Selected Letters of William Styron (86 page)

Ever,

Bill

T
O
G
EORGE
D’A
LMEIDA
^†rrr

November 2, 1994 Roxbury, CT

Dear George,

I am deep into your beautiful epic verse and enjoying it immensely. I have to take it in slow draughts—it is so rich—but the total effect is so far greatly moving, like certain music. It will sustain me through this chill November, and I thank you.

Many years ago—27, to be exact—I remember sitting in my Vineyard living room, with you present while I went over the jacket copy (finding
mistakes) of
Nat Turner
. After all of the misery it went through,
Nat
is now reincarnated in The Modern Library, which I reckon establishes it as at least a minor classic (in the catalog it roosts between Laurence Sterne and Thoreau) and at any rate makes me feel that the book—if I may use the unpolitically correct allusion—has triumphed over darkness.

That was a lovely time seeing you guys on the Island—much better, I might add, than when the Clintons arrived, which had its nice moments but was also noisy and chaotic.

Love to all & stay in touch.

Bill

P.S. I hope you read the new introduction.

T
O
W
ILLIE
M
ORRIS

November 29, 1994 Roxbury, CT

To: Willie

From: Stingo

Willie, you are about to enter into an amazing new phase in your life, take it from me, who has been in that phase longer than I would like to admit. It has been told that the distinguished Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, then in his late sixties, sent a telegram to a colleague on his sixtieth birthday which read: “Welcome to the great decade!”

Willie, Felix Frankfurter was off his rocker. Let me tell you, the sixties really suck. Your wiring and your plumbing begin to go haywire, things start to crack and leak—the name of the game is dysfunction. You will find that this is the decade of eroding religious faith, and you will lose the radiant belief that so sustained you as a Baptist from Yazoo City. No man, you will discover, can continue to profess devotion to a Deity who thought up anything so ludicrous as the prostate gland.

But there are wondrous compensations. You will discover that, with the waning of the old ardor, you will be overtaken by an even more intense love of dogs and children. You will continue to appreciate the joys of gastronomy, though there are only limited ways to give flavor to soft food. You will learn the pleasures of slow motion, like the three or four minutes
to get out of the front seat of a car. And Willie, when you sense a deliriously lovely young girl eyeing you on the sidewalk, and you think of the old days when they used to fawn over you and ask you up for coffee, and then she asks you if she can help you across the street—then you know that age itself is a glorious compensation, and that respect is a more beautiful attribute than anything so tawdry as lust.

But mainly, Willie, as you enter Felix Frankfurter’s grisly decade, take comfort from the supreme knowledge that you have the abiding love of your friends, not only here in Connecticut, where Rose and I and Dinah and Tashmoo are thinking of you, but throughout the world—literary and otherwise—where your name is honored as an imperishably lovely writer and one of the indisputable life-enhancers of our time. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

T
O
P
ETER
M
ATTHIESSEN

February 7, 1995 Roxbury, CT

Dear Peter,

You were incredibly brilliant the other night, what with your orotund and enormously effective declamation of my rich beautiful prose, not to speak of your oleaginous and, I might add, entirely justified praise of my work—I just wanted to say how grateful I am for laying it on with the moving thickness I deserve.

Also I’m greatly pleased that
Mr. Watson
proceeds at such a happy pace—keep me informed of progress.

And let us reunite in some fine sociable way very soon.

As ever,

Porter

T
O
P
ETER
M
ATTHIESSEN

March 17, 1995 Roxbury, CT

Dear Peter,

I know there are no words to help assuage the bottomless pain that you and Luke and family are feeling, but I did want to say that I’ve been thinking of you constantly.
^†sss
There’s very little I can do, I know, but you helped me through my darkest times, and if there’s any way I can help you at this moment I am here.

