TO WILLIE MORRIS
December 28, 1982 Roxbury, CT
Dear Willie:
Thanks for the nice review from Memphis. So far as I know, it is the only good review my modest book of essays received. An English professor from someplace like Rutgers (naturally) lambasted me in The N.Y. Times Book Review and the others followed suit.*bbb It was really perplexing, since This Quiet Dust really didn’t set itself up as a showy or ambitious work but simply a collection of casual pieces which might be savored for the relatively simple essays they were. I guess I’ve got to simply resign myself to the fact that critics will seize almost any opportunity to show off their malice; in any case, I realize that English professors hate the guts of writers in general. But thanks for the Memphis piece.
The good news is that the movie of Sophie is doing incredible business in the eight major cities where it’s showing. It’s really quite a fine movie—not the same as the book, of course—but a splendid adaptation in which Meryl Streep (who’s going to win an Oscar) does an absolutely fantastic job. I hope you see it before long. We had a great world premiere in N.Y., benefit for Amnesty International (sold out), and I went down for the gala Southern premiere in Richmond, also a benefit for Christchurch School and a great success. The Governor read out a citation and the day was called Wm. Styron Day and I felt I’d come a long way from being a little nose-picker down in the Tidewater.
Speaking of governors, Wm. Winter*ccc got a fine laudatory article in the Times in regard to his educational program. The South is rising again!
When you coming up to Yankee land? It’s been too long. Stay in touch and best to all my Oxford buddies.
Yrs ever Stingo
TO MARY BUXTON*ddd
February 16, 1983 Roxbury, CT
Dear Mary: Your letter was written with great good spirit and warmth and I hope I can reply in kind, at least in part.
Let me begin, though, with a true reminiscence. When I was 22, the age of the narrator in Sophie’s Choice, and living in New York, I came down with a truly wretched case of hepatitis. In those days, right after World War II, it was a very serious and unfamiliar disease, and I’m sure I came as close to dying as I ever have. While recuperating, I received a letter from Elizabeth. The gist of her letter was this: while she was happy that I had recovered, she hoped from her heart that I realized that I had brought the illness on myself, that by the loose and debauched life I had been living—drinking, irregular habits, etc.—I had no one to blame but myself for my close call with oblivion. I was still very weak when I read her words, barely able to get out of bed, and they made—to say the least—a bleak impression on my spirit. In short, I can say—some 35 years later—that it was one of the most hateful and poisonous letters a boy of 22 ever received from a vindictive stepmother, and it made me feel like hell. Therefore, I really can’t accept your gentle suggestion that Elizabeth was representative of stepmothers in general, who are traditionally despised by their 13-year-old children. I was no longer 13, like Luke vis-à-vis Virginia, or your sister’s stepson. I was, rather, a young adult in full command of my sensibilities, and I still hate Elizabeth for that loathsome, disgusting letter with its terrible freight of puritanical malice. The only reason—as always—that I didn’t write back and tell her to go fuck herself was because of my father, and my desire not to make that good man unhappy. How he lived with her for so long in apparent bliss is a cosmic mystery.
Of course I “forgave” her—whatever that means. Until she died, she and my father visited our family and we had some fine times together. I think she had sincere affection for all my children. There were moments when in a sort of pitying way I had warm feelings for her. But she was a grim woman and I’m sure that had my father married her, say, five years earlier, when I was just a child, I would have been destroyed. I’m amazed to this day that I allowed myself to have anything to do with her. I rather regret that in the TV documentary you saw there was more time spent on her than should have been—a disproportionate bulge which I thought was a flaw in the film. And I’m very sorry indeed that Buck was hurt. But I would be insincere now if I didn’t register my true feelings.
You’re partially right, certainly, about my father’s true nature in matters of race. The book version of the old man was considerably idealized and you are correct in saying that he kept most of the prejudices of his post-bellum Southern generation. But there had been many moments in the past when I had glimpsed in him the sight of a genuine liberal struggling to escape from the flesh of a reactionary (he did in all actuality, as I said in the book, resign as president of the Va. chapter of the Sons of the Revolution when that group endorsed Senator Joe McCarthy) and so I think my portrait wasn’t too far off.
