University of Virginia Library

A study of the relationship between a writer and his editor can be revealing. Knowledge of the career of Maxwell Perkins, for instance, contributes significantly to our understanding of Wolfe, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway—all three of whom were Perkins' authors. The same is true (though in a less positive sense) of Faulkner and his first editor at Random House, Saxe Commins. Yet this bond between an author and his editor is at best fragile, if only because of the author's sensitive ego. Often an author minimizes

his editor's contributions to his work, rationalizing that it is after all his genius that supplies the necessary grist for the editor's mill. Gerald Brace Warner, a novelist himself, has written frankly about this delicate alliance:

William Styron seems not to suffer from such delusions. He has always acknowledged the important role that his Bobbs-Merrill editor Hiram Haydn played in the composition of Lie Down in Darkness, the novel which rushed Styron suddenly to prominence on the American literary scene in 1951. Haydn's influence on Lie Down in Darkness predates Styron's conception of the novel. In 1947, with only William Blackburn's creative writing classes at Duke University under his belt, Styron enrolled in Haydn's fiction-writing seminar at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Impressed by his new pupil's short-story efforts, Haydn challenged Styron "to cut out the nonsense and start a novel."[2] Styron immediately conceived a story about "a girl who gets in a lot of trouble."[3] When Styron had written only twenty pages, Haydn took out an option on Lie Down in Darkness for Crown Publishers, then his employers. But after about thirty more pages, Styron's writing bogged down completely. The young Virginian returned to the South and spent an unproductive year among his familiar haunts at Duke University. Haydn sensed that Styron was foundering and urged him to return to New York. Styron did so, and after a short stay in New York City he took up residence in Nyack, New York, with the family of another novelist named Sigrid de Lima. Later Styron moved to West 88th Street in Manhattan, and approximately a year and eight months after his return he finished Lie Down in Darkness. During this period he frequently visited the Haydn home, receiving the encouragement due a "de facto member of the family."[4] More importantly, Haydn interceded when the Marine Reserve board recalled Styron to active service before he had finished the concluding section of Lie Down in Darkness. As a result of Haydn's efforts, Styron received a three-month deferment and finished the novel. Meanwhile Haydn changed publishing houses; Styron and Lie Down in Darkness followed him to his new position as editor-in-chief at Bobbs-Merrill.[5]

Haydn contributed more to Lie Down in Darkness than advice, support, and intercession with the military. Many of his suggested emendations and deletions were incorporated into the published version of the novel. Again Styron has indicated candidly, if not quite accurately, the presence of Haydn's hand in Lie Down in Darkness:

Certainly Styron is correct in stating that many of Haydn's changes involved "little tiny points." But close scrutiny of the holograph manuscript, the "working" typescript, and the "editorial" typescript of Lie Down in Darkness—all now housed at the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress—reveals that many of Haydn's emendations constitute more than mere editorial tinkering. The two typescripts, "working" and "editorial," reveal a unique compositional process.

Styron remembers sending the novel to Haydn in four or five installments. Haydn, recognizing Styron's native ability and not wishing to dampen his enthusiasm, refrained from suggesting any changes during the initial composition of Lie Down in Darkness. A working typescript was prepared from the complete holograph manuscript, and Styron made changes and cuts throughout this typescript. A second typescript was then prepared from the emended one, and this clean "editorial" typescript was given to Haydn who marked his own suggested deletions and emendations on it. Finally, Styron approved each of Haydn's suggestions individually by incorporating them back into the first typescript. The end product is two typescripts which have almost identical texts. A third typescript was apparently prepared from Styron's twice revised "working" one and was sent to Bobbs-Merrill to serve as printer's copy. Though this typescript and the proofs for Lie Down in Darkness do not survive, a collation of the "working" typescript and the published novel shows that the usual changes in punctuation, spelling, and other accidental features, as well as some small revisions for style, were made before publication.

Haydn made several kinds of minor emendations: deletion of italics, word changes, trifles of phrasing, and grammatical niceties. His deletion of italics throughout the editorial typescript, in fact, is rather significant. Styron himself has spoken often of having to rewrite the initial third of Lie Down in Darkness in order to rid the novel of Faulkner's influence.[7] Obviously, the use of italics to highlight a character's thoughts is pure Faulkner. Haydn's deletion of italics, then, is a good example of his helping Styron to exorcise the "Faulknerian ghosts" from Lie Down in Darkness. Haydn suggests twenty-eight of these cuts in the first third of the "editorial" typescript; and Styron incorporates each of these suggestions in the published novel.

