As for the Willingham check, just forget about it for the moment. I’ll keep on Calder’s tail by mail until he coughs up a check.
I made the mistake of allowing my name to be carried in the Paris Tribune “Who Is Where” lonelyhearts column and have received about a dozen letters from people whom I haven’t the vaguest desire to meet. One of them, however, was a very nice note from K.S. Giniger of Prentice-Hall and I guess I’ll look him up because he sounds like a nice guy, though I don’t know.
I am leading a clean, well-ordered life, but won’t be entirely happy until I start writing + working again. Tell Didi I miss her very much, + will write today or tomorrow, and also that I’m having dinner with Irwin Shaw, if that’s of any interest.
Love + Kisses—Bill
P.S. I hope you sent the other copies of the English edition to the people I listed
TO WILLIAM C. STYRON, SR.
May 20, 1952 Paris, France
Dear Pop,
If I don’t forget, I’m enclosing a copy of the review of Lie Down in “Punch,” which was sent to me from England.†Q Excellent reviews in England, I’ve been told, but not much in regard to sales.
Dorothy wrote me that I was runner-up in a Saturday Review of Literature poll concerning Who Should have Won the Pulitzer Prize. Not bad, all things considered.
Thanks for the list of books on Nat Turner. Things seem to be getting a bit out of hand, however, in my search for background material, since I’ve written to a couple of other people—namely my agent and Prof. J. Saunders Redding, the Negro professor of English at Hampton Institute—for material, and I’m afraid that all sorts of unnecessary duplications might result. Would it be asking too much to have you either call Mr. Redding (his number is in the Hampton phone book) or talk to him, and in any case get together and figure out just what each of you are going to send? He wrote me that he had a bunch of stuff he was going to send and I don’t know just how much of that might be on the list you sent from the State Library. At any rate, I think you’d enjoy very much talking to him—a striking, forceful, but thoroughly affable gentleman whose only difference from any other human, so far as I can tell, is in the pigmentation of his skin—and I think also that he’d be in a good position to tell you which items on the list are valuable, which ones are not, and which ones, if any, he’s already sent me. Pop, don’t exert yourself over this thing, but if you find that it’s no strain, and that you enjoy doing it—including seeing Mr. Redding, whom I think you’d like—well then that’s fine. For my part, I would like to have photostats of practically all the articles on the list, if you can do it without too much trouble. #1 Redding says he’s going to get for me. I think you can ignore #7, since I have no particular desire to read a fictionalized account, and #6, which I’ve already read and is rather slight. #10 is starred as unavailable for loan, so you can forget that; but all the rest look interesting and I’d like to have them if possible. Perhaps Mr. Redding could tell you which ones of the other items are intrinsically valuable and which ones merely repeat.†R
Pop, one thing I wish you’d do for me and that is not to bruit it about too much concerning what I’m planning to write about. I don’t mind anyone knowing that I’m working, but for some reason I really prefer to be a bit secretive about the nature of the project; could you just say from now on, to people who don’t already know, that I’m doing something “historical” on “Virginia in slave times,” or something like that?
As for the article in the Michigan Alumni Bulletin, I enjoyed it very much; it was one of the few things Cousins ever said that made any sense.†S This idea about “noble themes” does have some truth in it; the only catch is that a writer never must search for noble themes; he creates the noble theme himself. Nat Turner, for instance, is on the surface pretty much a bastard through and through; however I subscribe to the theory that all people, no matter how bad—and that includes the Loftises—have a scrap of nobility in them; it’s not the writer’s job to particularly exalt humans or make them noble if they’re not all noble, but the writer is shirking his duty, and is not much of a writer, if he fails to show that scrap of nobility, the scrap varying in size according to the person. I hope that when I’m through with Nat Turner (and God, I know it’s going to be a long, hard job) he will not be either a Great Leader of The Masses, as the stupid, vicious jackass of a Communist writer might make him out—or a perfectly satanic demagogue, as the surface historical facts present him, but a living human being of great power and great potential who somewhere, in his struggle for freedom and for immortality, lost his way. And that is the human condition and no one is even half-noble unless he deserves it and no one is all noble, even a saint. Which is where Mr. Cousins is wrong.
