Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963
Page 31
Now, as you know, I have considered from time to time the title Morte D’Urban for my Duesterhaus novel. Whether that will be it, I don’t know, but in any event I intend to play upon the idea of dying to this world, a phrase I seem to recall from the writings of several saints. […]
We are getting nowhere at all with our quest for a summer cottage. I keep thinking that anyone else of my eminence would know somebody who would say, “Oh, go use our house in Maine. We didn’t intend to open it at all this year.” I peer into the eyes of each passerby, but not a one stops and says anything like that to me.
[…] Jim
Journal, April 25, 1959
Yesterday call from Ken McCormick saying there was a nibble for “Defection of a Favorite” for television, which could mean as much as $2,000 to me … Now what happens—nothing, I suppose. In any case I suppose the money would be applied on my debt. But it was, for a while, before I thought of that, pleasant to think that I had passage money coming in from out of nowhere.
Journal, May 4, 1959
A hard weekend for Betty and me—absolutely nothing accomplished, and the morning the worst ever so far as the children are concerned. No mail for days. No word from Ken as to that TV sale. I must bear down—as never before.
HARVEY EGAN
Suite 7
May 4, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] I was sure when I read that Del had spent the night before the fight5 chatting with a few close friends that he’d be waterlogged again, but no. It must be as some of the scribes say, if we could just see into Del’s mind, we’d know what to expect. Anyway, more power to him!
These are ulcerous days around the ranch, with one chance after another fizzling out on us: to get out from under, that is. The only possible house (the one I mentioned to you) was sold last week, and that, we’ve decided, is it so far as St Cloud is concerned.
If I had my life to live over, I’d join the Clementine fathers.
Jim […]
Journal, May 12, 1959
Last night we looked at the Colbert house on Third Ave. South and decided to rent it for June–July–August. $100 per mo. Fabulous clutter. But we can do no better. Betty, desperate to be somewhere else, is unhappy to be moving into the place. I understand her feelings. I had the same ones when I was walking around in the place. I couldn’t see a place to sit and read except on the porch—which figures as a crying room for the children in Betty’s plan, I learned. So it goes.
HARVEY EGAN
Suite 7
Tuesday, 10:00 a.m. [May 1959]
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] We found a place for the next three months, beginning in a week or so, over in the old neighborhood, students overhead, clutter where we’ll be, but … Betty still holds out in her heart for better places than this. As for me, I have cut away every last bag of sand and will begin on the members of my family if that is necessary to stay aloft, if you follow my imagery. […]
Jim
Journal, May 18, 1959
Out of gas—creatively … I feel absolutely powerless these days to prevent financial ruin. Ideas for stories don’t come.
Journal, May 26, 1959
Now living at 424 Third Ave. S. So far it has been very tough going. Betty and I never so out of harmony. Today I am back in my office for the first time since Saturday. I have the feel of the golf course story—came to me finally during Mass on Sunday—and am girding my loins to write it. Everything depends on it. The only things holding me back from Ireland now are leaving my parents and living with Betty under unsettled conditions. Perhaps if we went by air this time, we’d be in better shape when we got there. It will be killing, I know—but what is this here? What of the furniture? And so on? Into storage, I suppose. Money, money, money—this is the answer to every question confronting me.
