Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life
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14 He was invited to teach at Ann Arbor.
15 Merchant marine.
16 He remained (Billy) Cosgrove in Morte D’Urban.
17 Mud.
18 Bishop William Brady had been appointed coadjutor bishop to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on June 16, 1956. He succeeded Archbishop John Gregory Murray on his death in October 1956.
19 Wolverine: train from Michigan; LaSalle Street Station: in Chicago; IC: Illinois Central.
20 Jim paying back a loan.
21 Thomas Merton (1915–1968; Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance—that is, Trappist).
22 Father Caedmon (later Father Thomas Wahl), a Benedictine at St. John’s.
23 Dick Keefe.
24 Consumers Union.
25 Frank G. Clement, governor of Tennessee, gave the keynote speech.
26 “The Green Banana,” The New Yorker, November 10, 1956.
18. The Man Downstairs is entertaining tonight. Pansy and Dwight are quiet
1 Warner G. Rice, chairman of the English department.
2 A. L. Bader, head of the Hopwood Fellowship program.
3 Katherine Anne Porter.
4 Victor Gollancz.
5 Freda Bruce Lockhart.
6 As described in his novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.
7 Suez Crisis.
8 Emergency session of the UN General Assembly on the Suez Crisis.
9 “The Green Banana,” The New Yorker, November 10, 1956.
10 X. J. “Joe” Kennedy and Robert E. Whelan Jr., both teaching fellows in the English department at the time.
11 University of Michigan football team.
12 Gordon Zahn.
13 Legion of Decency pledge administered on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception: “I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures…” and so on.
14 Spellman.
15 X. J. Kennedy, “Epitaph for a Postal Clerk,” The New Yorker, December 8, 1956.
16 Arthur Wormhoudt, The Demon Lover: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Literature.
17 The fictional town near St. Clement’s Hill, the retreat house to which Father Urban was exiled.
18 Sore throat, earache.
19 “Some Footnotes on the Fiction of ’56,” Reporter, December 13, 1956.
20 Published in Reporter, January 10, 1957.
21 Gollancz.
22 Bellow’s Seize the Day.
23 Harvey Webster.
24 Jim was incensed by people who, thinking that “Farl” was a typo, changed his middle name to “Earl.”
25 Clyde Craine, head of the English department, University of Detroit.
26 Lanny Ross (1906–1988), American singer, actor, and songwriter.
19. This room is like a dirty bottle, but inside is vintage solitude
1 Elizabeth Hardwick, “The Classless Society,” The New Yorker, January 19, 1957.
2 LeBerthon.
3 Egan was assigned to St. Peter’s Church, Mendota.
4 Del Flanagan lost to Gil Turner at Midway Stadium, St. Paul, July 25, 1957.
20. Scabrous Georgian, noble views of the sea, turf in the fireplaces
1 Christian Family Movement.
2 Drawing of members of the Movement.
3 “Look How the Fish Live,” Reporter, October 1957.
4 Eugene and Abigail McCarthy.
5 Roethke had had a bout of madness but recovered quickly.
6 Edmund Wilson.
7 Cheap paperbacks designed to promote literature and rational thinking, especially in working people.
8 William Bedell Stanford (1910–1984), professor of classics, Trinity College.
9 Ó Faoláins.
10 “A Couple of Nights Before Christmas,” The New Yorker, December 21, 1957.
21. The office is in Dublin, on Westland Row
1 John Charles McQuaid.
2 See Jim to Egan, February 26, 1958.
3 Father Edward Ramacher (1917–2007), a tireless booster and promoter who mounted any number of celebrations and shows in partnership with the business community in the Diocese of St. Cloud.
22. About Don, I haven’t been the same since I read your letter
1 Buckminster Fuller.
2 Father Patrick Peyton (1909–1992), who led the Family Rosary Crusade: “The family that prays together, stays together.” (It later emerged that the crusade in Latin America was funded by the CIA.)
3 The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montogomery by Viscount Montogomery of Alamein (1958).
4 Father Egan.
5 The main character in Erskine Caldwell’s Tabacco Road.
6 McCarthy beat the incumbent Edward Thye for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
7 Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected and became Pope John XXIII.
