‡M Styron’s first letter to Norman Mailer.
‡N James Jones, “None Sing So Wildly,” New World Writing: Second Mentor Selection (New York: New American Library, 1952).
‡O Mailer’s first two novels, The Naked and the Dead (New York: Rinehart, 1948) and Barbary Shore (New York: Rinehart, 1951).
‡P Paul Bowles (1910–99), composer and novelist. His novel The Sheltering Sky (1949) was a major success. In 1947, Bowles settled in Tangier, where he lived for the rest of his life.
‡Q The White Horse Tavern is a Greenwich Village bar that was frequented by Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Hunter Thompson, and Jack Kerouac.
‡R Maxwell Geismar, “The End of Something,” The Nation, March 14, 1953.
‡S On postcard of gargoyles at Notre Dame Cathedral.
‡T Styron was in Paris with Bobbie Taeusch during the brief period when he and Rose had broken up after an intense courtship from October through December 1952.
‡U The first issue of The Paris Review had just been published. Styron enclosed a clipping from Newsweek mentioning Styron’s “Letter to the Editor.” See “Advance-Guard Advance,” Newsweek (March 30, 1953).
‡V Samuel Barber (1910–81) was already well known in the 1950s for his Adagio for Strings. Originally written as the second movement of String Quartet Op. 11 (1936), his orchestral adaptation was first performed in 1938. Elliott Braxton was a native of Newport News. Alexei Haieff (1914–94) was a pianist and composer who created the music for George Balanchine’s Divertimento (1944).
‡W This was the ring that Styron’s father gave to his mother when they became engaged in 1919.
‡X “The Prevalence of Wonders,” The Nation, 176 (May 1953).
‡Y The Styrons decided instead to travel to South America.
‡Z The novella Styron refers to is his story about the Hart’s Island prison. The piece was eventually published as “Blankenship” in a special Styron issue of Papers on Language and Literature 23 (Fall 1987). It also appears in William Styron, The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps, ed. James L. W. West III (New York: Random House, 2009).
§a This incident inspired the collision between Peter Leverett and Luciano di Lieto in Set This House on Fire.
§b Leon Uris, Battle Cry (New York: Putnam, 1953).
§c The review of the French edition of Lie Down in Darkness—Un lit de ténèbres (Éditions Mondiales, 1953): “For he shows us above all an American evil: that of ‘frustration’: a word which recurs as often in Styron as in Norman Mailer, Paul Bowles and many others.”
§d Styron met James Jones and the actor Montgomery Clift at a party in New York given by Vance Bourjaily. Clift’s encounter with Jim Jones at that party led to one of the actor’s signature roles, as Prewitt in the film of Jones’s From Here to Eternity.
§e Gustave Flaubert (1821–80): “Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.”
§f Adele Morales was Norman Mailer’s second wife. Their relationship ended after Mailer stabbed her with a penknife at a party. She wrote a memoir about the relationship, The Last Party: Scenes from My Life with Norman Mailer (New York: Barricade, 1997).
§g Styron refers to “daemon” in the Aristotelian sense (from the Eudemian Ethics): a spiritual guide or muse.
§h Styron is loosely paraphrasing Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”: “a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.”
§i Lewis M. Allen (1922–2003), a playwright and producer who produced Annie on Broadway with Mike Nichols. Styron and Allen met as two Virginians in New York and became very close friends. Allen married Jay Presson, a very successful screenwriter, who happened to be the first person to hold Styron’s first daughter, Susanna.
§j Bernard Baruch (1870–1965), enormously successful financier who advised Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
§k Lillian Hellman (1905–84) was an author of numerous plays and screenplays, and was nominated for an Academy Award for The Little Foxes (1941).
§l Rose Styron on January 31, 2011: “It’s interesting that he said this, because he hated the theater.”
§m This is the interview of Styron by Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton that would appear in The Paris Review 5 (Spring 1954), later republished in Malcolm Cowley, ed., Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (New York: Viking, 1958).
§n Truman Capote and Anthony West. West (1914–87) was a British author best known for the biography of his father, H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life (New York: Random House, 1984).