As for me, I’m healthy, wealthy and happy in the Paris spring and I await your correspondence on Mr. Turner.
Your son,
Bill
TO DOROTHY PARKER
May 25, 1952 Paris, France
… I have been doing a rather intellectual round during the past few days. There’s a big thing going on over here called “Works of XXth Century” in which leading intellectuals all over the West have been invited to participate. Ken Giniger, the Prentice-Hall guy, is writing an article for the Saturday Review on the series of lectures and concerts and asked me to go along to some of them as his guest. We had excellent seats at a concert of the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch, playing Berlioz and Brahms, and on two afternoons we went to forums involving topics like “Revolt and Communion” and “Artist and Isolation” and speakers like Allen Tate, Auden, and James T. Farrell; I must say the discussions were terrific bores, but I was glad to hear Auden, for instance, who made some sense.†T Speakers speak in French and English, depending on their nationality, and we sat at long tables just like the ones at the U.N., and put on ear-sets which were wired for simultaneous translation. This, however, did not minimize the boredom or the stratospheric generalization and abstractions; as an English friend wrote me, “if you were to squeeze my ennui, I should let fall a drop of pure quartz.” But I did meet Allen Tate, who said he liked my book, and Auden, who had also been on that Prix de Rome Committee and, if anything, gave the impression that he had been one of the dissenting judges but who, withal, was very genial and nice. He reminds me of my Aunt Deborah who, at your every word, is about to raise his hands limply and make a great indrawn laugh and emit a very middle aged and spinsterish “whoops!” James T. (“Call me Jim”) Farrell was pretty well plastered but I had a rather lengthy chat with him and he wants me to have an evening with him at the Deux Magots this week. He goes on a bit about trade unions and such, but has a lot of interesting stories to tell. Two of the nicest people I’ve met in France, through Giniger, are a young couple named Jacques and Colette Duhamel (no relation to Georges) who together run a publishing house called Editions de la Table Ronde and specialize in translating young American writers. She’s extremely pregnant at the moment, but I’ve never seen a woman who could be so lovely while enceinte; they’ve been very hospitable to me and have invited me to dinner a couple of times, and I plan to return it, in my imitably Southern way, by cooking them some Virginia fried chicken.
Yesterday the Matthiessens and I were driven out into the country by Irwin Shaw and wife in their beautiful convertible to the most absolutely elysian wayside inn that I’ve ever seen. The day was perfect, balmy and cloudless; you sit in the back, in a garden full of rosebushes and chrysanthemums, and look out over a distant pasture where cows are grazing, and far below the Seine, we started at one-thirty and didn’t finish until past five, having consumed langoustine (like small lobster), pâté made of rabbit, steak two inches thick (I give you my word), strawberry shortcake and six bottles of wine. If, in these letters, as it seems, I’m becoming disgusting about food, let me know, but I promise when I see you next to be straight + hard as … I love you.
Bill
P.S. Give Lizzie my best, and tell her my father is sending me a lot of stuff on Nat Turne
r.