HARVEY EGAN
June 9, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
I am in receipt of yours and am pleased to provide you with our new address, namely: 424 Third Avenue South, St Cloud. Although the men on the radio persist in calling these days perfect days, comfortably warm, I do not find them so. In suite 7 the climate is intolerable, but I work on and on, whiskers growing longer, garments gradually falling apart, eyes reddening, and am in short a sort of walk-up beachcomber. But enough of that. I don’t know what to think of the coming Del go.6 You have the promoter’s old car and so perhaps know more than most of us. I do know, having read it in George Edmond, that it won’t be a decision. I suppose you’ll be there with your flask in Del’s corner. I have decided not to try to follow this one, being busy these days up in Duesterhaus. […]
My eyes are holding up, but everything else seems to be slipping, especially the old get-up-and-go that we Americans are just dead without. […]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
June 18, 1959
Dear Fellow Fan,
Del had a pretty good battle plan laid out for Joey,7 but his one mistake was in not following through on it. Del isn’t the first fighter to have his well-laid strategy blow up in his face. It happens all the time in boxing. Nobody says that Joey landed a lucky punch, but the bout was too brief to prove anything. Del has made St Paul the fistic capital of the U.S., the talk of the country. So you might say he deserves a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of St Paulites, not all of them his well-wishers, by the way. If a rematch between these two topnotchers could be staged, would it prove anything? It just might. A lot of people might be surprised if Del could just get dried out or beefed up, could get proper sparring partners, and could come in at his best fighting weight, either 150 or 160, or both. Just one man’s opinion, of course. What’s yours?
A Real Ring-in-the-Nose Flanagan Fan
HARVEY EGAN
Suite 7
July 7, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
Assuming you read this on July 8, it might interest you to know that I was born on that day, 1917, around five o’clock in the afternoon—in time for cocktails—and that I have been going ever since, but I have now reached the point where if success does not come soon, I’m afraid I will have seen the show. I have been working hard for the last five or six weeks and need a rest. I have a few days to go yet, but the story-chapter is in the nets, all except a paw or two. Now what can you offer me? I crave life, laughter: Do you suppose we could find a theatre where they still have a mighty Wurlitzer and still have the audience sing along to the bouncing ball?
Otherwise I have nothing to report. […]
Jim
Journal, July 21, 1959
Mailed off letter to Killiney nuns.8 … So now it appears we are pointed toward Ireland again. Of course everything depends on my story being accepted by The New Yorker.
Journal, August 5, 1959
Hot, humid—sitting in my office looking out the window, wanting to remember this scene and the people and the weather—so I’ll never be silly enough to wish I were back, for it is now almost certain we are returning to Ireland. Bats, the latest thing at home to keep us from getting any rest at night. This miserable, miserable summer. I now see our whole married life as a search for a home, and every child making the need more pressing and the prospects less likely … I hope this will be the last harvest I will reap of the failure of Betty to educate her parents and others in the meaning of her calling and mine (as writers, artists) and the few prerogatives attending same.
Journal, August 14, 1959
The startling news when I came home yesterday that the Dickehuts9 were moving out of the flat at Strobels’. Betty saw evidence of an immediate move—and Birdie told KA that she’s had two shocks that day. 1. D’s moving. 2. Our plan to go to Ireland.
JACK CONROY
424 Third Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
August 21, 1959
Dear Jack,
I came across a note among my effects (as we published authors say) from you, dated Dec. 8, last year, and I wonder if I was going to reply to it or if I actua
lly did. Anyway, you ask if we are still in Ireland, and the answer is no. But should be, on consideration of all we’ve been through since coming back: looking for a house and not finding one and meantime living with Betty’s family and—for the last three months—in a house owned by an undertaker who summers up the river, possibly because he can’t stand the heat and bats at home, we now think. So that’s it, Jack. We are now in the process of readying ourselves for another shot at Ireland. If we do not go, you may be sure this will not be known to us until we’ve got everything crated up for shipment, including ourselves. […]
All for now,
Jim Powers
The Strobels offered to rent Jim and Betty the two-floor apartment above their own in their large house on the Mississippi in St Cloud. The plan to return to Ireland was canceled.
Meanwhile, skulduggery was afoot at St. John’s, where the new Abbey Church designed by Marcel Breuer was being built. A number of architects had been considered, but Breuer was the one promoted by Frank Kacmarcik,10 who, apparently, collaborated with him on the design. Breuer and Kacmarcik decided they wanted a window in keeping with the brutalism of the church and tried to reject the agreed-upon design by Bruno Bak. They failed, and the Bak window was installed.