§o Set This House on Fire, which Styron would complete in 1959.
§p Francine du Plessix (b. 1930) is a Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer and literary critic best known for her essays in The New Yorker. She married the painter Cleve Gray (1918–2004) in 1957.
§q These lines, appearing on page 277 of the Rinehart proofs sent to Styron, are reproduced at the end of “Fourth Advertisement for Myself: The Last Draft of The Deer Park,” in Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959).
§r Bellevue was at the time a psychiatric hospital.
§s Styron wrote his New York address, 231 East 76th Street, New York, NY, because they had not yet moved in to Rucum Road.
§t Elizabeth McKee had a house in Litchfield County.
§u Friends eventually dubbed the house Styron’s Acres, and Styron lived there until his death, in 2006. Rose Styron sold the property in 2011.
§v Vance Bourjaily, The Violated (New York: Dial, 1958).
§w “Gregory Acquires ‘Naked and Dead,’ ” The New York Times, August 20, 1954.
§x Robert Lindner, Rebel Without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1944) was the source of the film’s title but none of its content. Peconic is a town on the North Shore of Long Island.
§y Chandler Brossard (1922–93), prolific journalist and writer whose first novel, Who Walk in Darkness (New York: James Laughlin, 1952), documented life in 1940s Greenwich Village.
§z James A. Michener’s first blockbuster, Tales of the South Pacific (New York: Macmillan, 1947), won a Pulitzer and was turned into the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, which won ten Tony awards and a Pulitzer. Mr. Roberts was a comic production starring Henry Fonda, who appeared in the Broadway role and the film. The Teahouse of the August Moon was another comedy, appearing on Broadway in 1952 and as a film in 1956 starring Marlon Brando. Leon Uris’s Battle Cry was made into a film in 1955 starring Van Heflin and Raymond Massey. Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) was a Protestant minister and radio personality. He is best known for his book The Power of Positive Thinking (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952), which spent 186 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.
§A Louis Kronenberger (1904–80), author of Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954).
§B Edmund Trzcinski (1921–96), playwright best known for his drama Stalag 17, written with Donald Bevan, and made into the Billy Wilder film of the same name in 1953.
§C Bennett Cerf (1898–1971) was a publisher and cofounder of Random House.
§D Henry Miller (1891–1980), novelist, travel writer, and painter, best known for his controversial novel Tropic of Cancer (Paris: Obelisk Press, 1934). At the end of the letter, Styron compliments Miller for The Colossus of Maroussi (San Francisco: Colt Press, 1941), a reflection on a year Miller spent in Greece with the writer Lawrence Durrell.
§E A Denicotea is a German-made cigarette holder with disposable filters.
§F Matthiessen’s new novel, Partisans (New York: Viking, 1955). Race Rock (1954) was his first novel.
§G Styron is quoting Mailer’s first letter to him, February 26, 1953. Mailer actually wrote: “I think it’s just terrific, how good I’m almost embarrassed to say, but as a modest estimate it’s certainly as good an eighty pages as any American has written since the war,
and really I think it’s much more than that.”
§H A pun on a line from the Christian prayer known as the Sanctus. The actual line is Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini (Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord).
§I An unknown story by Reynolds Price. Price (1933–2011) was a novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, and professor at Duke University.
§J The playwright and essayist Arthur Miller (1915–2005) was a neighbor of the Styrons in Connecticut, and they later became close friends. Miller married Marilyn Monroe on June 29, 1956, and they divorced in 1961.
§K Michael Temple Canfield and Lee Radziwill (née Caroline Lee Bouvier).
§L Arlene Francis (1907–2001) was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist. Moss Hart (1904–61) was a playwright and theater director. Cole Porter (1891–1964) was a composer and the writer of many memorable Broadway musical scores and popular songs. Richard Charles Rodgers (1902–79) was a composer of more than nine hundred songs and forty-three Broadway musicals, best known for his song-writing partnerships with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein. Steve Allen (1921–2000) was a television personality and the first host of The Tonight Show.