TO ROBERT LOOMIS
May 27, 1952 Paris, France
Dear Bob,
A note to catch you up on my vicissitudes of late. I’m living in Montparnasse in a nest of vice-dens: Le Café Dôme (Hemingway’s old hangout), la Rotonde, la Coupole, and shady dive called Le Chaplain, which is the nearest Paris equivalent of Luis’ Bar on West 4th Street. Really, this whole area is so reminiscent of Greenwich Village that I want to laugh and cry and scream at the same time: great buck niggers in zoot suits, bearded poets, unwashed little raggedy-assed girls and a whole slew of unsavory people that look like a cross between Toulouse-Lautrec and Marshall Allen. Fortunately I’ve made the acquaintance of a member of the nice, normal folks and so only part of my day is spent swilling cognac. I miss whiskey, and beer. The French beer tastes like horsepiss and is just about as intoxicating. Most of my spare time (and about all my time is spare) has been spent with a guy named Peter Matthiessen and his wife. He’s from Connecticut and won the Atlantic “First” Prize last year, and is now writing a novel for Little, Brown. We go over to Irwin Shaw’s every now and then and get drunk. Last Saturday the Shaws and the Matthiessens and I drove out in Shaw’s beautiful convertible to an inn in the country: it was a gorgeous day and we sat at a table on the lawn and watched the cows graze, while we drank six bottles of wine, ate langoustine (small lobsters), sirloin steak two inches thick, and strawberry shortcake so light that it almost blew off the table. Really a productive life I’m leading. Right at the moment I’m not withering away for sex, but I must say the tail was steadier, if you’ll pardon the expression, in dear old New York. First contact I made was a beautiful divorcee, aged 26, from the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. She has an alimony of $3000 a month, a white Oldsmobile and a four room apartment, but being American was getting psychoanalyzed and was in general so screwed-up that I drew an utter blank. My most recent work-out has been with an English girl who is a midget; she’s a terrifically intelligent girl, good-looking, loves sex, but she’s only about four and a half feet tall and it’s like making love to a mouse. I think I’ve flushed her for good, much as I hate to, and am now casting about for a normal French girl who doesn’t know a word of English and hasn’t ever heard the word Freud. It shouldn’t be too hard. You’d think it would be hard to draw a blank in Paris, but there are dry spells like now.
My name was in the Paris Tribune and so a fellow named Giniger from Prentice-Hall called me up and has been taking me around to various events. He doesn’t want to lure me away from Bobbs but merely liked my book. We’ve been to a concert of the Boston Symphony under Munch playing my favorite composers, Berlioz and Brahms, and to a series of forums which comprise part of a big thing called “Work of the 20th Century,” which Giniger is covering for the Saturday Review, and in which a lot of bigshot literary names from America have been invited to participate. The thing is a terrific bore, but it’s organized along the lines of the U.N. insofar as translation goes, with earphones and hearing Auden come out in French. I met him and Allen Tate and Robert Lowell and Stephen Spender†U and James T. Farrell, who must have been just along for the laughs. Farrell invited me to dinner sometime this week; he’s a very nice, easy-going guy with a wry sense of humor just like Irwin Shaw, when you’re around him you get the impression that writing and all that sort of stuff is a bit sissified.
I must say that my main and practically only regret about Paris so far is that I haven’t gotten much work done. I have finally gotten part of the way into my long piece on the Marine Corps but, I don’t know, Paris doesn’t seem to be particularly good for my inspiration and I can’t seem to stay at it. I am determined, though, to finish that thing (I think it’ll be long and good enough for either New World Writing or Aldridge and Bourjaily’s new magazine)†V before I leave Paris (a month from now? two months?) and before I start in on the Nat Turner novel, material for which hard-suffering people are sending me from all points of the globe. Right now I’m trying to re-gain my vision, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious; some of the feeling I had, and the music, when I was writing the last part of Peyton’s soliloquy. I think when I get that again, which shouldn’t be too far off, and combine it with more experience, I’ll be able to write a really fine book. And speaking of vision: believe it or not, though it’s hard to be lonesome in a place like Paris, it is tremendously easy to have pangs of homesickness. I guess at last I’m just that provincial and there are times, if you’ll forgive the banality, when I’d literally pay $20 for a single hamburger from the White Tower and a cold glass of real milk, instead of French milk, which tastes as if it cometh not from the teat but from the asshole. When I consider that I’m going to be over here until probably autumn of next year, I could literally come with chagrin. But lest finally you jump at conclusions and think that I’m not enjoying myself, let me reassure you that such moments of panic are momentary and that, being in the prime of my youth, I would consider it not just a disgrace but a crime against nature not to have the time of my life.
