Rose sends love to you all and joins me in saying that we are dearly looking forward to seeing your radiant, fat, grinning, abstemious, mothergrabbing faces again.
Love,
Bill
TO SUSANNA STYRON
February 7, 1972‖nn Roxbury, CT
Dear Sue: It was wonderful getting your wonderful letter and hearing about all the fine times you are having in Rome. I am really blue with envy—that is 10 times more envious than being green—at the thought of you immersed in the glories and beauties and sheer pleasures of that most favorite city of mine.
Everyone is tickled to death about your getting into Yale. You may be interested to know that your favorite person—John Schereschewsky—is exuberant over your admission and is claiming for himself almost all the credit for having made you so wise and bright. But everyone is overjoyed at the idea of your being a Yalie and I know you’re going to have a marvelous time there.
If you see Jack, tell him that—alas—the African Trip is off. Myles Turner had to postpone the hike until even later in the spring, which made it impossible for me since I have a speaking engagement then. So it’s really too bad in a way but I’m still entertaining hopes for someday … Someday … Meanwhile, I’m doing healthy hiking in the Roxbury hills.
Guess What!! The Mustang is no more, since in an excess of reckless affluence I traded it in on the most beautiful Jaguar you’ve ever seen. Actually it’s such a great car I plan to live in it. The enclosed piece of the brochure should give you an idea what it’s like and I hope it’ll also help entice you back here so you can drive it. It is truly elegant without being pretentious and I’ve just gotten over my guilt about buying it. Terry of course is ecstatic. Actually I paid for it with my money from Paul Newman. The movie incidentally is being filmed next fall in New York and it looks as if John Huston will direct it.
The enclosed check is to be considered a little birthday present. Do take care of yourself and drive carefully when you drive—save yourself for the Jag. Prague sounds wonderful and I know you’re going to really flower and flourish in Rome after gray Lugano. We all miss you so much and send you our dearest love.
Daddy
TO PHILIP ROTH
February 25, 1972 Roxbury, CT
Dear Philip:
What has happened about your super country Joint? Let me know. We need some friendly neighbors. That is a great house.
I too have been brooding about mortality and have been filled with Kierkegaardian despair believe me.
In the midst of this Angst, I found the solution. I bought a $9,000 XJ6 Jaguar, and feel much better.
Stay in touch,
W.S.
TO SUSANNA STYRON
March 28, 1972‖oo Roxbury, CT
Dear Sue:
I am writing this thinking that you will be back from Russia in a week or so and when you read this you have had many—I hope—marvelous experiences. Also, doubtless, a lot of disheartening ones, but that is the trouble with travel in general and also partly—as you have discovered—with Russia. I’ll be fascinated to learn what you felt about that incredible place, so please let me know at the earliest opportunity. I wrote Elana and Ray from Paris right after I saw you in Rome and can only hope that in the midst of the confusion you made some connection.
I had a lovely time in Paris with Jim and Gloria after I saw you, or left you, in Rome. Nothing madly exciting, but just a nice placid routine with of course more than one happy encounter à table at places like the Brasserie Lipp and La Coupole. The Joneses are really dying to have you up there for a visit so please don’t hesitate to call them if you want to spend a few days with them. I say this without prejudice or favor. They are enormously fond of you so you will not discommode them by a visit. They want you! As soon as I got back here from Paris I had to go down South for that wretched lecture tour in Va. and N.C. The U of Va was a drag—I felt like a pariah in that smug place, almost no one showed up for my talk!—but this was cancelled out by my turn-out at the U of N.C.—nearly a thousand students, all rapt and worshipping except for the usual phalanx of half a dozen or maybe a dozen black folk who did their usual childish gig of trying, unsuccessfully, to embarrass me by walking out. Anyway, I think I’m going to transfer my state allegiance from Va. to North Carolina. The kids in Chapel Hill are really amazingly on the ball.