§M Peter Viertel (1920–2007) was an author and screenwriter whose work included such notable films as The African Queen (1951). Niven Busch (1903–91) was an author and screenwriter best known as the co-writer of the screenplay for The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Elia “Gadge” Kazan (1909–2003) was one of the most important directors in the history of Broadway and Hollywood, and was infamous for his testimony as a friendly witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Kazan earned his nickname in college—“Gadge” or “Gadg,” short for “gadget”—because he was compact and useful. Edmund Purdom (1926–2009) was a British actor.
§N John Phillips, “What Is the Matter with Mary Jane? The Tragicomedy of Cyprus,” Harper’s Magazine, June 1956.
§O Herbert Weinstock, executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf in the 1950s.
§P The Lost Steps (Los pasos perdidos) (New York: Knopf, 1956) was a novel by Alejo Carpentier, a Cuban writer and supporter of Castro’s revolution. Weinstock initially thought Carpentier’s novel was “unreadable,” but did not want to lose the author to another publisher. He solicited blurbs from Styron, Ralph Ellison, Lionel Trilling, and Robert Penn Warren, among others. Only Ellison, Trilling, and Styron responded.
§Q Mary Lee Settle (1918–2005) was best known for her historical novels about West Virginia. O Beulah Land (1956) began the series.
§R Robert Francis Goheen (1919–2008), classics scholar, president of Princeton University (1957–72), and U.S. Ambassador to India (1977–80).
§S Robert Arthur (1909–86), screenwriter and producer.
§T Styron discovered the original of this letter, which had been returned to him after Hyman’s death, when William Blackburn collected Hyman’s correspondence. He wrote to Blackburn on June 8, 1964, in frustration: “I looked in vain through my letters for communications from Mac. Not a solitary one showed up, though I’ll look again. I think the simple fact of the matter is that whenever Mac and I got in touch it was almost invariably by telephone. This of course is the curse of our age, and I suspect a lot of interesting chatty stuff has been lost to posterity because it was uttered over the phone rather than written down more or less imperishably. I have another batch of letters stored away elsewhere, and when I can get my hands on them I’ll look to see if any of them are Mac’s and let you know—though I rather doubt that any will show up.”
§U Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, eds., Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America (1957).
§V Ernest van den Haag, “Of Happiness and of Despair We Have No Measure.”
§W Styron refers to Harry F. Byrd, Sr. (1887–1966), a governor of and senator from Virginia, whose political machine dominated state politics for most of the twentieth century. Styron and his father both abhorred Byrd’s politics.
§X William Du Bois, “Books of the Times,” The New York Times, September 14, 1957.
§Y Charles Van Doren (b. 1926) is a writer and editor who was involved in the 1950s scandal surrounding the television quiz show Twenty-One.
§Z John Howard Griffin, The Devil Rides Outside (Fort Worth, Tex.: Smiths, Inc., 1952).
‖a A friend from the Marine Corps.
‖b The clipping reads: “A total of 150 days in jail was assessed against Milton Adams, whose address was given as 5971 Jefferson Ave. He had appealed from a conviction in Warwick Municipal Court of assaulting Mrs. Virginia Toler, 217 Court A, Ferguson Park, Dec. 28. He was found guilty on the assault charge and was fined $50 and given 90 days in jail. He had been convicted in Municipal Court on two charges, one an ABC violation and another on a charge of creating a nuisance. He received 30 days on each charge, the jail terms being suspended. When he appeared in Municipal Court on the assault charge the suspension of the two previous sentences was revoked. Judge Armistead ruled yesterday his terms would run consecutively. Adams was not in court at the time of trial yesterday. He was not represented by counsel. Judge Armistead directed that a capias be issued for him and he was arrested in the afternoon and taken to Denbigh jail.”
‖c Milton Adams lived in Hilton Village, Virginia, and was a bit older than Styron. His father ran the dive bar that is fictionalized in Styron’s story “A Tidewater Morning.”
‖d Eva Rubin’s due date.
‖e American writer and literary critic (1915–98).
‖f Robie Macauley (1919–95) was a senior editor at Playboy and Houghton Mifflin, as well as the author of two novels and a volume of short stories. James Gould Cozzens’s By Love Possessed (New York: Harcourt, 1957) was a bestseller. Styron used the term unowho (or unuhoo, in later years), to refer to God.