8 Stearns County pronunciation of “Joe and Jody.”
9 Joke—unfinished intentionally.
23. Back and wondering why
1 Del Flanagan versus Ralph Dupas. Del won.
2 One of Jim’s early short stories, made into a play.
3 They didn’t meet.
4 Bandas had been appointed to the forty-member Pontifical Academy of Theology, a position Knox had held before his death in 1957.
5 Del versus Jimmy Martinez. Del won.
6 Versus Joey Giardello.
7 Joey Giardello. Del was knocked out.
8 The school Katherine and Mary had attended in Ireland.
9 Tenants.
10 Frank Kacmarcik (1920–2004) taught art and print design at St. John’s, also painted and designed graphics himself; collected works of art in Europe after the war and brought them to St. John’s.
11 The proposed Continental League, which never came to be. The existing major leagues expanded.
12 Kacmarcik.
13 Glen Flanagan, Del’s brother, also a prizefighter.
24. The J. F. Powers Company: “The Old Cum Permissu Superiorum Line”
1 Salvage and surplus outlet.
2 Sportswriters.
3 For the children for Christmas.
4 Jim to Betty, November 26, 1956: “My fervent desire, as you should know, to have all the symphony orchestras founder, all the books go unread, for there to be nothing but trash in every branch of art and entertainment—if people can’t see the real thing, feel the need of it as of food and drink; anything but that they feel humanitarian about helping. That is burning incense before a god which doesn’t exist—and that is what? I don’t want to be party to it anyway.”
5 Second Vatican Council.
6 Reidar Lund (1910–1961), who for the last two years of his life was the sports editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
7 Match with Phil Edwards in London, March 8, 1960. Decision: no contest. Referee disqualified both in seventh round for “persistent holding.”
8 The result appeared in Critic 19 (October–November 1960).
9 The place to which Father Urban was exiled in Morte D’Urban.
25. No money is the story of my life
1 Stands for Jesus, Mary, Joseph—inscribed at the top of written work by the pious.
2 Françoise Sagan (1935–2004).
3 Paul Claudel (1868–1955).
4 NAB (Nationally Advertised Brands), a novel in which a “supermarket derby” and a “bureau of conscience” were to figure.
5 William Faulkner, part of Writers at Work series.
6 “The Fig Tree.”
7 Washington Senators.
8 Clark Griffith (1869–1955) and Calvin Griffith (1911–1999), successive owners of the old Washington Senators, which became the Twins.
9 Cookie Lavagetto (1912–1990), Twins manager.
10 University of Minnesota Golden Gophers versus Michigan State Spartans.
11 St. John’s Abbey Church, designed by Marcel Breuer.
12 Frank Kacmarcik had undermined Joe in the past.
13 To Art and Money’s house and attendant festivities.
14 Father Godfrey Diekmann, a monk at St. Jo
hn’s and one of the prime movers in liturgical reform and the vernacular Mass.
15 Pope John XXIII spoke in favor of Latin being preserved as the teaching language of the Church.
16 Last issue was in 1960.
26. The day was like other days, with the author napping on the floor in the middle of the afternoon
1 Roethke.
2 It was actually published September 14.
3 Waugh gave Doubleday a quotation.
27. As a winner, let me say you can’t win, not on this course
1 “Keystone,” The New Yorker, May 18, 1963.
2 Where his daughter and her family lived.
3 The Disinherited was being republished with an introduction by Daniel Aaron, the author of Writers on the Left (1961), among other works, and one of the founders of American studies as an academic discipline.
4 Herman Kogan (1914–1989), Chicago journalist.
5 Joke.
6 Walter Winchell (1897–1972), newspaper-and-radio gossip reporter; habitually called New York “the Big-Town.”
7 Hedda Hopper (1885–1966), gossip columnist for the Los Angeles Times. On JFP: “A charming shy man, I imagine he’s quite lonely at times.”
8 He declined.
9 The Twins traded the pitcher Jack Kralick to Cleveland for Jim Perry.
10 Calvin Griffith.
11 Metropolitan Stadium for a Twins game.
12 George Frazier praised Morte D’Urban in his column in The Boston Herald, April 22, 1963: “On the basis of a single novel, Mr. Powers seems to me the most gifted fiction writer in America today.”