Under separate cover I am sending you some (a pair) of arch supporters, your size, and I hope you receive them in good shape and don’t thereafter let your feet go flat. Other news: Sundance had 11—count ’em—11—puppies and so the house here in Rox has turned into some ghastly veterinary asylum. But the “kids” are beautiful. Though blind.
Oh how all of us miss you—especially me. Do write soon. They tell me that at Yale all they are waiting for is the arrival of Swinging Sue Styron. My play is definitely going to be put on next fall and first readings begin in a week or so, supervised by Bob Brustein. Pray for me. Love to Jack and Corda and you.
XXXX DADDY
TO The Atlantic Monthly
May, 1972‖pp Roxbury, CT
It was fun to see Gore’s reaction.
I was very much amused by Gerald Clarke’s clever and witty portrait of my friend Gore Vidal.‖qq It somewhat embarrasses me therefore to register a complaint about a statement, attributed to me, which caused Gore to react so unhappily. Mr. Clarke says that I once told him that there were “only five big writers in the country today”—a group that included Mailer, Capote and myself but not Gore Vidal. Would that I possessed either the conceit or the self-assurance to so breezily set up a Board of Directors for American letters, but alas, I’m a mass of insecurities, besides being firmly convinced that literature is neither a track race nor a gentleman’s club. What I do recollect is that Mr. Clarke asked me to name some American writers whose work I admired. I named several, including Mailer and Capote. It would never in the world have occurred to me to mention Gore, although if I really had been playing the little game that Mr. Clarke claims that I was playing, and if I were allowed a second rank, Gore definitely would have been included somewhere between five and ten, which to my mind is not bad at all.
TO SUSANNA STYRON
May 15, 1972 Roxbury, CT
Beloved daughter O’Mine: I’ve been planning to write you every day for a week or ten days now but all sorts of odd things have interfered. A couple of days ago I had to go down to Yale to hear a reading of my play. It went off fine, I thought (and Bob Brustein and others thought likewise); it made everyone laugh a lot, which is an excellent sign. It’s going to be put on down there sometime late next fall and a director named Ed Sherin has taken on the job of directing. Among other things he directed The Great White Hope on Broadway, which I liked very much, and I like him too so I think we’ll get along very well. Another thing that’s occupied me is an interview I was asked to do with Daniel Ellsberg about the Pentagon Papers.‖rr A group in New York called the New Democratic Coalition is putting out a publication and it turns out that Ellsberg wanted me to be his interviewer. So I did, and found it a rather fascinating experience. Ellsberg is a real fanatic and that quality comes out in his every word. But he is also quite earnest, likable, open, and in many ways charming so I found the hours I spent with him quite enjoyable and rewarding. He thinks Nixon is practicing actual genocide in Vietnam—genocide which is quite on the scale of the Nazi orgy in Germany—and I must say that after the events of the past two or three weeks I am inclined to agree with him.
As for your existential “wrassling,” I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you that your pondering and wondering and troubling are only extensions of what people have been doing ever since they had the capability of thought, which is to say hundreds of thousands of years. Gods and the idea of a God were of course born out of just this troubled pondering, so it may or may not be a consolation to you that your intense wonder and turmoil about the meaning of the human condition is, in fact, a part of the human condition—or at least as it is experienced by se
nsitive and questing souls like yourself (no joke). It may just be that there is no reason or purpose to existence. Many great men—thinkers and artists—have thought this to be true, yet have not despaired over this assumption but have created great work through their very vision of mankind enduring triumphant over the sheer purposelessness of the universe, and in spite of the bleak and soulless aspect it so often presents. The whole concept of tragedy is of course embodied in this notion.