We send love to all of you

Porter

T
O
R
OBERT
L. B
YRD
^†ttt

April 10, 1995 Roxbury, CT

Dear Bob,

I thought that the enclosed book should be put among my papers, since it is an important work relevant to
The Confessions of Nat Turner
.
^†uuu
The attached letter from Magda Moyano will partially explain it.
^†vvv

Until she sent me this thesis on John Hartwell Cocke, I had reached an impasse in the writing of
Nat Turner
. After I read the work, the outline of the rest of the book became clear: I would use John Hartwell Cocke as a model for Nat’s master, Samuel Turner, and also use Bremo Plantation as a prototype for the kind of environment Nat would be reared in. The book proceeded well and smoothly after I made that decision, but it really
did require the serendipitous acquisition of this work by Coyner to make the breakthrough.

I thought it would be a good addition to my collection.

Best regards,

W.S.      

T
O
P
HILIP
N
OBILE
^†www

April 10, 1995
^†xxx
Roxbury, CT

Dear Mr. Nobile:

Your lengthy letter deserves a lengthy reply.

I think I have tried to face up to the sins of our culture, to use Garry Wills’s term, as well as any American writer.

But there are so many pious and hypocritical points of view suggested in your letter—from those of the Pope and the Church to that of the ignorant and misinformed Eisenhower to that of the admirable Garry Wills—that I find it hard to adequately express my contempt for the idea of apologizing to Japan, much less explaining the many reasons why such an apology would be outrageous—the most important being that the lives of thousands of potential invading troops on the mainland of Japan (myself included) were almost certainly saved by the dropping of the atomic bomb.

Despite the Emperor’s sanctimonious “deep sadness,” the Japanese have never officially apologized for their appalling atrocities against civilians in Asia and against Allied prisoners of war, scores of thousands of whom died in conditions approaching those of the Nazi concentration camps, and whose ordeal has recently been definitively chronicled in
Prisoners of the Japanese
by Gavan Daws.
^†yyy
By contrast, the Germans have admirably confronted their Nazi past, and Americans have dealt soul-searchingly not
only with slavery and our sins against Native Americans but also with our criminal war in Vietnam, culminating at this very moment with the remarkable confessions of Robert McNamara.

The Japanese have steadfastly refused, as a nation, to accept guilt for their recent history (this has been scathingly documented by Ian Buruma in
The New York Review of Books
), but until they do, our future, and theirs, will be in danger.
^†zzz
I am convinced from the evidence that the Japanese were
not
ready to surrender, and that, tragic as it was, the dropping of the atomic bomb was a historical necessity. But even if this were not so, there would be a need for Japan to accept blame for its atrocious past (of which Pearl Harbor was only a small component), and that they have not done so remains a moral outrage and an offense to humanity.

Sincerely,

William Styron

T
O
E
DITOR
,
The New York Times

April 23, 1995
^†AAA
Roxbury, CT

To The Editor:

In “Mr. McNamara’s War” (editorial, April 12) you savagely attack Robert S. McNamara’s acknowledgment of error in Vietnam as “prime-time apology and stale tears,” declaring that he “must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen.”

No mea culpa deserves such contempt. It is true that his comes late—very late—but it should be saluted, not scorned. This country can never be truly reunited until the Vietnam wound is closed. Mr. McNamara, by his admission, has taken a long step toward the healing. What he needs now is company. The presidents of those years are dead, but most of the other warlords are still among us. Let’s hear from them.

You state: “Fifty-eight thousand Americans got to come home in body
bags. Mr. McNamara, while tormented by his role in the war, got a sinecure at the World Bank and summers at the Vineyard.”

These are the facts. Robert S. McNamara became Secretary of Defense on Jan. 21, 1961, and resigned on Nov. 29, 1967. On Jan. 19, 1968—nearly two months later—the United States high command reported the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam as 16,459.

