by J.F. Powers
Jim
The conversazione was a great success and remembered as such into the twenty-first century by survivors in the Movement.
HARVEY EGAN
The Cloisters
St Cloud
January 2, 1957
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Nothing has happened here since the conversazione. The last few guests left this morning. No one stayed overnight, though we’d made up beds for four. I gather that it was a success, and if so I’m glad. That is all I hoped. I knew I wouldn’t hear anything memorable at such a gathering. There remains the problem of refusing invitations resulting from it, but we are comparatively safe with the children as alibis for staying home. […]
We were very glad you could come and stayed as long as you did. Maybe in Ireland when we give a hunt ball, you’ll stay all night. I have no plans for that, however. I’d like to finish a novel quick. That doesn’t seem to be how I do things, though. […]
Ace Brigade
Merton sent me his new book, but I haven’t read it yet. Mary Humphrey got right to it. She does most of my spiritual reading, she who doesn’t need it. But as you say Doris Day used to say, “That’s life, I guess.”
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
January 8, 1957
Dear Betty,
[…] It is now 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, and I’ve just had a call from Clyde Craine25 of the University of Detroit. Apparently, he knows me better than I know him; he calls me “Jim.” The whole affair grows. I am to be interviewed on WWJ, the NBC Detroit outlet, at 2:30 or 2:45, I guess it is; then I call Clyde; then we have dinner; then we put something on tape; then there is the reading itself; then we see some people afterward; and then I either stay overnight at Clyde’s or return on the midnight train. In fact, it isn’t as busy as it sounds, and Clyde isn’t, actively, pushing me around, but the thing just builds up, of itself. And I keep wondering what it means. I am not that well-known. I wish I were. Boredom, I guess, on the part of everybody. Even I am looking forward to it, but tell myself to watch that I don’t drink or talk too much; I must put the whole thing under the glass of analysis. Clyde was for my reading “The Valiant Woman,” though the story always bothered his boss, he said; a Jesuit, evidently. I got the impression that there might be crusaders in the audience, book burners and the like. I hope so. I wish that I could purchase some pneumatic horns, attached to glasses, say, that I could blow up and put on for reading. I am to read “The Presence of Grace.” Well, that’s enough of that. Having just spoken to Clyde, I am still full of it, you understand. […]
Much love,
Jim
I am wearing Austin’s rubbers here.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
Saturday, January 12, 1957
Dear Betty,
[…] Now for my day in Detroit. I arrived by bus around 1:15, looked in the windows of a whole row of shoe stores, asked about a couple of pair—whether they came in black; they didn’t—and forgot about that. I appeared at WWJ, waited a few minutes in the lobby, then Fran came in—a combination of Mrs Hancock, in “Blue Island,” and Mrs Mathers—and up we rode in the elevator, we being the aforementioned and Lanny Ross26 and his entourage, girlfriend, photographer, another man. In the fifteen seconds it took for us to go down the hall after leaving the elevator, before we entered the studio, Lanny questioned me. Obviously, he was annoyed that he was having to share the program with me. “Writer,” I said, asked what I was, though Fran had told him as much when she introduced us. “What kind of writer?” “Short-story writer.” “Something like this?” he said, pulling out a pocket-size pulp magazine—detectives, or something. “No,” I said flatly. “Well?” he asked. “The New Yorker,” I said. “Oh,” he said. “That’s kind of whimsical, isn’t it?” “I suppose,” I said. Then I heard him saying to Fran, as I was removing my coat and putting it on the grand piano, “Is this going to be a round-robin?”
Well, to make a long program short, Fran has heard of me through Time magazine, through having seen the best books of the year, and I am introduced as “James Powers.” And at first she and Lanny sort of give way to me in the program, asking me questions, and I answer them as sweetly as I can, but there is a disturbing drift toward the negative, culminating in my saying a literary man could no longer associate himself with a newspaper. Fran wants to know right away if I know this station is owned by a newspaper. I say, yes, and that I sometimes read the paper on Sundays but that I am not singling out Detroit papers, just all papers. I say I am able to read a few of the British papers, which are “written,” and Lanny says, “Like The Manchester Guardian?” and I say yes and add The Observer and Sunday Times.