‖g Styron is paraphrasing a September 11, 1906, letter from the renowned psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910) to the British writer H. G. Wells (1866–1946) in which James famously wrote, “the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That—with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success—is our national disease.”
‖h “Ride Out” appeared in Foote’s 1954 collection Jordan County: A Landscape in Narrative (New York: Dial Press).
‖i Rubin’s review of Lie Down in Darkness from The Hopkins Review, Fall 1951.
‖j This letter was written in response to (and on top of) Mailer’s letter of March 12, 1958, where he quoted “a reliable source” that Styron had “been passing a few atrocious remarks” about Mailer’s wife Adele. Citing past instances of Styron besmirching other women, Mailer invites Styron “to a fight in which I expect to stomp out of you a fat amount of your yellow and treacherous shit.”
‖k At the urging of Rose (who had just given birth to Polly) and Jim and Gloria Jones, Styron decided not to send this annotated response.
1) I suggest that this “reliable source”—and I thought you above this type of shady allusion, Norman—is either a person with a warped and perverted imagination or simply an outrageous liar. I have no idea how close he or she is to me but, as a curator of paradoxes, you must be aware that closeness is no guarantee for the preservation of decency, and the fact that you have obviously not asked yourself whether this person simply does not hate and envy me, or you, or both of us—and above all himself—is one of the saddest parts of your letter.
2) “Atrocious remarks.” An unmitigated lie. Or, depending on your definition of atrocious, simply a lie. You force me to explain myself in some detail. I would be less than frank if I told you that Adele was my favorite person in the world. At the same time, I am honestly fond of her, and I do not defame the character of people I care for. The fact remains, though, that she does seem to be able to handle her liquor very well, and that at parties she becomes aggressive and [unknown] beyond the ordinary limits of what people call fun. If you think that this fact cheers me or gives me any malicious delight, rather than pain, you
are dead wrong. And I have remarked about this, in company with more than a few others who have felt the same pain. I have however passed no “atrocious” remarks at any place or time, and if you wish to fight me on this point you will morally have to battle several dozen others who share my regret and my sentiments.
3) The venomous tone of your letter leads me to believe that, quite to the contrary, you wish to believe it more than anything in the world.
4) This is odd. The only woman I can remember slandering in your presence, the wife of a young critic, richly deserved the slander, and I remembered that you did not hesitate to join merrily in the slander, adding your own sage judgments.
5) Your delicate style, which would be degrading to you even if I were guilty of the monstrous things you allege against me, leaves me in little doubt that something is, and must have been, eating you that has nothing to do with the “viciousness” you so meanly and falsely saddle me with.
Mailer’s response on March 27 invited Styron to repeat his defense “face-to-face” or Mailer would know that Styron’s account was “a crock of shit.” This would be their last correspondence for more than twenty years. Styron admitted in a letter from April 2, 1980, that Mailer’s version of events was essentially correct.
‖l Postcard of the Mayflower II, a full-scale replica of the original Mayflower.
‖m Bill, Rose, and Susanna Styron visited Martha’s Vineyard for the first time that August, at the invitation of Hiram Haydn.
‖n J. R. Salamanca, The Lost Country (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958), was set in Virginia and adapted for the Elvis Presley vehicle Wild in the Country (1961).
‖o The CBS adaptation of The Long March. Styron wrote a disparaging piece about the experience, “If You Write for Television …,” New Republic (April 6, 1959).
‖p Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939).
‖q Styron pasted in several items and the header from the National Enquirer: The World’s Liveliest Paper: One paragraph about Russia’s deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan meeting escorts in New York City, another about Herbert Hoover and a “curvey cutie.” And: “James Jones, the ‘From Here to Eternity’ author, is holed up in an apartment at 17 Rue du Cirque, working diligently on a new tome. Mrs. Jones reports that her husband is ‘not very pleasant’ to live with while he’s embroiled in writing. ‘A lesser woman would have left him,’ she states bitterly.”