William Styron, Hiram Haydn, and the Ending of The Long March

Abstract

ABSTRACTLetters between William Styron and his first editor, Hiram Haydn, recently acquired by the Rubenstein Library at Duke University, have clarified the manner in which Styron revised the ending of his novella The Long March (1953). Haydn, who had read the novella in typescript, suggested that Styron write a different ending for the narrative. Styron instead resurrected an earlier ending from his manuscript and substituted it for the ending that Haydn had read. Styron's letters to Haydn show resistance to editorial advice and hint at the factors that would eventually cause Styron to break from Haydn in 1959.