All the sudden we’re off that and into Lanny’s new project, which is singing in supermarkets, in behalf of a new series of records, Master-Something-or-Other Records, “lovely Strauss waltzes,” and “My Fair Lady,” very popular with teenagers in Fran’s family. Well, I detested Fran, but I rather liked Lanny. You could see the nasty yellow hair dye, and he looked pretty burned-out around the eyes, but he was a man and he’d been somebody once and maybe he still was. He saw that I wasn’t trying to hog the microphone; he saw, I think, I didn’t give a damn. Toward the end of the 15-minute program he broke into folk song, rather a surprise to me, but I was glad to hear something else. I haven’t seen anybody dressed like Lanny since Ken McCormick appeared in Milwaukee. Subtle grey herringbone topcoat, black shoes, grey and black tie, white shirt—sombre, crisp though, like the grey side of the dollar bill. I was walking out without a word, since the photographer was snapping Fran and Lanny together, when Lanny came over and said he’d been glad to meet me and was going to look up my work—the Gollancz edition was in my hand—and Fran too said she’d been glad to meet me. There you are, a short résumé of that part of the trip to Detroit.
I then called Mr Craine. We had two drinks at the Detroit Athletic Club, drove forever to the restaurant, where we dined with his wife, Fr Farrell, dean of the graduate school, and another couple. This was rushed, time being short, and before the reading I cut a tape with a fellow who asked me a typed-up question which I looked at before we started cutting. This ultimately took a negative turn too. Then came the reading, a much bigger crowd than they expected, about 200 people, I’d say, and they’d expected under 50. The reading seemed to take forever, and I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. The questions afterward, however, went on for over an hour. This was pretty stimulating, I was told. I won’t go into it all—except to say that things took a negative turn. I did sense, however, that Mr Craine and others felt that it was quite an evening.
Then we went to one of the faculty’s house and had one drink. It was rushed so I could catch the 11:59 train for Ann Arbor, which I did. I walked home, feeling I needed the air. Then I smoked a pipe here, thought I ought to set this sort of thing down in a journal but felt it was too much trouble, that I should say what I have to say in my work—and wondered, though, whether the journal, if I kept one, might not have a more lasting value even as literature. […]
Before I close, I want to say that there were some wonderful faces among the clergy there last night. One wonderful old man whom I’d been conscious of during the reading and questions came up and said I was too kind to the clergy, we’re worse than that, he said. This was nice but irrelevant to my real interest—which was in him himself, what a wonderful face, so round, the hair, so white, the eyes, so blue. I hated to think of him dying, as he would in a few years, all that perfection disappearing from the earth. All for now. It won’t be long now. Time is working for me now.
Much love,
Jim
19
This room is like a dirty bottle, but inside is vintage solitude
January 23, 1957–August 1, 1957
The Vossberg Building, suite 7
ROBERT LOWELL
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minn
esota
January 23, 1957
Dear Cal,
Every now and then I wonder whether you are a father yet. I hope there has been no difficulty about it, or that there will be none. I don’t see anyone who would be able to enlighten me. (Allen Tate, I heard, was in India, although last week there was a piece on him in a Mpls paper about the Bollingen prize.) I’d appreciate some word on this from you. Ordinarily, I take no interest in this sort of thing, which is so common hereabouts, but it’s different with you.
I returned from Ann Arbor last week, having completed my semester there. Things are getting back to normal, with me up all night and the temperature 15 below.
No doubt you saw that I am to be one of the Kenyon Review Fellows in Fiction. This is hard to explain, the honor of it, especially since I’ve never published there, and though I haven’t had it indicated to me in any way, I attribute this to Peter Taylor. It is a break, and it, with what I have contracted to extract from Doubleday in advance royalties when the need arises, assures me of two years of economic freedom. I’m hoping I’m old enough, finally, to make the most of it as a writer and not to fritter the time away as I have in the past.