13 “Keystone,” The New Yorker, May 18, 1963.
14 Hoke Norris (1913–1977), literary editor of the Chicago Sun-Times.
15 Van Allen Bradley (1913–1984), literary editor of the Chicago Daily News.
16 Will Wharton, a.k.a. Wallie Wharton, had been business manager of The Anvil, the literary journal founded by Jack Conroy.
17 Nelson Algren, Who Lost an American? (1963).
18 Kid Gavilan, Cuban boxer.
28. Ireland grey and grey and grey, then seen closer, green, green, green
1 The Empire Builder.
2 20th Century Limited.
3 Catherine Petters, born October 2, 1963, their seventh (and last) child.
4 He was working at the St. Cloud Diocese’s chancery.
5 George Henry Speltz was not appointed; he became coadjutor bishop of the St. Cloud Diocese in 1966.
6 Cardinal Bernardus Johannes Alfrink, who was Dutch, promoted liberal ideas at Vatican II.
7 Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, an Italian, championed the conservative position at Vatican II.
8 Georges Maranda (1932–2000), who was born in Quebec, pitched in the majors only two seasons: 1960 for San Francisco and 1962 for the Twins.
9 Kacmarcik.
10 Garrelts had commissioned a carved wooden panel from Joe for the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota. After having Joe deliver it and leaving him waiting—first he was out, then he was on the phone—he tried to get out of paying for it.
11 Irish pronunciation.
12 Joke.
13 Dick O’Connell, Joe’s brother, sent a package that fell apart in the mail.
14 Milwaukee Journal questionnaire typescript, July 1963.
Afterword: Growing Up in This Story
1 Jim to Joe and Jody O’Connell, December 19, 1971.
Appendix: Cast of Characters
Family
Jim and Zella, Jim’s parents, on their wedding day, 1915
Jim’s sister, Charlotte, and her husband, Bill Kraft, 1944
Jim’s brother, Dick
1946: The Wahls plus Jim. Left to right: John, Betty, Jim, Art, Money, Pat, Tom
Friends
Quincy College Academy Little Hawks, 1934–1935. Jim, middle row, far right; Garrelts next to him; Keefe, same row, middle
Back row, left to right: Emerson Hynes, Harry Sylvester, George Barnett, Jim; front row, left to right: Don Humphrey, George Garrelts, John Haskins
George Garrelts and Dick Keefe (whom Seán Ó Faoláin called “a complete cynic with, deep in the blubber, a heart of ambergris”)
Jim and Seán Ó Faoláin, 1958
Joe and Jody O’Connell
Leonard and Betty Doyle, 1949
Fred and Romy Petters
Arleen and Emerson Hynes
Dick and Mary Palmquist
The Writer and His Wife
James Farl Powers (1917–1999): Called J. F. Powers for all published work; informally called James, Jim, JF. Born in Jacksonville, Illinois. Author of three books of short stories, Prince of Darkness (Doubleday, 1947), The Presence of Grace (Doubleday, 1956), and Look How the Fish Live (Knopf, 1975); and two novels, Morte D’Urban (Doubleday, 1962) and Wheat That Springeth Green (Knopf, 1988).
Elizabeth Alice Wahl Powers (1924–1988): Called Betty. JFP’s wife; born in St. Cloud, Minnesota; graduated with a BA in English from the College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, Minnesota; author of a number of published short stories and one novel, Rafferty & Co. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969).
Their Children
Katherine Anne Powers (1947–): Called KA. Became a barmaid, cook, archivist, literary critic, and columnist.
Mary Farl Powers (1948–1992): Became a prominent artist in Ireland, a director of the Graphic Studio in Dublin, a founder of the Graphic Studio Gallery, a member of Aosdána (the Irish academy of arts and letters), for which she served as a toscaire (delegate).
James Ansbury Powers (1953–): Called Boz. Became an artist.
Hugh Wahl Powers (1955–): Became a photographer.
Jane Elizabeth Powers (1958–): Became a garden writer, photographer, and columnist.
The Powers and Wahl Families
James Ansberry Powers (1883–1985): Called Jim. JFP’s father; born in Jacksonville, Illinois. See Introduction.