George and Gerda have an apartment not too far from here, but George spends most of his time in a tent out in the country, alone, doing what God only knows. I guess painting. I got drunk once and rode on the ass-end of his motorcycle at 60 miles an hour through Paris with my feet dragging wildly along the cobblestones and I still haven’t recovered. Incidentally, they mentioned that you mentioned that Leslie Flatt Belker might be coming over.†W If you see her, tell her I will welcome her to Paris with open arms, but that I warn her that she mustn’t try any of this psychoanalytical monkey-business with me. Styron welcomes only un-complexed women into his bed and board. Drop me a line about the New York life and give my best to John, George + Mickey and all.†X How’s George’s book doing? I never did get the galleys.
Love forever—Bill
TO DOROTHY PARKER
May 27, 1952 Paris, France
Dearest little omelette aux champignons—I have just spent a harmless, quiet Sunday reading (Prize Stories of 1951, and The Stockade, an unpublished first novel which Little, Brown sent me and reads very well) and writing (a short story about the Marine Corps which I’m just getting well into) and now, before I dash over to the Ritz (to have cocktails with an immensely wealthy young guy I met in England) I figure that it’s time to talk to you. When one sojourns in a place for quite a while one’s life tends to become crystallized and static and even (to one’s self) a bit uninteresting; but now upon reflection I guess there are a few things to note that you’ll doubtless find fascinating. First, about my sex life—dead, mort, hopelessly barren at the moment, even in Paris, imagine! I tried desperately to put the big make on a lush little American divorcee who gets an alimony of $3000 a month (the Singer Sewing Machine fortune) and who has a fancy apartment near the Invalides and an obscene stark-white Oldsmobile. But it turns out that she’ll endure all sorts of wet grappling but draws the line like a Duke co-ed when it comes to the Real Thing. Imagine that—also imagine me dating a neurotic (she’s getting psychoanalyzed) Scarsdale girl in Paris in the month of May. Better I should go back home. So I gave it up as a bad job. Why don’t you come over here and save me all these extra-curricular miseries?
So I’ve just been coasting about for some time on the thin-ice of my frustration; never, however, giving up hope. After all, some people have considered me attractive at times. I see quite a bit of Peter Matthiessen and his wife, as I think I’ve already told you; the other night we all had dinner with Irwin Shaw and his wife and I must say, in spite of stories to the contrary (probably inspired by jealousy), that I find Shaw a hell of a nice guy—honest, gentle, witty and not at all the sort of Brooklyn wise-guy that he’s been made out to be. I got very drunk that evening and had to be revived, at about 5:00 A.M., by great draughts of coffee in the Dôme.
Zeph Stuart (you remember, McDougal Street) is here with her three children in a hotel on the other side of the river, and adds considerably to the atmosphere and fun. Yesterday she, Peter, and I paid a call on an old French g
uy named Tristan Tzara, who is an acquaintance of Peter’s, and who in the ’20s was famous as the founder, along with Arp and Miro, of the Dadaist movement—a fabulous old gent who rather wistfully lives off the memories of past grandeur but whose apartment is absolutely crammed with original Picassos (a great friend of his), Miros, Chiricos, Utrillos and practically anyone else you can name. He’s a communist, like most left-bank French intellectuals, but withal quite reasonable. Among his bons amis were Joyce and Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and he was and still is apparently an intimate pal of Malcolm Cowley. He was great fun to talk to. Afterwards I seemed to have gotten myself stuck with a cocktail date with Ken Giniger of Prentice-Hall, who doesn’t move me in the least, but we all met at the Ritz and had cocktails ($1.50 per martini) on my publisher, Mr. Enoch of Signet Books, who was passing through with his wife on a trip from India and who seemed pleased enough to meet one of his authors in Paris, though I don’t know.