“I’ve finally pretty much decided what to write
next—a novel based on Nat Turner’s rebellion,”
twenty-six-year-old William Styron confided to his father
in a letter he wrote on May 1, 1952. Styron would not publish
his Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat
Turner until 1967, but this letter undercuts those critics
who later attacked the writer as an opportunist capitalizing
on the heated racial climate of the late 1960s. From 1943
to 1953, Styron wrote over one hundred letters to William
C. Styron, Sr., detailing his adventures, his works in progress,
and his ruminations on the craft of writing. In Letters
to My Father, Styron biographer James L. W. West III
collects this correspondence for the first time, revealing
the early, intimate thoughts of a young man who was to become
a literary icon.
Styron wrote his earliest letters from Davidson College, where
he was very much unsure of himself and of his prospects in
life. By the last few letters, however, he had achieved a
great deal: he had earned a commission in the Marine Corps,
survived World War II, published the novel Lie Down in
Darkness (1951) and the novella The Long March
(1953), and won the Prix de Rome. He had also recently married
and was about to return to the United States from an expatriate
period in Paris and Rome.
The letters constitute a portrait of the artist as a young
man. They read like an epistolary novel, with movement from
location to location and changes in voice and language. Styron
was extremely close to his father and quite open with him.
His story is a classic one, from youthful insecurity to artistic
self-discovery, capped by recognition and success. There are
challenges along the way for the hero—poor academic
performance, a syphilis scare, writer’s block, temporary
frustration in romance. But Styron overcomes these difficulties
and emerges as a confident young writer, ready to tackle his
next project, the novel Set This House on Fire (1960).
Rose Styron, the author’s widow, contributes a prefatory
memoir of the senior Styron. West has provided comprehensive
annotations to the correspondence, and the volume also has
several illustrations, including facsimiles of some of the
letters, which survive among Styron’s papers at Duke
University. Finally, there is a selection of Styron’s
apprentice fiction from the late 1940s and early 1950s.
In all of American literature, no other extended series of
such letters—son to father—exists. Letters
to My Father offers a unique glimpse into the formative
years of one of the most admired and controversial writers
of his time.
William Styron (1925–2006) was the
author of many books, including The Confessions of Nat
Turner and Sophie’s Choice. He was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Howells Medal, the American
Book Award, the Légion d’Honneur, and the MacDowell
Medal.
James L. W. West III is the author of William
Styron: A Life (1998) and general editor of the Cambridge
Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He is Sparks
Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. |