Zella Routzong Powers (1892–1973): JFP’s mother; born in Seward, Nebraska. See Introduction.
Charlotte Powers Kraft (1920–1999): JFP’s sister; born in Jacksonville, Illinois; married 1944; three children.
William Kraft (1921–1994): Called Bill. Charlotte’s husband; engineer in the nuclear weapons industry in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Richard Powers (1931–1993): Called Dick. JFP’s brother; born in Quincy, Illinois; became a professor of political science at the University of Victoria, B.C., teaching international relations; married Laura Daniel in 1955; two children.
Arthur L. Wahl (1893–1973): Called Art, Papa. Betty’s father; born in St. Cloud, Minnesota; his father, a builder for whom he and his brother worked, went bankrupt in the second decade of the twentieth century, and the brothers immigrated to Alberta, Canada; raised horses and worked as casual farmhands; both returned to the United States, and Art became a successful building contractor.
Romana Seberger Wahl (1900–1991). Called Money, Mona, Nana. Betty’s mother; born in St. Cloud, Minnesota; taught school until marriage in 1922.
Patricia Wahl Bitzan (1927–): Called Patt; Patty; Pat. Betty’s sister; seven children.
Donald J. Bitzan (1926–): Called Don. Pat’s husband; watchmaker; eventually established successful jewelry store.
John Arthur Wahl (1930–): Betty’s brother; construction company manager and owner.
Irene Sticka Wahl (1931–): John Wahl’s wife; three children.
Thomas Peter Wahl (1931–): Called Tom; religious name Caedmon. Betty’s brother; Benedictine monk and priest; ordained, 1958.
Bertha Seberger Strobel (1891–1962): Called Birdie; Bertie by JFP. Betty’s maternal aunt.
Albert Strobel (1880–1963): Called Al. Birdie’s husband; successful optometrist.
Albertine Muller Seberger (1865–1957): Called Bertha; called Grandma Seberger. Betty’s maternal grandmother; born in Stillwater, Minnesota; married Peter J. Seberger (1864–1935).
Friends in the Movement (or Otherwise Associated with St. John’s)
&n
bsp; Bronislaw Bak (1922–1981): Called Bruno. Painter, printer, stained-glass artist; taught art at St. John’s University; designed stained-glass window of St. John’s Abbey Church.
Hedi Bak (1924–2010): Called Hetty. Bruno Bak’s wife; artist; three children.
Carlos Cotton (1913–2001): Sculptor; taught at St. John’s.
Mary Katherine Finegan Cotton (1916–1992): Carlos Cotton’s wife; sister of Elizabeth Anne Finegan Doyle; Catholic Worker; eight children.
Leonard J. Doyle (1914–1970): Taught English at St. John’s Prep; translator for St. John’s Liturgical Press; his beard, a subject of great interest to Jim.
Elizabeth Anne Finegan Doyle (1918–2011): Called Betty. Leonard Doyle’s wife; sister of Mary Katherine Finegan Cotton; Catholic Worker; nine children.
Donald Humphrey (1912–1958): Called Don, Hump, Humphaus. Artist, sculptor, and chalice maker; Catholic Worker.
Mary Alice Frawley Humphrey (1912–1992): Don Humphrey’s wife; seamstress of baptismal robes; weaver; Catholic Worker; eight children.
Emerson Hynes (1915–1971): Called Em. Professor of sociology at St. John’s; at center of Catholic rural and family-life movement in the area; became Senator Eugene McCarthy’s legislative assistant in Washington.
Arleen McCarty Hynes (1916–2006): Emerson Hynes’s wife; ten children; became Benedictine nun after ten years a widow.
Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005): Called Gene. Taught at St. John’s, 1940–1943; novice for nine months, 1942–1943; married, 1945, and lived in a Catholic agricultural commune in the area for a while; later U.S. representative (1949–1959) and U.S. senator (1959–1971).
Abigail Quigley McCarthy (1915–2001): Eugene McCarthy’s wife; writer and journalist; four children.
Joseph O’Connell (1927–1995): Artist, sculptor, and printmaker; taught at St. John’s in mid-1950s; later, artist in residence at St. John’s and St. Benedict’s.