lange of cruelty and pagan cosmology.” in Rome and honeymooned in Ravello, of the many pithy statements Lethem’s
The letter marked something of a break- where the letters end. They settled on a characters make that seem as if they might
through in the 19-year-old’s casually po- farm in Connecticut and thereafter father be insightful or merely a lot of smoke. And
lite epistolatory style. and son communicated mostly by phone. there is a lot of smoke in Chronic City—
A cataract in Styron’s right eye blurred OW DOES Styron’s experience com- smoke and mirrors actually, of different
his vision and rendered him incapable of
properly aiming a rifle. His patriotic com-
H pare to those of aspiring authors to-
day? These letters present a blueprint for
sorts. The title refers to a blend of mari-
juana enjoyed by Chase and his eccentric
mitment to America’s fight in World War making it in fiction: Garner the support friend Perkus Tooth. It makes them “dev-
II, however, was such that he memorized of those closest to you and repay it with astatingly high” and either very paranoid
the eye chart, passed the test, and became gratitude; learn as much as you can from or very perceptive.
a Marine officer. The dropping of the mentors; and at all costs avoid personal The reality of everything in Manhattan
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasa- and professional entanglements that will is in question. It is never exactly clear when
ki, and the ensuing Japanese surrender, distract you from the task at hand. Al- the story is set. The era resembles our own,
ended the War before he could see com- though Styron started out before the rise with computers, cell phones and the temp-
bat. He served the rest of his time at a of MFA graduate programs his relations tations of eBay, but the city contains mag-
training camp on Hart Island in Long Is- with Blackburn and Haydn were essen- ical elements. An enormous tiger, real or
land Sound. The cataract enabled him to tially analogous. unreal, is believed to be on the prowl at
secure a discharge from the Marines dur- But two differences have been brought night, causing random destruction, and
ing the Korean War, a conflict he deemed about by contemporary technology. Many Grecian urn-like “chaldrons” transfix
“asinine,” just as he was reading proofs young writers are led into temptation by their viewers with a sense of the numi-
of Lie Down in Darkness. the quick, cheap, disposable fame avail- nous potential of their eternal “thingness”:
The letters from 1946 to 1951 concern able on the Internet. They blog, attract “It had the translucence, perhaps opal-
Styron’s effort to complete that first nov- what seems to be an audience, and chan- escence would be the word, like some-
el, begun at Duke under Blackburn’s tute- nel their efforts into usually hysterical thing hewn from marble the color of a
lage and finished in New York, where he commentary or confessions that might Creamsicle. Under the circumstances,
studied with Haydn at the New School and gather “hits” yet are sure to be forgotten in the vase seemed to have its own message
took a job with a book publisher. Styron a week’s time. Still, this temptation, while for Perkus: Have you neglected Beau-
counted being fired from that dull job— trendy, could never derail the most serious ty?. . . The orange vase spoke to Perkus,
satirized in the opening pages of Sophie’s of authors. More tragically, the Internet simply, of not the possibility but the fact
Choice (1979)—as one of his greatest and cell phones have fundamentally trans- of another world. The world Perkus or
blessings. Subsequently he benefited formed the way family and friends com- anyone would wish to discover, the fine
from his father’s generosity to the tune of municate. You could never put together a real place where the shadowy, tattered
$100 a month, estimated by editor James book like Letters to My Father—brim- cloak of delusion dissolved.”
L.W. West III as equivalent to $900 today. ming over with love, talent, vision, and re- All of that seems Romantic with a cap-
With the publication of Lie Down in solve—from an inbox full of stale e-mail. ital R. One imagines Perkus as a slightly
Darkness Styron became that now famil- sozzled Samuel Taylor Coleridge, fend-
iar figure, a twentysomething literary
phenom. His reports home chronicled Smoke and ing off migraines with laudanum and los-
ing track of the dream/reality divide. But
glamorous nights out with the likes of
Norman Mailer, James Jones, and Mont- Mirrors Perkus’ Table Talk takes place in the li-