Selected Letters of William Styron (96 page)

‡LL
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The Confessions of Nat Turner, ‘Finest American Novel in Years,’ ”
Vogue
150 (October 1, 1967).

‡MM
Frantz Fanon (1925–61) was a Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer who supported Algerian independence and helped conceptualize postcolonialism.

‡NN
Schlesinger wrote Styron on July 27, 1967, telling him that
Confessions
“is a marvelous book.” On the
Vogue
review, he added, “I would wish that I had had more space (and a different audience).” He continued: “I would be curious to know sometime why you decided not to use the episode described in the ‘Confessions’ when, apparently in 1825, Nat ran away from an overseer ‘and after remaining in the woods thirty days, I returned, to the astonishment of the Negroes on the plantation, who thought I had made my escape to some other part of the country, as my father had done before.… And the Negroes found fault, and murmured against me, saying that if they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world.’ This seemed to me to yield an interesting insight both into Nat and the general slave mood.”

‡OO
Styron is likely referring to the 1967 translation of Fanon’s
Black Skin, White Masks
.

‡PP
Philip Rahv, “Through the Midst of Jerusalem,”
The New York Review of Books
(October 26, 1967).

‡QQ
Marke was an editor at
The New York Times Book Review
.

‡RR
Styron’s response, along with one from his eldest daughter, Susanna, was published in “Books to Send to a Distant Planet,”
The New York Times Book Review
, December 3, 1967.

‡SS
George Steiner, “The Fire Last Time,”
The New Yorker
(November 25, 1967); John Thompson, “William Styron,”
Commentary
, vol. 44, no. 5 (November 1967).

‡TT
Styron was awarded the degree by Wilberforce on November 21, 1967. He recounted the experience in “Nat Turner Revisited,”
American Heritage
(October 1992).

‡UU
The bathroom in the Styron home where many of Bill’s awards were displayed.

‡VV
In “Styron’s Golem” (The
Minority of One
, December 1967), Geismar wrote, “It has already been decreed, for example, by all these interlocking cultural institutions—from the publishers and the Book Clubs to the critics and
The New York Times
reviewers—that William Styron’s
Confessions of Nat Turner
, a rich and ripe if not fruity product of the Plantation School of Southern Liberals, is to be
the
book of the year … only a Virginia gentleman who has grown up with the Southern Negro and who speaks his language can dare to penetrate his servile heart.”

‡WW
Postcard is inscribed “Aboard the Rosalie L.”

‡XX
The film was released in 1970; Styron did not appear in the final cut.

‡YY
Thornton Niven Wilder (1897–1975), American playwright and novelist. His novel
The Eighth Day
(1967) won the National Book Award.

‡ZZ
Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005) was a U.S senator who sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1968 on an anti–Vietnam War platform.

§aa
Candida Donadio (1930–2001), literary agent with McIntosh and McKee before founding her own agency in 1969. Donadio represented Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth, among others.

§bb
Styron received an honorary doctorate from Duke in the spring of 1968.

§cc
Richard Gilman, “Nat Turner Revisited,”
The New Republic
(April 27, 1968).

§dd
Schlesinger had written Styron on May 13 asking him to join George Kennan in signing a letter protesting the international publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writings, which they felt would mute their impact in the Soviet Union.

§ee
Eugene D. Genovese, “The Nat Turner Case,”
The New York Review of Books
(September 12, 1968).

§ff
Wertham (1895–1981) was a psychiatrist who became rather infamous for his crusade against violent imagery in the mass media, and particularly comic books.

§gg
Styron refers to the riots that began in May of 1968 and continued through Bastille Day.

§hh
General Taylor (1901–87) was appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by John F. Kennedy in October 1962. Mortimer Caplin (b. 1916) was U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1961–64).

§ii
Pottsville, Pennsylvania, was Gloria’s hometown.

§jj
The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

§kk
See Styron’s letter of June 18, 1968.