I’m glad all is going well with you and Chip. I think of the Tidewater often though it’s been many years now since I’ve visited the Peninsula. Your letter was, at heart, filled with good will and an undercurrent of happiness, and I hope that state is always yours.
Faithfully and with love always
Bill
P.S. Rose sends her fondest.
TO WILLIE MORRIS
May 8, 1983*eee Cannes, France
Dear Willie: The Cannes Film Festival would be poontang heaven for a young stud but since I am President of the Jury I have to act real moral and drink mineral water. I’m having a good time but 22 movies in 10 days is a bit much even for a film buff like me. I’ll be back around the last of May and hope we can have a good ole boy reunion.
Stingo
TO WILLIE MORRIS
July 6, 1983 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Willie:
I’m so glad you felt the same way I did about the Hamptons. That damn place has always filled me with anxiety but the week-end in question I thought really exemplified the place at its worst. Needless to say I adore Gloria, as you do, but Matthews and I both agreed passionately that it is a terrible mistake to invite such a mob for any kind of festivity. There was absolutely no communication with anyone, so that you end up more in a state of constant irritation and even hostility than in the conviviality that such an event is supposed to produce. Except for seeing you, and one or two other people I care for, the whole week-end was for me a terrible and depressing washout, and I made a solemn vow never to go back to that area unless I can be assured that the social life will be under control. You’re absolutely right: the people there do move in packs, and it is very close to disgusting. I’ve always cherished my few friends there, but at the same time I’ve always detested the place for its umbilical cord relationship to the worst aspects of N.Y. City: chic food shops and dreadful cocktail parties and shrinks and gynecologists driving BMWs and, mainly, seeing the same damn people over and over and over again. Believe me, and I mean it: Martha’s Vineyard has its drawbacks but it is a slander to say that in any way it resembles the Hamptons. I can live my own life here, and work, and I know it would be impossible to do that there. I think the greatest indictment came from Peter and Maria Matthiessen, who told me that they’ve gotten so fed up with this madhouse aspect of the place that they’ve seriously considered moving away.
Anyway, it was great to see you and I’m very much looking forward to that book of yours. Will you get me an early version to read? Tell Matee Daniels that all the intellectual Jews up here are rooting for him to win; they know he will push their cause down there and it will mean a lot more copies of highbrow quarterlies being sold in the great state of Mississippi. Vann Woodward is coming up for a visit in a week or two. We’ll hoist a glass in memory of all the good old times.
Yrs in Jesus
& Jerry Falwell,
As ever,
Bill
TO CARLOS FUENTES
July 17, 1983 Vineyard Haven, MA
Dear Carlos: I’m sorry you couldn’t have made it up here for a brief vacance. The weather has been splendid and I miss our Immanuel Kantian promenades.
Your Harvard speech was absolutely excellent and I’ve heard very fine reverberations.*
fff I’m sure its effects will be strong and persuasive—despite the official resistance—and you certainly had an enormously influential podium. It was a triumph of reasoned exhortation.
Keep me posted on developments in regard to the Canadian powwow. I think it could be very fruitful indeed.
Abrazos Stay in touch
Bill
TO EDWARD BUNKER
November 28, 1983 Roxbury, CT
Dear Édouard Bon Coeur:
I have tried to contact you many times recently by telephone but got either no answer or a mysterious busy signal. The latter baffled me, and I wondered why there should be a busy signal when otherwise no answer. This conjured up visions of someone lurking around, not answering the phone but making calls, etc. However, it seems plain that you have not been home for some time and I hope this reaches you.