HARVEY EGAN
St Cloud
August 25, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
You’ve been pretty quiet lately, and all kinds of news has been breaking that, frankly, I think we ought to have your ideas on. What about this third major league?11 I think that Branch Rickey (a great friend of St Paul, by the way) is the best thing that’s happened to it so far. Why should or shouldn’t the Minneapolis team play half of its schedule at Midway? What about football—this new league, the American League? The players are available for it, as they aren’t for another baseball league of the highest caliber, but you know what the expenses are in football and how the weather can play hob with the gate, especially here in Minnesota—where, however, the winters aren’t as bad as the summers. […]
Yes, it does appear that we will be staying on here for a time, the flat at Strobels’—overlooking the river—having fallen vacant a week or so ago. About seven rooms, including the third floor. Girls heartbroken, but there are too many things pending—my work—which I don’t care to transplant just now. So rejoice, and tell all my good friends in St Paul and environs that I will remain and am always on tap for good talk and good fun and all that’s worthwhile. Let’s make the most of my presence while we have it.
Jim
[…]
The big scandal is the infighting going on at St John’s, to get the big window—at this late date, after okaying sketches, after ordering all the glass—away from Bruno Bak. Frank.12 I gather Breuer has begun to fear that the window will kill his building—kill the powerhouse effect for which he is so famous. This of course is off the record.
Good news, that, if true that Del is planning a comeback. I’d like to give this boy of mine Joe O’Connell a shot at him. Any chance of Glen making a comeback?13
24
The J. F. Powers Company: “The Old Cum Permissu Superiorum Line”
September 19, 1959–June 14, 1960
“In the days of Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he was chief, there lived a mighty preacher of the Order of Saint Clement, and Urban was his name.”
The Powers family moved into the top two floors of the Strobels’ house, a place almost directly across the street from the site of the old red house, now a sandlot used for parking. Jim was desperate about money and infuriated by the chaos of family life; still, he was immensely pleased to be in his old office, and just being there buoyed his spirits.
He crept ahead on the novel and, at the office, adopted the ironical conceit that he was running a going concern, “coming and going like a businessman in sheep’s clothing, or vice versa,” issuing any number of spoof letters “From the Desk of America’s Cleanest Lay Author” (“Pledges Administered * Pious Lobbying Undertaken * Fig Leaves”). These exercises went some way toward defusing the frightening reality of his situation.
HARVEY EGAN
Suite 7
September 19, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
It has been a tough fight, moving this time—the worst ever, and only two blocks away. I had known things were bad with us, confusion, possessions, etc., but the payoff is when I look for my manuscript, when the air is beginning to clear, and find it is missing. I had two chapters in a plastic container—sort you businessmen use when you go to the bank—but it is nowhere. An ad appears in the Lost & Found section of The St Cloud Times, starting today. I’ll never get the manuscript back if it falls in the hands of the St Cloud clergy. You see I have this parrot, who lives in a rectory, and says: God love you!
Otherwise, well, the kitchen is small, tortuously so, but the living room is good, and the bedrooms look out upon the Father of Waters, as we all call the river up here. I am making a fire screen (for the fireplace) today, out of old iron picked up at Gopher1 and copper screening: impossible to find one ready-made here except at exorbitant prices. I have been gluing furniture—in short, preparing myself for my old age as a sexton and chauffeur for some lucky pastor.