§ll
Larry L. King, “The Grand Ole Opry,”
Harper’s Magazine
(July 1968).

§mm
Larry L. King, “Requiem for Faulkner’s Home Town,”
Holiday
(March 1969).

§nn
This is the only extant letter from Styron to Genovese, a rare typescript from a short period where Styron typed his outgoing mail. Genovese destroyed all of his correspondence in the 1990s.

§oo
Styron never employed a secretary, but frequently used the ruse to get rid of various inquiries.

§pp
Styron was covering the Democratic National Convention. His article, “In the Jungle,”
The New York Review of Books
(September 26, 1968), was collected in
This Quiet Dust
.

§qq
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (b. 1933), Russian poet and filmmaker who gained great acclaim in Russia and abroad beginning in the 1950s.

§rr
Thomas Merton, “Who Is Nat Turner?”
Katallagete
(Spring 1968). Merton (1915–68), a Catholic monk, wrote nearly seventy books.

§ss
Ossie Davis (1917–2005) was an Emmy Award–winning stage, film, and television actor known for his social activism.

§tt
The panel, “The Uses of History in Fiction,” was a discussion among Styron, Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren, and C. Vann Woodward at the Southern Historical Association meeting in New Orleans on November 6, 1968. The transcript was published in
The Southern Literary Journal
(Spring 1969) and in James L. W. West III, ed.,
Conversations with William Styron
.

§uu
Styron’s note appears on a copy of a letter of December 2, 1968, to Styron from “President Richard M. Nixon.” Willie Morris was very fond of playing pranks on Styron and had found some vaguely authentic looking letterhead with a letter asking Styron to “recommend exceptional individuals.” Morris’s Nixon wanted “the best minds in America to meet the challenges of this rapidly changing world. To find them, I ask for your active participation and assistance.”

§vv
Richmond was the Counselor for Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

§ww
Annie Brierre, an editor at Gallimard.

§xx
General David M. Schoup, “The New American Militarism,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, April 1969. The article caused quite a stir, blaming the Vietnam War largely on “pervasive American militarism and inter-service rivalry.” See Howard Jablon,
David M. Schoup: A Warrior Against War
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 109.

§yy
Henry Hyde (1915–97) was a lawyer and American spy who played an essential role in the D-Day landing. See Joseph Persico,
Piercing the Reich
(1997), and Anthony Brown,
The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan
(1982).

§zz
Hellman’s first memoir, published in 1969.

§AA
Nathanael West (1903–40), American novelist and screenwriter, author of
Miss Lonelyhearts
and
The Day of the Locust
.

§BB
Styron refers to Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), a writer known for his novels
The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man
, and
Red Harvest
, and Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), a writer and satirist known for her contributions to
The New Yorker
and as a founder of the Algonquin Round Table. Dorothy is not to be confused with Didi Parker, Styron’s coworker and correspondent of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Russian-born Raya Orlova was a close friend of Hellman who translated many of her plays. Helena Golisheva and Elena Levin were other Russian friends.

§CC
Styron called
Revolutionary Road
“a deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic.” Yates (1926–92) wrote a screenplay of
Lie Down in Darkness
in 1962.

§DD
Styron wrote a nearly identical letter to Jones on June 24, calling Yates “a capital fellow.” He also mentioned Henry Hyde procuring “a 2-book contract with Random House for 11,500 shares of RCA stock—worth a cool $500,000. I’m glad you got us together.”

§EE
A special issue on William Styron:
South Atlantic Quarterly
68 (1969).

§FF
Young’s 1934 novel about Civil War Mississippi is considered a classic of the moonlight-and-magnolias school.

§GG
Harry Tuchman Levin (1912–94), American literary critic and scholar of modernism and comparative literature at Harvard University.

§HH
George Core, “
The Confessions of Nat Turner
and the Burden of the Past,”
The Southern Literary Journal
(Spring 1970).