For one thing I wanted to let you know how certain efforts I have made to procure you some loot have been making out. By the time I was able, at the beginning of the fall, to make inquiries about funds and fellowships at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which I belong, it turned out that all of the candidates and applications had been processed for this year—the deadline was early last summer. So while this put you out for the current year, you are still eminently qualified for the next go-round in the coming year. I should point out that these fellowships are not terribly munificent—I mean, you can’t live off them—but they amount usually to several thousand bucks nonetheless, and are pretty good in terms of recognition. So please keep this in mind for 1984, as I’d be glad to push the matter and I think you’d have an excellent chance to get a fellowship. Many writers who are not nearly as classy as you have gotten these grants.
This idea may simply appall you, and if it does read no further—but did you ever consider teaching? I don’t have to tell you how many good writers have taken this route, and should it not make you unhappy to think about it I believe I might be able to pull some kind of influence in this direction. If you are interested that is another thing you can let me know about, and I shall make the appropriate moves.
You may not believe it, but I am far, far into a new novel which pleases me enormously. My liver has acted up to the extent that I barely drink anything anymore—so it is just me and Aquinnah, taking our walks in the woods together. I hope we can get together before too long, perhaps in the holiday season, but at the moment, I am totally mystified as to your whereabouts. As I say, I hope this reaches you in good shape, and that you are likewise in good shape. Why don’t you give me a call if the carrier pigeon delivers this to you safely.
Yours,
Bill
TO FREDERICK EXLEY
December 24, 1983 Roxbury, CT
Dear Fred: If you don’t get a Guggenheim, it will be through no fault of mine.*ggg I laid it on so thick (saying such things as: In 25 years of making recommendations there is no candidate so highly regarded in my eyes, etc.) that they will either buy it or reject it out of hand as preposterous, perhaps even indecent. I am used to such humiliations as the Signed First Edition Society. The other day I got a fan letter saying, in all seriousness, that my work combined the best of James Joyce and James Michener.
Merry Xmas,
Bill
TO CHARLES SULLIVAN
February 1, 1984 Roxbury, CT
Dear Charlie:
Many thanks for the splendid cigars, which were here waiting for me after a trip to Mexico. I’m about ready to head south again, since despite the fact that moments of New England winters are exhilarating, enough is really enough and some of these days around 10° with the wind blowing are really monstrous. Who knows, I may end up on your doorstep. Anyway, the cigars are excellent. They are proof of something I’ve long maintained (in spite of wisdom to the contrary): that the best Tampa cigars are really of very highly maintained excellence, close enough to Havanas to make a more than passable substitute (Imagine, it’s been 20 years since the Cuban Embargo!). Anyway, I am grateful to you for the thoughtfulness.
My Marine Corps novel is coming along well, and sometime before long I’d like to talk to you about it seriously and at length, and maybe solicit your advice and observations.
As you will recollect very well, WWII ended before a lot of us got to the Pacific, thus shattering dreams and creating ambiguities. My own dream was shattered because a large part of me wanted to fight the Japs and prove my courage and all that sort of thing. After all, this is what the USMC had been training me to do for a long time, and I felt quite let down when in August 1945 we all heard the news at Quantico. On the other hand, another part of me was quite relieved that Hiroshima prevented me from having my ass shot off. I would be dishonest if I didn’t say that. At any rate I ended the war with profoundly mixed feelings, and a large part of this new novel is concerned with these complicated attitudes toward courage, idealism, patriotism and, most importantly, The Bomb.
