Your advice as to my getting exercise was well taken, and the exercise itself will go into effect as soon as the weather clears. Right now, here at this late date, it’s snowing in small flurries outside, though I don’t think it’ll stick. At any rate, I hope you weren’t really concerned over the stomach upset I had, for it cleared itself up in no time at all and I feel fine once more.
The story I mentioned above I just finished a week or so ago, taking time off for a few days from my book, and I do believe it’s the best short story I’ve done to date.*u It concerns an “ex-” Southerner’s visit to a ramshackle farm in Virginia, where he meets his old uncle, only to be driven off the place with derision and imprecations. It’s not a pretentious story: by that I mean that I think I’ve balanced the intention of the story with the substance of the narrative, and all in all I believe I’ve managed to carry the thing off with a peculiarly, and successfully, haunting effect. The “haunting” part, I think, derives from the fact that it’s based almost fully on a dreamy half-nightmare I had one night, which was so impressive that I didn’t go to sleep at all but wrote the outline for the story in the hours before dawn. I’ve sent it off to my agent, Elizabeth McKee, who is irritatingly slow always in answering my letters to her, so I don’t know whether she thinks she can sell it or not. If she can’t sell this one then I doubt if she’ll be able to sell any of my stories. By this time, though, I’ve become, if not resigned, then at least accustomed to remaining in literary oblivion. I’ve lost most of the old frantic desire to get printed. I realize now that most of my stories of the past few years really weren’t worth being printed, and it makes me happy, if not especially wild-eyed and desperate for recognition, to see how well I’ve progressed—as with this latest story. So I just bide my time and keep on writing with the same slow, identical painstakingness that I imagine I’ll be employing forty years from now, and am more comfortable in the realization that eventually these things will not only suffer the painful accouchement but will get the smiles, maybe, and the approval that all good fathers’ sons should receive.
I also this month completed a chapter of the novel, which leaves me, if my present plan is followed, only two more to go out of a total of six. These last chapters, however, will be somewhat longer than the first. What a baffling, splendid job writing a novel is! With all of the heartaches involved, it’s the most rewarding task, in a way, that a person can set himself to. Each paragraph, each page becomes better and better—at least in my case—and it’s a wonderful revelation to see how strikingly one’s power of expression becomes more forceful and strengthened after the exercise of two hundred pages or so. This novel will be shot through with faults, but when it is finished I will know my own style, I will know how to write.
I have been reading Sandburg’s “Lincoln: The War Years,” and it’s really an astonishing book.*v It’s heightened my interest in the War Between the States, which I’ve always had to some extent, and I think that sometime not too long from now, after reading a lot more, I’ll walk over the Virginia battlefields: the road to Richmond is full of them: Seven Pines, Gaines’ Mill, Malvern Hills, Chickahominy. What a splendid thing it would be to write a vast book about that war, I mean a really great book. Some say (the “intellectuals”) that America has never had glory or tragedy, but, with all its stupid confusions of motive, that war was both glorious and tragic, and I daresay that it was the last war in which the Lord God of Hosts hovered over the battlefields.
The papers are still coming and I enjoy them and tell Eliza I appreciate, too, the various and interesting clippings.
Best to all.
Your son
Wm. C. Styron, Jr.
Styron moved back to New York City in June 1950, sharing an apartment with Howard Hoffman, a painter and sculptor.
TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.
June 5, 1950 314 West 88th Street, New York City
Dear Pop,
I suppose you might be surprised to see the change of address above, but I moved down here a few days ago and I expect to be here all summer—a temporary stay, I hope. I think my wonderful stay at the de Limas was destined to come to an end about this time, and although the move was not effected without a certain amount of regret on all sides, it came about with as little pain as possible, and I think it was the only thing to do. I don’t know whether I’ll go back to Valley Cottage or not—permanently, that is—but even if I don’t I’ll remember my stay there as about the most pleasant, mutually rewarding of my life. At any rate, before I left I planted corn and tomatoes in the garden up there, and so Sigrid and Mrs. de Lima and I have planned to go back most every weekend to weed and cultivate and pick the crop.