Sometimes Haydn's minor changes emphasize an effect. In the first chapter, for example, a middle-aged Helen Loftis dreams of her family's visit to her brother Eddie's farm in the Pennsylvania mountains. At the age of twenty-four she is already neurotically attached to her crippled first-born daughter Maudie. Both the editorial and working typescript versions of this section originally read: "The baby, waking from strange darkness into unfathomable light, began to cry but became quieter, after a while, in her mother's arms."[8] In the editorial typescript Haydn reduces this passage simply and more directly to "Helen crushed the child into her arms." This change more powerfully suggests the cloying and destructive nature of Helen's love, and Styron wisely adopts Haydn's emendation in the published novel.[9]

At other times Haydn merely adds new phrases or sentences without deleting the novelist's original wording. One such example occurs in the second chapter where Loftis invites Pookie and Dolly Bonner to his home for late Sunday afternoon drinks. In this scene Loftis wants to indulge his own lustful but as yet unrealized itch for Dolly. His initial overture to her is a cruel ridiculing of her husband. The editorial and working typescripts originally read this way:

Immediately following Loftis' remarks, Haydn adds: "They sat there for a few minutes in silence. Then Dolly stirred" (p. 61). By slowing down the movement of this passage for several beats and by freezing these two would-be

adulterers in silence, Haydn dramatically underscores the importance of Dolly's reaction. When Dolly responds favorably, Loftis is sure of her receptiveness to an affair.

Still, these are only minor alterations in the text. At other times Haydn's emendations are more clearly significant. He supplies what Styron calls "accuracies" to an intricate plot structure, sometimes pointing out certain narrative and rhetorical inconsistencies. Haydn also suggests numerous deletions and emendations in Peyton's interior monologue in an effort to temper that section's sexual explicitness. Most important among these are the cuts and changes muting the incestuous relationship between Peyton and her father.

Successful books almost always display narrative consistency, but often the novelist may lose sight of his grand plan: inextricably caught in the web of his own creation, he lacks the distance and objectivity necessary for close artistic control. Many times the chore of refining and ordering a work falls to the novelist's editor. The best-known example, of course, is Maxwell Perkins' reshaping of Wolfe's Of Time and the River. In Lie Down in Darkness Haydn occasionally performs a similar function, but the shaping hand in the novel is always Styron's; Haydn merely points out small confusions in the narrative in order to assure consistency in the plot, characters, and rhetoric of the novel.

Haydn's editorial ability is clearly illustrated in the letter that Loftis receives from Peyton shortly after her death. In this letter she tells him about the terrifyingly abstracted thoughts that plague her. In both the working and the editorial typescripts, the passage in its unrevised state reads:

In the editorial typescript Haydn emends the single word "aura" to "mistiness"—but the emendation is significant. Haydn apparently remembered from his reading of the complete holograph manuscript that Peyton often complains of a sense of drowning in her interior monologue; "mistiness," with its dreary, oppressive connotation of wetness, is much more appropriate than "aura," a word which carries lighter, almost ethereal connotations. Styron defers to Haydn's judgment here and changes "aura" to "mistiness" for the published novel (p. 38). Similarly in the second chapter, Helen, furious with her husband for inviting the vulgar Bonners for drinks, rebukes him about his desire for Dolly. The editorial typescript originally read: Here, besides deleting the italics, Haydn changed "neurotic" to "queer." By substituting the suggestive "queer" for the exact, almost clinical "neurotic," Haydn understates Helen's problems appropriately. At this point in Lie Down in Darkness we have had only glimpses of Helen's destructive personality; we have yet to witness her total depravity at Peyton's wedding. Therefore, Haydn's word choice keeps Styron from tipping his hand too early; the reader only becomes curious about this "queerness" of Helen's. Furthermore, the use of the psychologist's term "neurotic" is inconsistent with Loftis' character. A Tidewater Virginia lawyer who thinks of himself as a Southern gentleman is more likely to ameliorate his wife's aberrant behavior by labeling it with a quaint word like "queer." Once again Styron heeds his editor's advice; "queer" appears in the published version of the book (p. 59).

Another example occurs in the chronology of Lie Down in Darkness. In both the holograph manuscript and the working typescript, Styron begins the desolate journey of Llewellyn Casper's hearse and limousine on "a weekday morning in August in the nineteen forties." In the editorial typescript, however, Haydn specifies the date as "1945." Styron's editor again remembered from his reading of the manuscript that Peyton kills herself on the day of the bombing of Hiroshima—6 August 1945. No matter how one views this bit of gratuitous symbolism, the ambiguous dating of the novel at the beginning is inconsistent with its exact dating at the conclusion. Haydn recognized the disparity, and Styron changed the date to "1945" (p. 11).