But I’ve often had the feeling that the existential dilemma is a very subjective matter, entirely depending upon the individual and the circumstances of his life, and that we “Western intellectuals” with our wrenched and tormented psyches have often imposed the need to find a purpose which may be in the end only an exercise in masochism. A fisherman in the Arabian Gulf finds purpose in life by fishing, a Wyoming sheepherder by tending his sheep and remaining close to Nature and that big sky. On a somewhat higher level intellectually, a person like James Joyce, a profoundly pessimistic man at bottom, could find reason and purpose through these moments termed “epiphanies”—instances of intense revelation (through love, or a glimpse of transcendental beauty in the natural world) which gave such a sense of joy and self-realization that they justified and, in effect, ratified the existence of him who experienced them. In other words, the existential anguish becomes undone; through moments of aesthetic and spiritual fulfillment we find the very reason for existence. The creative act in art often approaches this, but it can work on humbler levels as well. If you’ll pardon my pointing to my own work, I think I tried to render this quality of revelation—“epiphany” in a part of Nat Turner. I’m thinking of the passage beginning on p. 119 of the Random House edition (you may want to re-read it) where Nat as a little boy is waiting on the table during a spring evening and experiences the combined ecstasy of (a) being alive and healthy in the springtime, (b) being appreciated as a human being, and (c) being given some marvelous unspoken promise about the future. For him at this moment all these things were enough. Existence and its joys justify everything and remain sufficient.
All the foregoing is of course ridiculously crude, off-hand and sketchy. What you have brought up has been the subject of the life-work of dozens of bearded old professors from Uppsala to Yale. But they are at least honest observations and they may give you a few hints about what your old dad has thought from time to time.
I certainly miss you very much and for that selfish reason am happy as I can be that you are going to Yale, despite your rather gloomy observations about the place. At this point I really wouldn’t have too many dread qualms about Yale. You are certainly the most beautiful, and vigorously independent person I know and I fully respect your desire to keep that independence intact but I honestly think you exaggerate your fears of a threat to your continued operation as a free spirit. In any case, try not to fret over it.
Also, do drive that lovely new car of yours carefully, especially this summer when the Latin people get their customary madness on the highway. I’ll talk over Andy’s scholarship problems with your Ma. As for the typewriter, I’d be glad to send you the money for it. How much?
Best love from
Daddy
TO FREDERICK EXLEY
June 8, 1972 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Frederick:
The state of Iowa is filled with rich farmers who make pots of money selling hogs in places like Dubuque and Sioux City which we poor suckers in turn remunerate by buying bacon at $1.19 a pound. These rich farm bastards in turn support fat institutions of learning like the University of Iowa, which should be able to pay a decent fee for writers to come and titillate the same farmers’ daughters with their (Thomas Wolfe’s phrase) creamy thighs. I will agree to come to your class for expense money but only against my better judgment. I am not a particularly venal person but I feel that we writers deserve honest pay for honest work (and that includes appearing at classes) as much as do doctors or lawyers and certainly more than politicians. Actually with me the amount of the money involved is really immaterial (my father-in-law was a clever scoundrel who in 1934 bought 9,000 shares of IBM at $8.00 a share and left them to my wife), it is—to be trite—the principle of the thing. In other words, I’d feel more comfortable about it if John Leggett could squeeze one of those hog’s tits and get me, say, as little as $250, but in any case I will come out there for expenses if those cheap bastards can’t cough up anything. Let me know when this deal takes place.
Young kid I knew well—only 20 years old, an aspiring writer—died very tragically and unexpectedly last September. He was a passionate admirer of your work, wanted to meet you, etc. I’ll tell you more about him when I see you. He came from a rich family and this spring they started a literary festival in his memory at Taft School, where he graduated from. Arthur Miller, Jerzy Kosinski and I kicked off the first event.‖ss Maybe you would consent to go there next spring. Anyway, we’ll talk about that too.
Faithfully
B.S.
TO MIKE MEWSHAW
September 27, 1972 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Mike:
I enjoyed Walking Slow very, very much.‖tt It is a great leap from Man in Motion—which as you know I also liked—and that is saying something. Your sense of narrative flow is impeccable and also I think you’ve substantially deepened your feeling for character—specifically, Carter is a much more mature, sympathetic and believable figure than the hero of Man in Motion. Also I’m delighted with your deft ability in handling subsidiary characters—Eddie Brown and [Unknown] are both raucously alive. In short, I think Walking Slow is a real achievement and I hope you’re proud of it—you should be. What really sustains the book, I think, is a continuous and unobtrusive yet most effective strain of comic insight which somehow nicely ventilates the pervading seriousness of the book yet never calls attention to itself. This sense of humor is one of your solidest gifts. Hang on to it, for it’s invaluable.