Our bloodiest years in Vietnam lay ahead. By the end of 1969 there would be 39,893 dead. Your final figure is correct: 58,135. But that was more than six years after Mr. McNamara left the Pentagon. So if it was Mr. McNamara’s war, was it not also Mr. Rusk’s? Mr. Bundy’s? Mr. Clifford’s? Mr. Rostow’s? Mr. Laird’s? And—last, but certainly not least—Mr. Kissinger’s?

As writers we have always taken a solemn view of our responsibilities as Americans. Fifty years ago we served in the United States Marine Corps. We vigorously denounced the war in Vietnam—though never the brave men who fought there—and we openly, often bitterly, disagreed with all who were prosecuting it, including Mr. McNamara.

We welcome his acknowledgment that the United States was wrong then, believing that America can never be damaged by an act of contrition, and we invite all those who stood with him to join him now on his knees.

William Styron  

William Manchester

T
O
P
HILIP
R
OTH

June 21, 1995 Vineyard Haven, MA

Dear Philip,

I’ll certainly refrain from any contact with the press in regard to your book, as per your request. After reading the
New Yorker
excerpt, which was splendid, I’m looking forward to the whole thing—I’ve got the bound galleys here and I’m sure the rest of the text will live up to the terrific
New Yorker
sample.
^†BBB

I appreciate your birthday note. Oh God, it’s hard, hard—I mean, it’s not really hard, or as hard as it used to be, and that’s the trouble although to be quite honest I’m rather pleasantly surprised that I’m not yet ready to be fitted for an implant. Maybe just some kind of brace.

Stay in touch.

Your buddy,

Bill      

P.S. While cooking fried chicken the other night Daphne mused wistfully about you. I think she wants some dick, like the old days.

P.P.S. You might want to look for a long memoir of mine in
The New Yorker
sometime before long. It’s a non-fiction version of the ordeal I memorialized in that play “In the Clap Shack.”
^†CCC

T
O
P
ETER AND
M
ARIA
M
ATTHIESSEN

July 7, 1995 Roxbury, CT

Dear Peter and Maria,

Thanks from my heart’s bottom for the splendid pen recorder which Al delivered to me safely. Now on my walks with my beloved poochies I’ll be able to record some of the aphorisms for which I’m famous (“Cogito, ergo sum”; “virtue is its own reward”; “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” etc.), and have them at hand hot for the typewriter and posterity.
^†DDD
It is my finest birthday present—even surpassing an inscribed copy of Newt Gingrich’s
1945
(which he was honest enough to call a “potboiler).”

Love and stay in touch

Porter

T
O
C. V
ANN
W
OODWARD

January 1, 1996 Roxbury, CT

Dear Vann,

Charles Joyner asked me to be present at Coastal Carolina Univ. later this month to be on stage with you for a conversation about Southern matters.
^†EEE
I told him that I’d be glad to do it if I can work out the right dates. Since I’ve got to give a talk in Orlando, Fla., on January 24
^th
, the best date for me would be Jan 25
^th
-26
^th
. Would this be convenient for you? Please let me know.

In that fine essay of Joyner’s on
Nat Turner
, which you gave me, he made the point that David Walker’s famous Appeal expressed rage and hatred at black people not because they were black but because slavery had so profoundly degraded them. This love-hatred motif was something I tried to express in
Nat Turner
but apparently our Nobel laureate, Ms. Morrison, has not been able to perceive that. Enclosed is some more of Ms. Morrison’s wisdom.

Happy New Year,

Bill

T
O
M
IA
F
ARROW

January 16, 1996 Roxbury, CT

Dear Mia, When you get this I will be, God willing, asprawl on the sands of Anguilla (thinking of you in a snowdrift. Ho! Ho! Ho!).

I’m enclosing Toni Morrison’s statement about my
Nat Turner
, along with a page from a very long essay on my book that will soon be published by Charles Joyner, a distinguished historian of slavery.
^†FFF
You will see that
he quotes Eugene Genovese about the matter that Toni Morrison chokes on. I think it explains the whole thing very well.