I read Elizabeth’s story in The New Yorker last night and greatly enjoyed it.1 I hoped, when I finished it, that it was the beginning of a novel and wished—I always envy good work—I could command the academic scene, which does interest me as one of the few in which you can make some sense out of what happens in terms of the past and ideas and character.
I see Flannery O’Connor has won the O. Henry with her “Greenleaf” story. I dropped her a line from Michigan when I read the story last fall. I thought it was very fine, only regretted that she killed off Mrs May, such a waste and not necessary. I advised her to go on with those characters just as if Mrs May hadn’t died. She said that death was the great temptation after she’d written thirty pages about any of her people. I’ve heard this called the Irish temptation or “out,” and suppose she might’ve been referring to that. […]
Best to you both.
Jim
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
January 25, 1957
Dear Katherine Anne,
Your letter received this morning, and I hasten to clarify a thing or two. I decided I’d be wise to take the Kenyon, which is worth $4,000 to a married man. […] I am better off than I’ve been for a long time. Now I must watch myself: I have a great capacity for indolence, for lounging about. In Ireland you’ll find me at Leopardstown about this time of day (3:00 p.m.), with as much as ten shillings riding on a race. That is another thing I liked about Ireland. I could go to the races, to the theatre, eat out, and even buy books without feeling profligate. I have a gaudy feeling I don’t like whenever I do such things here. To do what comes naturally partakes of a spree here. […]
Our success, survival rather, has been due to the fact that we did without things, and we know we’ll do so again—and again. We know where we come in economically—that we don’t really exist economically. What we did in Ireland was move up a caste, with our American money. […] All for now.
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
February 11, 1957
Dear Cal,
Your letter came this morning, and while it’s fresh, the news about Harriet, let us congratulate you, Elizabeth as well as Cal, and hope you bear up under parenthood. I’m afraid it gets harder, or has for us, anyway. […]
Your reference to Miss E. drew blood here. Betty hired a woman last fall, and she is still, more or less, with us. But she doesn’t do anything well and, though a character, not enough of one to be useful as such to us. Betty says she (B.) is a coward, or she’d go out and fire the woman. Betty has threatened (over the phone) to mail the woman her apron several times. And so on. My comment on your Miss E.: you couldn’t find a woman like that in a town like this. That’s the last word on that, for the moment. My head feels like a vacant lot where children go to break bottles and swing dead cats. […]
We are sending Harriet (not that she cares) a blanket and trust it will not be found wanting in some particular that Miss E. demands of a blanket. We have used them in our household, but more and more I see that we have made a lot of mistakes. It has been my pleasure to look about me and give thanks that I, that we, don’t live like that. Now I find the contrast not so great. Ah, well, perhaps you’ll write a book and tell us how to live though parents.
All for now. Best to you and the girls.
Jim
Finding no peace at home for work (or quiet ease), Jim rented an office, suite 7 in the Vossberg Building in downtown St. Cloud. It was decrepit and cheap and he loved it.
HARVEY EGAN
St Cloud
February 27, 1957
Dear Fr Egan,
To you I’m sending my first words written from my office in downtown St Cloud. Your old Royal, fresh from the repair shop, is here. A chair, which may or may not be a bargain at $4 from the Goodwill, is here. A table, cast out by us when we moved to First Avenue South, is here. And I am here. This morning I put a lock on the door, which had none. The jakes is next door, but I haven’t been there yet. There is another room like this next door on the other side, but it is padlocked. Down the hall, toward St Germain, are two lawyers and the Girl Scouts of America, and overlooking the street the realtor and insurance man’s office: he is letting me have this room for $16 a month because of his wife, he said, an admirer of my work. Below me is Walgreen’s; across Eighth Avenue—my window looks down upon it—is Cy Brick’s bar. Up the street is the cathedral. Down the street is the courthouse. Across St Germain is the post office. As you can tell by now, I am in the heart of things—the dead center, you might say.