The novel still goes very well, and I have picked out a nice place, I think, to write. It’s located between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, 1½ rooms, which I share with a fellow named Howard Hoffman, kitchen, bath—$8.25 a week, which is very reasonable. The guy I share the place with is a New School student—had an advertisement up on the bulletin board down there. He is a teacher and a sculptor, and seems to be both very intelligent and very nice. So I think I’m all set up until I finish the novel—at which time I intend to move to Sussex County, Va., and raise peanuts, with writing as an avocation.
It has been a long hard road for me—not from a material point of view (there I’ve been much better set up than most, I know), but in the inner struggle and the quest. I’m still far from my goal, but gradually I’m beginning to see things clearer, and to learn how to relate my art to my life. I’m sure I’m writing better all the time, and that my writing is becoming stronger and more mature. I think that I am becoming more mature, too. It is certainly a manifest truth in this day that what, above all, our people need to have is maturity and strength and an illumination of that spirit which has never died, or never will die—even if it means that in order to write with truth one has to batter his head bloody against a mass of materialism, and hypocrisy, and runaway “progress.” Even if it means being “reactionary” to write in the name of Christian charity and the worn-out virtues, I will show them, as powerfully as I can, if I can beat the race with time.
In regard to the money you have been sending me, all I can say is that I would have been just about completely lost without it—and you must know yourself how much it has meant to me. But I don’t wish to keep taking it until my novel is written, or for any length of time, if it is more than you can spare. This is all by way of saying that I know the year is up, and more, that you offered to send me the checks, and I wouldn’t feel right in accepting still others, especially in the light of the shipbuilding slump and so forth.
You have had faith in me, and it has been a wonderful feeling to know that one is not alone. Even in this day when art is frowned upon still as a not quite healthy profession, a lot of artists are lucky and I’m glad to be one of them. In the long run, despite the sneers and indifference, the artist, the real one, has always been vindicated in the end, except that it takes a long time and some have a more fortunate time than others. Amor Vincit …*w
No other news except that everything, again, goes well on the writing front and that, at the risk of sounding selfish, is gradually becoming to me the only thing that matters, although the lesson is fairly hard.
Your son,
Bill Jr.
TO SIGRID DE LIMA
June 8, 1950 314 West 88th Street, New York City
Dear Such a Sweet Sweet Baby:
Here it is a very hot (88°) June night and I am writing to my sweet baby because all this time I’ve been thinking about her and missing her very much. All week I have been writing on my book and today I reached an impasse, but I’m not too worried because I’ll conquer it tomorrow and, besides, impasses are to be expected. Loftis is getting ready to do the Kreksing with Dolly, only he doesn’t want to really, because he has a thing against violating the sanctity of the house; anyway, he’s writing a real hot semi-love letter to Peyton, and I think that somehow he identifies Peyton with D
olly, or vice versa, or something. All I have to do is think of my sweet baby and I can write real good. Really.
Otherwise I haven’t been doing much of anything, Last night I went down to see Loomis and we sat around and played Beethoven. He seems much better now, because he has a girl that he’s interested in and who appears to be very nice. She’s rather unfortunately associated, though, with television, and last Sunday she took us behind the scenes at a television show—The Aldrich Family—and it was really something strange and wonderful. What phoniness and barrenness and toothpaste smiles and general squalor! It’s sponsored (The Aldrich Family) by My-T-Fine desserts.
Loomis and I think that poor Brice is going psychopathic or something. His letters get more and more irrational and “secretive” and odd. I think he realizes that all of his old friends are tiring of his eternal pettiness and are beginning to lose interest in him. Anyway, it’s very sad.
Your letter was so interesting—about going through the blizzard and everything, and the Frenchman (how old was he!) and the Utica meatpacking papa. Such a sweet baby, I sure do wish I had gone with you in the Vista-Dome and was with you right now in the Pacific place. We could go to the Top of the Mark and you could watch me as I drank Martinis and got ver-ti-gi-nous.
