Read Online The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps by William Styron - Free Book Online Page A

for just at that moment the colonel suggested that we join him at a nearby table. A buffet supper was to be served later, and as we seated ourselves the sound of dance music erupted in a distant room, washing over us with the muffled din of trombones and clarinets; softly overtaking me, a liquor-warm mood of felicity closed round my senses like the inside of some large, benign fist, lulling me into a deceptive feeling of peace. It grew dark outside; the swimming pool and the escarpment of pine trees behind it were drowned in shadows. The war seemed far away, and for the first time since my arrival in camp I felt positively buoyed by alcohol, rather than having it feed and aggravate my discontent.Beyond any doubt it was Colonel Marriott who was responsible for this gentle euphoria: that the Marine Corps contained one regular officer capable of such enlightened, original conversation was enough to make me want to revise entirely my jaundiced estimate of military life. And although I recollect our talk as being “literary” (at twenty-six I doted on such earnest discourse), I found the colonel unpretentiously knowledgeable—astonishing me all the more since pretentiousness in matters they know little about is a common trait among career officers, especially those above the rank of captain. But even before this I was taken with him; he displayed a sympathy for my predicament that was quite out of the ordinary.
    “It must have been one hell of a wrench for you,” he said, “enough to put one into a state of shock. Especially when you have this book coming out. But I suspect you’ve fallen into the routine by now. Are things very much different from ’45?”
    “Well, very much the same,” I replied, “some things a little better—the chow, for example.” And this was, I had to confess to myself, substantially true. Although hardly a culinary miracle, the food was infinitely more palatable than the revolting swill we had been fed much of the time in the previous war. “I mean, over at the B.O.Q. the other evening I had some roast beef that was really first-rate.”
    The colonel smiled. The easy informality he encouraged had caused me already to drop the “sir,” which ordinarily I might have continued to use until we were much better acquainted. Also, I took the cue from Lacy, whom I had heard once call him “Paul.”
    “Yes,” he said, “the Old Corps is shaping up in many remarkable ways. Food for years and years was one area inwhich the Corps was glaringly behind the navy. I’ve contended all along that with excellent raw material available there was no reason in the world why the food for both officers and men couldn’t be considerably more than just edible, and that our mess halls could turn out some really civilized meals. Well, somehow, someone got the message a year or so ago, and the cooking’s not half bad now. Say, tell me,” he interrupted himself, obviously wanting to change the subject, “what about this book of yours? Lacy’s very excited about what he’s read. He says it’s bound to cause a big stir when it comes out.”
    He asked me the publication date, and this led to a chatty discussion of books in general. The subject of literary influences came up and when I admitted, a bit awkwardly, that I feared that my work still betrayed rhythms and echoes of my predecessors—mainly Faulkner and Fitzgerald—he looked amused and said: “Oh hell, I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s impossible to be one hundred percent original. A writer has to be influenced by someone. Where would Faulkner be without Joyce, after all? Or take From Here to Eternity , have you read it?” Of course I had, everyone had; at that moment it was still a rampaging best seller. “It’s one hell of a book, really. He’s a mean bastard when he deals with the officers, but it’s true enough. The influences are everywhere—Hemingway, Dreiser, Wolfe, the lot—but somehow it just doesn’t matter. The book has a power