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William Styron to Norman Mailer: Two Letters OCTOBER 25, 2012
William Styron
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Rose Styron, Bill Styron, Norman Mailer, and Norris Church Mailer at the party for the tenth anniversary of Poets & Writers, New York City, 1980
Of the following two letters from Bill Styron to Norman Mailer, the first, dated March 4, 1953, was in response to Mailer’s fan letter about The Long March, Bill’s novella published in Volume 1 of Discovery, edited by Vance Bourjaily, in which Norman also had a piece. Recently reading this letter—Bill had written it at the American Academy in Rome, where he was its first novelist fellow—I was intrigued, and a bit dismayed by Bill’s comments on James Jones as a writer. Intrigued, because Bill had spoken so often of his good times in New York with Mailer and Jones, three World War II soldiers and newly successful novelists in 1951. They were all close, but after the Mailers joined the Styrons in Connecticut in 1956, Bill and Norman fell out and didn’t speak for decades. Bill and Jim—and soon Gloria and I—became inseparable friends: we visited annually in their