Biggest news is the fact that Haydn is going to become Editor at Bobbs-Merrill, and he had a talk with me about it the other day. It seems that he doesn’t want to abscond from Crown with all of his authors, since that is not quite cricket in publishing. So I seem to have two alternatives: stay with Crown, which is the most legal thing, but which I don’t want to do, because of the fact that I think they haven’t been too generous with me and that only Haydn is responsible for the $250 I have got; the other alternative, as Haydn told me, is to go see Mavis McIntosh, who is Eliz. McKee’s partner, and who also is his agent.*x He doesn’t want to make any motions himself, so through Mavis (I called her today) I’m going to try to work it so that when Haydn goes to Bobbs-Merrill, I’ll go too, and Bobbs-Merrill will reimburse Crown the $250 I’ve got so far. Also, this move, if it works out, might result in my getting another $250, although I’m not banking too strongly on that. But I surely hope it works out, as I have no love, a priori, for Crown. Incidentally, if you write Aggie*y any time before the 21st of June, don’t mention this thing about Haydn, because it’s supposed to be, for some weird reason, a “trade secret.”
The more I think of it, the more I don’t think I’ll be able to go to Hill and Dorothy’s wedding.*z I don’t know how I’m going to tell them, and I’ll have to tell them soon, but I think they’ll understand that I just can’t afford another trip down there at this time. That last trip just about ruined me, and if I took this one, with the train fare and all both ways, plus “entertainment,” I’ll be flat busted. Or, as Peyton (Tom) puts it, I just “plain flat can’t afford it.” God. I hate to let them down, but as I look at it—along with the fact that it’ll interrupt my schedule, my “work cycle”—I think the whole thing would be ruinous and catastrophic.
It’s really not bad at all up here—although every time I think of V.C.*A fair my poor heart collapses. This Howard is a very likeable guy, and considering that I came here sight unseen, we’re marvelously amiable. Speaking of V.C. fair, I called Aggie yesterday and she said that last week guess who helped her weed the corn—none other than our friend Niel, the Dutchman! Either this weekend or the next I’m going up there and hoe and weed and sweat and everything and think of my sweat baby. Joke!
Please write and tell me about that San Francisco place—everything, and all the places and things you’ve seen. Everything, because everywhere my sweet baby goes I want to know about it. Write!
Wind is blowing off the river, that flows by Nyack and all those pretty places, and I’m thinking of you.
Love, love, love.
S.B.*B
TO SIGRID DE LIMA
July 18, 1950 314 West 88th Street, New York City
Dear Such a Sweet Baby:
Guess what! Bobbs-Merrill is going to give me $1000—count ’em—a thousand dollars for the famous novel Death of Peyton Loftis. Isn’t that a lot of dough? Actually, it’s not so immense as it sounds because I’m really going to get $500 now ($250 of which I have to pay back to Crown) and the other $500 is promised to me as soon as I deliver the completed MS. At any rate, it still is a very pleasant surprise, and I feel very wealthy and important although, being down to 13¢ and the check not in my hands yet, I’m really most broke.
The book itself is coming along—slow, as usual, but steadily. After considerable back-tracking, side digressions and such, I’m almost to the Charlottesville scene. After that, a switch to the funeral again, then the wedding, then Peyton’s day of judgment. Isn’t it going to be a long big book?
Howard and I went down to see John Maloney on Sunday night and had a very pleasant evening talking about life and art and the Korean situation.*C Maloney still seems to be writing good reviews for the Tribune—his latest in last Sunday’s paper, were reviews of Shelby Foote’s novel (he’s a young Mississippian) and “The Dog-Star” by Donald Windham, from Georgia, I think.