The story is told as if I (called Stingo—remember him?—who is the first person narrator) had been perhaps nine months or a year older, and then—instead of having his career terminate at Quantico—had been of the right age to be involved in the fighting as a platoon leader on Okinawa. Due to a freak accident, which is no fault of his own, he escapes combat, which causes him enormous and real frustration, since he not only honestly wants to prove himself in action but also feels that he has let his platoon down badly because of his absence. Shortly after this—recovered from the accident—he rejoins his unit on Okinawa, finding that most of his platoon has been shot up in one of the final battles, and the island is now secured. Thus he has truly escaped hearing a shot fired in anger. During the mopping-up operations, however, which are virtually danger-free for our hero, a fellow officer is horribly and mortally hurt in a booby trap and dies in the narrator’s arms. Back on Saipan (this incidentally is based on theoretical action with the 2d Division, which as you may remember was involved in the later stages of the campaign—8th Marines), Stingo’s previous macho courage does a flipflop and he finds himself no longer this gutsy young officer but utterly terrified. Though he has not experienced battle, he has seen its horrible effects and thus he loses his bravery. His terror, of course, is compounded by the fact that he knows he will be participating in the invasion of Japan (Operation Coronet, November on Kyushu) and that his chances are slim indeed for survival. The previous study in machismo turns into a study of fear. However, when the bomb drops on Hiroshima he is saved. It would be easy to say that his joy knows no bounds—he feels joy but it is hardly boundless, being shadowed by too many other factors: Hiroshima itself and his own continuing agonized conscience.
This is a crude description. However, this is the first novel I’ve heard of which deals with that very important dilemma—the conscience of those, like myself, whose lives were directly saved by The Bomb.
In these post-war years I’ve had a very easy solution to those situations when—at a party, say—someone inveighs against our national morality and the “crime” of Hiroshima. I simply walk out of the room. My life was saved by the bomb, and this novel is an attempt at an explanation of that uncomplicated fact and its consequences; therefore, it is about individual survival vs. mass death, and a lot of other thorny issues.
I’ve gone on at such length—I hope not too boringly—because I thought you might be interested in how the Marine Corps still haunts the imagination of someone like myself who—though I did not make it my career—was powerfully influenced by its effect on me many years ago.
I’d be interested in your response to this story. Naturally, since it is a novel, I’m going to feel free to depart from pure fact from time to time and go off on flights of fancy. I’d also like to think I might call on you from time to time, not just for technical advice, perhaps, but to get your feelings about the larger picture. I think this will be a very good novel if I can get it put together.
Many thanks again for the glorious cigars. Stay in touch.
Faithfully yrs as ever
Bill
S.
P.S. I hope you’re in good shape after the operation. In case you’re interested—my father had a near lethal heart problem when he was about our age, recovered, never had another ill or tremor, and I buried him happy as a clam two months short of his 90th birthday.
TO WILLIE MORRIS
March 3, 1984 Roxbury, CT
Dear Willie:
Thanks so much for the photo and text about my narrow escape on the road in Magee, Miss. I have a drinking problem, as you know, and I would not like the world to know it but a little too much wet goods which I took on up Hwy. 49 an hour or two earlier was the cause of the near-catastrophe. Also, fortunately for the reputation of both me and her, the 19 year old darling of impact was performing upon me an illegal act known in Italian as F_LL_T_O and ran off into a hayfield unscathed and unreported by the press.
Anyway I’m O.K. now. This has been a miserable cold winter and I’m yearning for sunshine. I often think of my old pal in Oxford. Tell the Mayor I got the Avenue magazine he sent. I thought it was quite a fine piece on you, Willie, unlike so many journalistic portraits which betray all sorts of hidden hostilities and jealousies.
The problem with being a writer of some note is that one can fuck off forever and never get a word written, I’m not exaggerating when I say that this spring—if I had responded to all the invitations—I could have been a merry-go-round that would have taken me to eight separate countries on three continents. As it is, I do have plans to go to Japan in May (paid for with lots of Yen by Japanese Broadcasting) because my new novel is about fighting the Japanese; and that same month I am also going to East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Fortunately, I will have enough of the book done by then to make me feel somewhat freer to relax.
Sophie has sold nearly 200,000 copies in hardback in France, hence I’m a national hero there, hence I’ve even been read by François Mitterrand (who told me “j’aime la pauvre Sophie”) hence Rose and I are going to a state dinner at the White House when he comes here in three weeks. Do you think I’ve sold my soul, when it takes all I can to avoid vomiting when President Goo-Goo (as John Marquand calls him) appears on the TV screen.