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Notes
Jack Griffin, Jerry Homsy, and Gene Stelzig, "A Conversation with William Styron, The Handle (undergraduate magazine of the Univ. of Pennsylvania), 2 (Spring 1965), 17.
Interestingly, Styron again followed Haydn to his next publishing firm, Random House, which today remains Styron's publisher. But in 1960, Styron declined to accompany Haydn to Atheneum, the firm of which Haydn was a founder. Of Styron's defection Haydn writes, with what appears to be a bit of pique, that the novelist "was tired of having people think and say that he owed everything to me; he wanted to stand on his own feet." See Haydn, p. 281.
James L. W. West III, "A Bibliographer's Interview with William Styron," Costerus, N.S. 4 (1975), 23-24.
See, for example, E. P. H. [Eloise Perry Hazard], "The Author," Saturday Review of Literature, 34 (15 Sept. 1951), 12; and Hutchens, p. 2.
Quoted from the "working" typescript of Lie Down in Darkness at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. This and subsequent quotations from the typescript are published here with Mr. Styron's kind permission.
Lie Down in Darkness (1951), p. 30. All future quotations from the novel are cited parenthetically.
Haydn's one remaining emendation to Peyton's letter is also important. At the end of the paragraph describing her fear of "floating," Haydn adds the line "then when I see the birds it seems [something crossed out]." This addition enhances the passage in two ways: first, Haydn's phrase "[something crossed out]" enables Styron to reap the full benefit of his epistolary technique. These crossed-out words are tantalizing to both Milton and the reader. Second, Haydn introduces the crucial image of the "birds" into the novel for the first time. Peyton speaks often of these wingless and hairless creatures in her interior monologue. The typescript sheet bearing Haydn's emendation is facsimiled in "A Bibliographer's Interview," p. 25.
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