Haydn again supplies both narrative and rhetorical consistency in the letter from Peyton to Loftis. Although it appears early in the novel, this letter accurately represents Peyton's pre-suicide mental state. In the working-typescript version of the letter Peyton complains to Loftis about the poignant disorientation which is characteristic of her breakdown:

In the editorial typescript Haydn emends both occurrences of "floating" to "drowning"—Peyton's most frequently repeated word later in the interior monologue which precedes her suicide at the end of the novel. In the published novel Peyton therefore writes to her father of "drowning" and a connection is established between letter and monologue.

Haydn makes one other seemingly minor change that demonstrates his keen eye for consistency. Early in the same letter, Peyton tells her father about the noisy taproom that she lives above: "There's a bar downstairs (I remember you haven't seen this apartment since I moved up from the village) full of the loudest Irishmen imaginable." Haydn realizes that "Irishmen" is inconsistent. Peyton's lover Anthony Cecchino is Italian; her land-lady Mrs. Marsicano is Italian; and she meets another Italian, Mickey Pavone, in the same bar that she describes to her father. Peyton must be living

in an Italian neighborhood, so Haydn changes "Irishmen" to "Italians" in the editorial typescript.[10]

Haydn's most important emendations are his sexual cuts in Peyton's interior monologue. In 1951 when Lie Down in Darkness was published, America was still in many ways a repressive society, especially in the presentation of sexual matters. Haydn's changes reflect these inhibited attitudes: the editor repeatedly tones down the explicit nature of the sexual passages that fill Peyton's rambling monologue.

Haydn first censors the passages in which Tony Cecchino, the milkman lover, forces Peyton to make love during her menstrual period. The editorial typescript of this passage reads:

Haydn excises the accurate though explicit metophor "with veins on it like blue ink leaked out from a pen" from the typescript. And Haydn (or perhaps Bobbs-Merrill) apparently reduced the entire passage still further in proof so that the published novel only reads "He came near me. I wondered if I was bleeding yet" (p. 337). Later in the editorial typescript, after Cecchino and Peyton finish their lovemaking, she says "When Tony came out, he had blood all over his belly and I was weeping." Haydn cuts "he had blood all over his belly and" from the line. Once again this sentence appears to have been edited further in proof: "When Tony came out" is changed to "When it was over." The whole sentence, now entirely tamed, appears in the published novel as "When it was over, I was weeping" (p. 339). Finally Haydn emends the passage describing Peyton as she prepares to leave to visit her estranged husband, Harry Miller. The editorial typescript reads: Haydn reduces "Quilted, absorbent, it was my last one; and I left hanging out the convenient thread" to "It was my last one." The entire passage appears in the published version of Lie Down in Darkness as: In proof, Haydn or Bobbs-Merrill must have substituted "fixed myself" for "stuffed myself up" and deleted "like the tampax."

Several of Haydn's emendations in Peyton's tragic soliloquy concern the Hungarian abortionist who comes to her aid. Peyton's promiscuity has already been established for us through her affairs with the mystery-writer Earl Sanders and with Cecchino. Haydn apparently felt that an additional sordid interlude with an oily and lascivious abortionist would be unnecessary and unattractive. He therefore deletes from the text all mention of a sexual encounter between Peyton and her doctor. The initial allusion to the Hungarian abortionist in the editorial typescript suggested Peyton's desire for him:

Haydn substitutes "looking at the" for "wanting him," muting Peyton's sexual arousal. The second reference to the nameless abortionist alludes even more explicitly to some sort of sexual encounter: Haydn changes the passage drastically, deleting "with his finger in me and not" and substituting "merciless inside twitching" for "chloroformed straining Hungarian flesh." The passage in the published novel speaks only of Peyton's guilt over the abortion and not of any sexual guilt:

In her interior monologue Peyton's disorientation centers on the various men in her life—Milton Loftis, Dickie Cartwright, Harry Miller, Earl Sanders, and Anthony Cecchino. We observe her frenzied mind jumping from memory to memory of her lovers, distorting each affair into a jumble of sexual allusions. Haydn edits these passages carefully. For example, in the editorial typescript, Haydn censors the passage in which Peyton compares the sexual organs of three of her lovers:

By deleting "not big and gross like Tony's, and he said I could make it hard with the merest switch of my tail," Haydn makes this passage far less explicit. Shortly thereafter, Haydn steps in again as Peyton compares her sexual relations with Tony and Harry: Here Haydn cuts the line "he was always taking it out to show me how big and he pressed my head down there once but I screamed." He also edits the passage in which "Dickie Boy" Cartwright, Earl Sanders, and the strange, flightless birds appear together in Peyton's tortured mind: The editor's deletion of "and I bit him where he wanted me to" is simply the cutting of some 1950s sensationalism. But Haydn's excising of the first two sentences in this passage is more significant. In these lines Styron seems to indicate that Peyton's "bird" hallucinations are the result of sexual frustration, in this case caused by Dickie Cartwright's impotence. Actually, throughout the published novel, these "birds" are symbols of Peyton's futile search for love. Haydn's motives here would seem to be artistic as well as censorious.

The most important of Haydn's sexual emendations concern the incestuous relationship between Peyton and her father. Their incestuous urges, though sublimated and never actualized, are implied throughout the novel—the playful fondling between father and daughter, Peyton's sugary nickname ("Bunny") for Loftis, her father's jealousy of her beaus, and his boyish excitement when Peyton returns home and his corresponding depression when she leaves. All these are tinged with feelings apart from mere paternal love. The incestuous action of the novel culminates with Loftis' sexual anxiety at Peyton's disastrous wedding, climaxed by his openly affectionate kiss that permanently shatters whatever familial ties still bind the Loftises together.

But several times in the editorial typescript of Peyton's interior monologue, Styron does more than imply subconscious feelings of incest: he indicates that Peyton and Milton may have made abortive attempts at sex. The first instance occurs when Peyton describes a summer night in Lynchburg, Virginia, with "Bunny."

This passage reveals urges that are certainly more than subconscious; Peyton and Loftis are embarrassingly aware of their mutual desire, if only for an instant. Wishing to mute a subject that would undoubtedly scandalize many 1950s readers, Haydn strikes the entire passage from the editorial typescript, substituting in its place the innocent line "But I remembered grass, and gulls" (p. 363).

An even more explicit example occurs later in Peyton's interior monologue when she pleads with her husband Harry to return to her. The editorial typescript reads:

Again Haydn realizes that this is far too explicit for Styron's audience. He changes "for once I awoke, half-sleeping, and you were still inside me and I ran my hand down your back and murmured, Bunny dear" to a more moderate "for once I awoke, half-sleeping, and pulled away. 'No Bunny,' I said" (p. 377). Haydn's emendation here may also have an artistic motive. Until this point the incest has been one-sided. Loftis alone subconsciously wants his daughter, but Peyton, though aware of her father's desire, never reciprocates. Haydn therefore makes this passage consistent with the rest of the novel by removing Peyton's physical longing for Loftis from the text.

Haydn's sexual emendations, then, range in importance from his significant muting of the incestuous relationship between Peyton and Milton to his rather prudish substitution of "other things" for "brassiere and pants" at the conclusion of Peyton's soliloquy (p. 385). Ironically, Haydn was accused by David Laurance Chambers, president of Bobbs-Merrill, of "sexual obsession" because he championed Lie Down in Darkness (Haydn, p. 49). One might logically assume that Haydn's suggested changes were the result of censoring by Bobbs-Merrill or pressure from Chambers. Styron, however, feels otherwise:

Whatever the case, Haydn's "unadventurous" changes did not alter the basic sexuality of the novel. Lie Down in Darkness remains a frank and sexually candid work. But future editors of the novel would do well to consider restoring many of Haydn's sexual cuts. Few of today's readers would be shocked by the explicitness of the sexual language deleted from Lie Down in Darkness.

Much of Lie Down in Darkness, then, is the end product of a unique cooperation between novelist and editor. Styron himself was intimidated neither by Bobbs-Merrill nor by Haydn. In fact, many of Haydn's suggestions were rejected by the novelist, and none of them, sexual or otherwise, was incorporated into the novel without Styron's full approval ("A Bibliographer's Interview," p. 24). Instead of chastising Styron, as Bernard De Voto did Wolfe for his collaboration with Perkins on Of Time and the River,[12] we should applaud the then young novelist's good sense and maturity in relying from time to time on his editor's experience and judgment. Lie Down in Darkness is a stronger, more consistent novel because of Styron's wise acceptance of Haydn's help.