The room itself reminds me of Quincy College Academy: brown railroad paint on the door and mopboards; a silver radiator; one window arched at the top; and light green walls, cracked and peeling and stained. There are two mops and three rolls of toilet paper and some steel wool in one corner, but I have permission to move these things out. In short, I am all set—either to write during the day, something which is impossible at home, or to go into the rubber-goods business. This is the kind of building the Clementines used to have their offices in in Chicago. I decided yesterday, sitting here wishing the door had a lock on it, that I wouldn’t get pictures or do anything about the walls or floor—which is splintery and worn. Only one object I desire: one of those old-fashioned watercoolers, the kind you put ice in, and a big bottle of spring water, the bottle upside down, and … the bubbles each time you draw one. It’s the bubbles I’d like to have. Otherwise I can stand it the way it is: the peace and quiet of noises which mean nothing to me, traffic, bells, cries of fishmongers and religious-goods butchers from the street.
This room is like a dirty bottle, but inside is the vintage solitude which hardly anybody can afford nowadays, and I am sipping it slowly, hoping to straighten out my life as a writer. I’ve done little or nothing since returning from Michigan. We have a new woman who comes three or four mornings a week, and she’s a good one, and Betty too is hoping to accomplish something as a writer. The light, I’ve just noticed, comes into the room, falls upon the paper in the typewriter, just right. It comes from the west, though, and that could be awful in the summer—but then that, as you always say, is life. I must dash off a line to Ted.2 After all, what I’ve managed to do here in No. 7—that is the number on my door—is only what he did in Elmira. I have more room, however—for what? For staring straight ahead, I guess.
All for now.
Jim
Why don’t you tune in Bob and Ray, weekdays at 5:00 p.m., from the Mutual station in the Cities—it’s above KSTP on the dial? I get them via Wadena.
HARVEY EGAN
From Number 7
March 25, 1957
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] You know that play I
was telling you about? Well. And so to the novel. I am trying to work up some feeling for Fr Urban, his last night as a preacher, but don’t seem to have the material I need. What I want is some examples of other men transferred as he has been, removed from the spot in the vineyard where it certainly did appear that they were doing awfully good work. Maybe it’s in Newman. I have always remembered Fr Wulftange’s remarks on Littlemore: another grey day at Littlemore, etc. Ah, well, I’m glad to be back with Fr Urban. We understand each other.
I made my trip to Urbana, Jacksonville, and Quincy, after 17 years away. The best thing was the visit I paid to Msgr Formaz, pastor at Our Saviour’s in Jacksonville for 52 years, dean of the Springfield Diocese, and the man who rec’d my mother into the Church and baptized me. He is 82 and a delicious old man, civilized, subtle, wise, and witty. I stopped off at Springfield, at Templegate, booksellers, and was told stories of him by the proprietors, who also told me a good one about Waugh when he was there some years ago. Reporter: Is it true you don’t care for American methods of heating? Waugh: What makes you say that? Reporter: Something I heard or read somewhere. Of course I only know what I read in the papers, as Will Rogers used to say. Waugh: Will Rogers? He’s dead, isn’t he? Reporter: Yes. Waugh: Now he knows better.
I visited the cemetery in Jacksonville and noted all the Irish counties on the tombstones, more than I’ve seen since I looked over the graves in St Paul. The Powers lot is filled, only a few yards from the clergy, on high ground. I felt it was all a mistake, all these poor Irish immigrating—for what? Now they know better. Don and Mary over last night, my first social life in some time, in St Cloud. They had gone out to hear Fr LaFarge on racial justice. I was not up to it. Well, that’s all I know this time. Write. I saw in the paper where we are jubilant about the changes in fasting regulations, we Catholics, I mean. T. Merton sent me his new book of poems. I can’t see him as a poet. But that goes for about all the poets. And now your arch-author must leave you.