Yesterday afternoon I went to a cocktail party at a friend of Haydn’s high in a building over First Avenue, where in the twilight you could see the UN building (a really startling structure: too bad it’ll be a 5 + 10¢ store in the next war, or a storehouse) and all of the other beautiful sunlit midtown buildings. It was like Hollywood’s idea of a New York cocktail party. Douglas Southall Freeman’s daughter was there (she’s married to Julius Ochs Adler, Jr., of the Times) and we talked about the old times in Richmond when we were both in prep-school and danced together. Also present was Grey Blake, who played the part of the young suitor in “The Cocktail Party.” He’s very British, as the phrase goes, but very nice and personable and we had a long talk. At the Algonquin he had a room next to Tennessee Williams, who kept him awake all night with his typewriter, and when “Tenn” moved out, in moved Anton Karas (of “The Third Man”) with his zither. So Blake moved out. Also at the party was Gwyned, the “career girl” working in an ad-agency, whom Life wrote up a year ago, crying on her boy friend’s shoulder, etc.*D She’s a very spoiled, lovely, silly-looking tomato.
Korea looks bad, but it doesn’t do to worry. If one worried one would go batty and get nothing accomplished. Ars longa …*E
A Kiss for my S.B. (X). Two Kisses (XX) and much love from plain, hot little ol’ NYC.
TO SIGRID DE LIMA
July 23, 1950 314 West 88th Street, New York City
Dear Such a Sweet Baby:
It is toward the end of a hot and humid Saturday afternoon, and I have been working—ineffectually enough, on account of the heat, or just maybe a lack of inspiration—and so thought it would be a good enough time to apprise you of what I have been doing recently. Aggie called me up a couple of hours ago and asked me to go to V.C. fair with her and the Maxwells, and it was a considerable temptation, but at the time I thought (mistakenly) that my thoughts were flowing well toward the book. I should have gone, but I hope to go tomorrow, to write a little and look at the corn which Aggie says is now higher than my head. Isn’t that miraculous? I had lunch with Aggie on Thursday at the Captain’s Table and had a nice talk, and then I went over to the School and saw the beginnings of her fine new, pale blue office on the sixth floor.
Last Thursday, too, I guess it was, I finished the scene between Dolly and Loftis and am now ready to go on to the Charlottesville episode. It’s about time, and I would be there quicker, had it not been for the fact that in the Loftis-Dolly sex scene I had to go back, through some compulsion, and describe a Christmas dinner of the year before. The scene is pretty long (the Xmas episode) and it won’t surprise you that it bears quite a resemblance to the first-hand Christmas dinner experience which I once told you about. I’m terribly put off about this Charlottesville scene, because I want it to be one of the best ones in the book. It seems to be obstinate in starting, but a couple more days of concentr
ation should put it on the road. I’ll feel that when that scene is done, the end, for the first time, will really be in sight.
My check for $500 is due sometime this next week and I’ll welcome it with relief. I’ve been living off nothing at all during the past week or so and I’m tired of poverty and of borrowing. After I sign the contract on Monday, Haydn is going to take it to Indianapolis with him (he’s flying to B-M’s head office) and I’ll get the money by air mail as soon as he can arrange it out there. I haven’t seen the contract, but Haydn says that Mavis McIntosh arranged a fine one, so I’m happy. Actually, though, it looks as if the book won’t get published until fall of ’51, because I really don’t think I’ll get it finished until Christmas, possibly, even February, and it takes six or seven months to get a book published. Haydn is rather put out by the fact that I won’t get it done by this November, because the spring season, for some reason, is a better season to promote a first novel, but I think he also realizes that not only am I a slow worker, but that I won’t be satisfied if I rush the job, get sloppy or hasty. My vanity has desired that I get the book published before my 26th birthday, but that’s a rather stupid conceit anyway, so what the hell. It’s going to be such a good book, I think, really a fine book—with all of its multitude of faults—and it’s progressing better and better each day—each day, that is, in which I force myself, with pain and groans, to write. I just hope that this last part won’t be so much better than the first that it becomes evident that I was just groping around in the first chapters. However, I’m going to do a little tightening and rewriting in the first chapters anyway. What a long road it is! Nothing in my life has ever seemed so incapable of completion—not that I don’t want to complete it (it’s exactly the opposite of that), but it’s still like carrying knapsacks of unbearable sand through endless woods to a sunlit meadow, the lovely contours of which I can only vaguely imagine.