A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (43 page)

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

May 13, 2003

Percival Everett

James R. Kincaid

Department of English

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA 90089-0354

Dear Professors Everett and Kincaid:

This is to acknowledge receipt of your outline and few beginning pages, forwarded to me as Senior Editor from Martin Snell, who is serving a probationary period as an assistant editor.

We will be in touch with you in due course.

Sincerely,

Arthur Sullivan

Arthur Sullivan

Senior Editor

May 13, 2003

Reba—

I guess I could bring this up while we’re at work, but that’s not what I do. How about going out to the Met—La Perichole—with me and dinner too on Friday. If you’re busy, that’s OK.

Ralph

May 15, 2003

Dear Septic,

I know it hasn’t been very long, our acquaintance, or very extended, our dating. I know that what you have seen of my past history, even last month’s, can’t have been very encouraging. Still, I cannot justly or fairly speak for your heart but only my own.

I have felt bewitched since I have been with you, transported. I am aware that these feelings sound very much like being in love, temporary chemically-induced mush and very banal. Worse, very unstable.

So, the fact that I am in love with you is meaningless. You might be in love with me too, but that would also be meaningless. What counts is that I find you beautiful, reliable, kind, and with the sort of generosity that doesn’t come from feeling insecure about yourself. I don’t think you’ve outgrown your past or gotten over it or absorbed it. I think your past has nothing to do with you. You have made yourself new. You have made me new. You are also so potently erotic that I don’t really care how long it is before we have sex.

Will you marry me?

Love,

Barton

May 17, 2003

Dear Percival and Jim,

I know I am off the case, and I think that’s the best thing for the case—not to mention you two, Strom, the book, and me. Still, I wanted to pass along the few tips I had remaining. You two dearies will know what to do with them.

First, I think Strom’s ability to connect his public or private life into any kind of coherent or linear story is so limited that you should just give up. He existed always, and exists now, inside the forces he feels, pretty acutely, are pressing on him at that moment. Don’t sell him short. He’s managed to survive so long by judging these complex, overlapping, layered pressures so astutely that a number of his constituents love him so thoroughly they’d die for him. Even some Senators, and you wouldn’t suspect this, like him a lot and respect him, even seek him out.

Second, a man so trained and constituted has the weaknesses of his strengths. There are many. Strom is so sensitive to local and immediate pressures because he has no way of feeling any larger ones. In a way, he never judges or analyzes at all, beyond playing one pressure off against another. He has never considered either the root or the large pattern he operates in and often sets in motion. He works inside an ideology but has no idea what that ideology is. He has no idea that ideology exists.

Second, I’d focus on just a couple of areas, ignoring others.

Ignore anything that happened before Strom was born. His views on slavery, on the War, on 19th-century legislation and court decisions, on Reconstruction are, all of them, not worth hearing.

I’d focus on two areas. One, his childhood and early life in local politics. He is colorful and shrewd on the world he grew up in and on how he acted before he got very important. In those days, he was as much of a free agent as he ever could be. He made some decisions. Later on, he became such a fine politician that he never had to make any decisions. Even the Dixiecrat business was never a decision of his: it was just the result of certain force lines vectoring.

Two, the Civil Rights Bill he signed and the ones he opposed. He is fully aware that he changed with the times and that these Acts pushed him in ways he didn’t think he wanted to go, but went anyhow. Strom might come close to telling you that he was never anything more than a sensitive recorder, a kind of conscienceless seismograph. Anyhow, he’s troubled about all that and has given the whole period a lot of thought, or what passes with him for thought.

Finally, don’t pay any attention to what he says about women. That’s just my own view. Actually, I guess it’s a request. Strom will talk endlessly and blindly about his success with women and his current performances in various bedrooms and cars. As anyone in Washington will tell you, his office is the main visiting spot for all the male interns working on the Hill, simply because Strom indecently showcases his own harem of young interns, all of them pretty close to parodies of Southern Belles, Little Miss Cotton Blossoms every one. I suppose they are of legal age, but they seem to be about 14. Strom will go through the office, goosing and fondling and pawing. I saw him at a reception this spring posing for a picture with two interns working for another Senator. They heard about Strom and wanted their picture taken with him. Right there, in full view of most of the Senate, with wives and guests, Strom joked loudly with the girls, putting his left hand square on the bosom of one and his right hand up the skirt and onto the ass of the other. I hope you will omit all of this.

Strangely, it’s the part of his life that he is proudest of and the one that is least like the political and administrative Strom. Whatever else one might (and should) think about him, he is neither ruthless nor vindictive. He likes almost everyone and tries to shield others from hurt, at least on a local level. But with young women, very young women, he is brutish and cheap.

I’d love to see you if you get to New York. You have been awfully good to me, and I won’t embarrass you with more thanks.

Knock ’em dead with STROM.

Your loyal friend,

Barton

May 18, 2003

Dear Juniper and Reba,

Pity you’re so cramped. I won’t reference all I’ve done for you, since it would amount to nothing more than pouring water on a couple of ducks.

Dinner with Wilkes? What a charming idea—not!

I will manage alone or I will be slaughtered. I simply did not realize I had enemies of so many different stripes.

Our working relation, I trust, will go on as usual.

I may need your help with suggestions on office redecorating. A memo came through that we (editors) will each be allowed $25,000 for redecorating. Not a lot, but I have some friends in the trade and maybe you do too? We’ll jolly well spruce up the place. Reba too.

Very cordially yours,

Martin

May 19, 2003

Dear Barton,

I have given much thought to your very sweet letter. I must say that it is probably the most intelligent and demanding proposal letter written recently. I say that only to note what an exceptional man you are, willing to be so trustful and respectful. All of that warms me, Barton, and makes me feel the compliment deeply.

I don’t want to keep you waiting for an answer, but yet I don’t know what to answer.

As I read your letter, I felt, deep in my heart, the truth of all you were saying. You did not tell me how to feel in return, but there was nothing you said that did not awaken an answering echo in me. I know that’s a Victorian phrase, but there’s something very Victorian about both of us; and I see nothing wrong with proceeding as if we were in a George Eliot novel.

That may be an unlucky reference, since marriages in Eliot novels so seldom provide happiness for anyone. But I don’t foresee any unhappiness for us, any letdown, any disillusionment as we sag into the ruck of one day following another. If we can make one another new, we can work that same magic on time.

So why is my answer not clear? Maybe it is, but I simply cannot summon quite enough self-trust to say it straight out. We haven’t known each other long. That doesn’t matter at all, we both know, in terms of our sense of what is right and what is possible for the two of us.

I think it matters, though, in terms of the equilibrium I need to gain.

OK?

Love,

Septic