Boston College wants me to come and lecture once, for $250 and expenses, but I’ve decided against it. Even if I had you write my talk, I’d have to change planes at Chicago and New York to get to Boston—and I don’t think I should be risking my life just to swell the procession of big names on the BC lecture roster (Frost, Warren, O’Faolain are others). I know this will please you. […]
Jim
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
October 20, 1959
Dear Katherine Anne,
I have your postcard and will answer your questions: we are here at the above address (which overlooks the Mississippi), and we are pretty well. We were going back to Ireland in September (and had arranged for the girls’ reentry into school there and paid for it) when this place fell vacant. Why it should be offered to us with five children is easily explained: it is owned by Betty’s aunt and uncle. And also why we, who know we must leave it, probably in a year, decided to take it; we just weren’t up to another transatlantic move so soon. It would have been into the dark again, with no housing and this time with one more child to make housing even more difficult and with less money in hand than we had the last time we tried it, when I had the Kenyon Review fellowship money. And so, for all these reasons, and because this place became available, here we still are. Each night I find I’m stranded. A good friend died while we were in Ireland last year, and I knew St Cloud wouldn’t be the same without him—I had expected to spend my declining years in argument with him, before a good fire—and it isn’t. There is no news. Let me hear from you—not on a postcard. If you’ve published anything anywhere, or are about to, please let me know.
Yours,
Jim […]
HARVEY EGAN
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud
October 22, 1959
Dear Fr Egan […]
All fairly well here. No word on the coming story. It may be this week, or may not—nobody tells me anything. I read my Reidar Lund and Hennessy,2 but I don’t seem to get any better for it.
I couldn’t have asked for more: Glen Flanagan’s comeback and Del off to Bangkok.
Jim
This envelope was opened by mistake, contents noted, and clumsily resealed. J. Edgar Hoover.
Donald McDonald, a writer for The Catholic Messenger, the newspaper of the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, wrote to Jim saying that he would like to interview him. Jim agreed but for months heard nothing more. In his letters, Jim turned the affair into a satire on an author’s eagerness for publicity. He also found material for epistolary capers in his friend Joe O’Connell, who had written a book review, an unlikely undertaking for this gifted artist.
HARVEY EGAN
December 7, 1959
/> Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Thanksgiving would’ve been murderous if I hadn’t been called upstairs periodically (it was celebrated below, at Strobels’), but what could I do? Nobody invited me out for dinner. There should be an organization that would make it possible for family men to spend holidays away from home—instead of inviting a serviceman to dinner, why not ask a family man? […]
Brought the vacuum cleaner down here yesterday and used it, and now the office fairly sparkles. Discovered among my papers one of the chapters I considered lost and am happy about that, though—let’s face it—a little dismayed to find that it doesn’t read as well as I’d been imagining. I haven’t heard a word from McDonald of The Catholic Messenger and don’t know what to do. Do you think it would be all right if I write and ask him in a nice way when he intends to interview me? I don’t want to crab my act, of course, but I desperately want to be interviewed. I have so much to say. Maybe a Christmas card would be the thing, with a friendly note. If I can get him to interview me, I’ll do what I can to get him to interview you. Well, that’s enough of that.
Jim
Joe O’Connell has written a review of Van Zeller’s book on art, for Worship, and that’s all he can talk about—his review. I think he’d like me to stage a party at which, by candlelight, he’d read his review. Watch for it, if you get Worship; it occurs to me that you’re about the only person I know who doesn’t review. What’s the matter?
CHARLES AND SUSAN SHATTUCK
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
December 20, 1959
Dear Chuck and Suzie,
I am cutting down on Xmas cards this year and so will tender my usual greetings in this more businesslike form. I am in my downtown office, a quiet place, having extracted myself from the arms of my loving wife and family and all their endless cookie making. I have a clear plastic sheet nailed over the one window, and this, with my new calendar from the Great Northern Railway, my world map (I like to know where I am), my postcards and newspaper photos—of Dick Clark and Nelson Rockefeller and other heroes of our time in smiling poses—makes the office a warm and restful haven. We are living on the second and third floors of Betty’s uncle and aunt’s house on the west bank of the Mississippi, just across the way from where we used to live, now a parking lot. We have a fireplace and five children, and I hope that sets the scene for you. Betty doesn’t have time to work at writing, since we have no help except a cleaning woman once a week, and she,* of all people, is subject to thoughts of returning to Ireland. Me, I keep watching the world map, but nothing lights up on it. We don’t think we’re long for this hemisphere, however. All right so we’re nuts. Now how about you? […]