Burke Davis’ book on Puller), should really begin to build up an invaluable reservoir of information.CCC I happen to know Burke Davis (he lives in my old neck of the woods in Virginia, and we have the same editor at Random House) and I don’t quite understand how or why I’ve not read his Puller book—but it is a lack soon to be rectified. I really appreciate your great help in all this, as I am straining at the bit, so to speak, to get back to work. Yes, you’re absolutely right, The Way of the Warrior is a free translation of the word Bushido and—as you will eventually see, I hope—there is a very definite irony having to do with the Marine officer class—you mentioned this in an uncannily accurate way. I do thank you for the various information you’ve supplied, and I hope I can call on you from time to time for further wisdom.
It was just great seeing you and Dorothy—however briefly—last summer and we’ll certainly have to get together again. At the end of November—the 30th, to be exact—I am giving a talk and receiving an honorary degree at Fla. State University in Tallahassee. I’d like to think that I might get further south to St. Pete along about that time, if you’re free for a day or so. I’ll keep you informed.
Sophie has dropped a rung or two on
the best seller list but it’s still doing beautifully according to Random House—into its sixth printing and 225,000 copies in print. So I’m feeling no pain about my most recent baby.
Anyway, stay in touch and I trust everything goes happily with you and Dorothy.
All best—Bill
Sophie’s Choice won the inaugural American Book Award for Fiction.
TO PHILIP G. PRASSASDDD
January 2, 1980EEE Roxbury, CT
Dear Mr. Prassas:
I noticed you sent a copy of your Harper’s letter to Aldridge. I’d be absolutely delighted if somehow you would see fit to sending a Xerox copy of this letter of mine to Aldridge, too, without comment.
Best wishes,
—W.S.
Dear Mr. Prassas
I am very appreciative of your recent letter with its lively defense of me against John W. Aldridge. While I am quite honestly touched and grateful that you should rise to such a defense, I hope you won’t be offended when I say that I think you are taking Aldridge far too seriously. In the same mail as your letter I received a letter from a woman, a professor of English at a large Eastern university, who has also written many reviews in intellectual journals. Her name would be familiar to you; I am not acquainted with her personally. She wrote: “Your book is assuredly the most powerful American novel I have read in years and years. The only novel of Faulkner’s that affected me as much is Absalom, Absalom. Next to Sophie’s Choice, Mailer, and recent Bellow and Malamud pale, and Cheever and Updike seem very minor figures. I will teach this novel every year (as soon as it comes out in paperback), for it is a masterful achievement of the first rank.”
Selected Letters of William Styron Page 55