§II
When Styron donated the physical Howells medal to Duke University on February 3, 1971, he wrote, “The medal is made largely of gold and worth, I am told, in the neighborhood of $400. Therefore it is not only not invaluable but probably not even irreplaceable, so it should be treated only with the same good care I’m sure you give to the rest of your material down there. I am told that if someone were to steal it he could only get about $125 at a pawn shop, so I do not think you should be overly concerned about its security. Actually, I would think it might make you a nice paperweight, and I would be delighted to think that you might use it as such.”

§JJ
William C. Styron, Sr., married Eunice Edmondson, one of his former sweethearts, in January 1971.

§KK
Stationery produced by Leo Carty for Anton Studios that Styron used ironically for correspondence to friends and family. The front has a portrait of a skinny, balding African American man. The front of the card reads: “Nat Turner: POWER OF SELF DETERMINATION.” On the back of the card appears a brief biography: “NAT TURNER (1800–1831) Born in Southampton County, Virginia, Turner believed that God had appointed him a leader of his people. In February 1831, he led one of the first successful slave revolts, killing fifty-five white people. Turner was captured and hung but his fight for freedom will never be forgotten.”

§LL
James Jones,
The Merry Month of May
(New York: Delacorte, 1971), was a novel set during the 1968 student protests in Paris.

§MM
The essay appears in Mark Spilka, ed.,
Novel: A Forum on Fiction
, vol. 4, no. 2 (Winter 1971).

§NN
Styron referred to Erich Segal’s immensely popular novel
Love Story
(1970). Styron attached a piece, “Not Literature,” from the
Los Angeles Times
, January 23, 1971, in which he was quoted on the controversy: “[
Love Story
] is a banal book which simply doesn’t qualify as literature. Simply by being on the list it would have demeaned the other books.” The other judges for the 1971 award were author John Cheever, Maurice Dolbler (literary editor of
The Providence Journal and Evening Bulletin
), John Leonard (editor of
The New York Times Book Review
), and critic and novelist Marya Mannes.

§OO
Donald Gallinger (b. 1953) was seventeen years old when he wrote to Styron about
The Confessions of Nat Turner
. Inspired by Styron’s reply and by a friendly postcard from John Updike (“I think you read me very well”), Gallinger eventually became a published writer. His novel
The Master Planets
(2008) examines the effects of a Polish woman’s actions during World War II on her American family decades later.

§PP
Sterling Stuckey, “Twilight of Our Past: Reflections on the Origins of Black History,” in John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris, eds.,
Amistad 2: Writings on Black History and Culture
(New York: Random House, 1971).

§QQ
Nobile was an editor at
The New York Review of Books
. He wrote an account of the early days at the publication, in which he included portions of this letter from Styron. See
Intellectual Skywriting: Literary Politics and the New York Review of Books
(New York: Charterhouse, 1974).

§RR
David Lloyd Wolper (1928–2010), an American television and film producer with a long list of credits, most notably the miniseries
Roots
.

§SS
William Styron and John Phillips, “Dead!”
Esquire
(December 1973).

§TT
Dorothy Tristan (b. 1942), actress, appeared in
Klute
(1971) and
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
(1986) among other films, and was married for fifteen years to American film editor and director Aram A. Avakian (1926–87), who was in Paris when
The Paris Review
was founded and socialized frequently with Styron, Plimpton, and Marquand.

§UU
Marianne Moore (1887–1972), American modernist poet and writer. Morton Dauwen Zabel (1901–64), author of
Craft and Character: Texts, Method, and Vocation in Modern Fiction
(1957).

§VV
John Simon (b. 1925), American author and literary and drama critic. Richard Gilman (1923–2006), American literary and drama critic.

§WW
Philip Roth,
Our Gang (Starring Tricky and His Friends)
(New York: Random House, 1971).

§XX
Jason Epstein (b. 1928), American editor and publisher, hired by Bennett Cerf at Random House. In addition to editing such notable authors as Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, and Vladimir Nabokov, Epstein was also a cofounder of
The New York Review of Books
.