I hope you’re enjoying Spain. I’ve never spent much time there but my daughter Susanna—age 17—just returned from a long summer all over the country, where she became great pals with Luis Miguel Dominguín.‖uu Although she assures me the attachment was innocent, there were some very funny photographs in certain Spanish magazines, the captions of which identified her as the bullfighter’s inamorata, his first American love since Ava Gardner. It made me feel a little odd and not so young, especially since Dominguín is exactly my age.
When you get to be a well-known writer—which you are on your way to becoming—you must avoid at all costs any interviews, especially with little epicene pricks from Esquire such as the one you mentioned in your letter. There is nothing much to be said about that disaster except that from the very outset of the interview he felt himself clearly so superior and was so patronizing (I remember him once alluding to the fact that “the best of your work” was behind me) that I could hardly have expected it to be any better. But I let it be a lesson: avoid all interviews!…
Best to you both and keep in touch.
Bill
TO FREDERICK EXLEY
September 29, 1972 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Fred:
I’m in receipt of your various interesting and informative communications and just wanted to say that I am looking forward to my sojourn to Iowa City very much. I am as yet uncertain about the exact date but I assume that the idea of sometime during the first week in November still stands. I enjoyed your graphic description of the festivities chez Bourjaily and appreciate your warning about eschewing their hospitality since I was planning vigorously to eschew it anyway. Thank God for old Iowa House, where I hope you will make me a solid reservation. A trip to Chicago also sounds like a good deal of fun and I’ll leave in your hands whatever plans might be made in the carnal or “fun” sense. From your description of the city in your fictional memoir you seem to know your way around, and perhaps you will introduce me here and there as Dr. Penis, pronounced whichever way you chose.
I just got back from New Orlea
ns where I delivered a kind of talk at a cornpone affair called the Deep South Writers Conference, but mainly occupied my time in eating those fantastic Gulf oysters and in other animal pursuits. I am now closing up my house here on the Vineyard and am heading soon for Roxbury, Connecticut, which is the address you can reach me at. My play—In the Clap Shack—opens in December at the Yale Repertory Theatre and I’ve got to get down near New Haven in order to deal with casting and other preliminaries. There are already ominous rumblings about the play, largely due to its subject matter—syphilis and gonorrhea—and I’m steeling myself for the inevitable attack, a mean little book of essays entitled “William Styron’s In the Clap Shack, 10 White Urologists Respond.”
Let me know of any further developments on the Iowa City scene. My telephone number in Connecticut, incidentally, is (203) 354-5939. Stay in touch.
All best,
Bill S.
TO BOB BRUSTEIN
October 18, 1972 Roxbury, CT
Dearly Belovedfolk:
It was great to receive your letter and to know that things over there must be so much more pleasant in the long run than over here, where people are still knifing each other at random, “cutting up” (their wives and boyfriends), and in general making a terrible mess of the contemporary scene. The Yale Daily News has just announced on its front page a mad rapist at loose on the campus and I would fear for Susanna’s “security,” except for the fact that she is really by now such a femme moyenne sensuelle.‖vv It turns out that she turned her last few weeks in Spain into an extraordinary caper with Luis Miguel Dominguín and she brought back a sheaf of clippings from the Madrid equivalent of Paris-Match, showing her in photographs running away from photographers à la Brigitte Bardot and then later being trapped by reporters into such admissions as: “ ‘I will go anywhere on earth that Luis Miguel goes,’ said the lovely 17-year-old North American student of French and Spanish literature.” She pretends to indignation at such journalistic mendacity but of course loves every bit of it and carries the clippings around with her everywhere. Her roommate at Silliman is Bobby Shriver.‖ww