by J. F. Powers
Jim
MICHAEL MILLGATE
Boxing Day 1959
Dear Michael,
Very happy to have your avant-garde Christmas card and to know where you are—still with the same landlady, I wonder. I am down here at the office—the J. F. Powers Company is the only one working in the building today—enjoying the cleanliness and comfort of it. I was busy for several days constructing a puppet theatre,3 and until this morning, when I vacuumed it, the place looked more like Santa’s toy shop than the hard-hitting business office that it is. I am having a cup of tea at the moment.
Now, I understand Allen Tate is back at the University of Minnesota with a new wife, but I have not seen him and probably won’t. I remember your saying in your last that you’d had the impression that I didn’t like Allen. That isn’t true. I like him well enough but haven’t known him very well. I think he’s a fine essayist. I knew Caroline Gordon somewhat better. What I don’t like (and it isn’t very important) is this Legion of Honor role Allen plays, dinner at the Walker Art Gallery in Mpls, hobnobbing with the wives of chain drugstore magnates (soon to be heading for Mexico and landscape painting), everybody acting as if it’s literature and not drugstores that really matters. […]4
Otherwise things are pretty dull. No new children, by the way. […]
Jim Powers
HARVEY EGAN
412 First Avenue South
December 26, 1959
Dear Fr Egan,
This ought to get some action. You, by the way, are the friend I refer to in the body of the letter. All for now, have to get this across the street. jf
Dear Mr McDonald,
Your files will show that you wrote to me last fall with the idea of interviewing me on tape and possibly using the interview in a published book (as well as in the Davenport Messenger). Since then, though I expected you all through November, I have heard nothing from you or your office. Word has recently reached me that you are leaving the employment of the Messenger.
What I’d like to know is where does that leave me? I have been expecting to be interviewed and have told my wife and various friends, including clergy, that I would be interviewed. What am I to tell these good people?
I have not entirely given up hope of being interviewed, but I do think that we’ll have to work fast if this is to come to pass before you take up your new employment, assuming you are to begin it soon, possibly at the start of the second semester. I stand ready, as before, to cooperate with you in every way possible (that is consistent with ethics and my reputation as a published arthur). I don’t know that I’m prepared to come to Davenport, but I might meet you halfway, say, at Prairie du Chien. If you could come as far as the Twin Cities, that, though not what you originally suggested, would be better than my traveling farther south. I think I can promise you a meal and a room suitable for interviewing not far from St Paul where I have a friend, himself eminently interviewable, and no stranger to the intricacies of tape-recording. He might even be able to furnish the machine and tape. Perhaps we could make it a double interview—such as Ed Murrow sometimes does on his TV program. I think this might very well be just what your series needs. Be that as it may, I want you to know that I mean to hold you to your original proposition, or know the reason why not. Please write to me at the above address, or perhaps a wire would be better, as to your plans regarding me.
Sincerely yours,
J. F. Powers
Journal, February 5, 1960
At Fred Petters’s last night with big crowd to see Dorothy Day. She talked of people at the CW, especially Ammon Hennacy, and was very interesting. I was bothered, though, by the tacit consent given to her by everybody present. I was moved to make my own position—that of an artist with a wife and a family with little faith in the common people to save themselves from themselves—clear, but I didn’t, feeling that it was her evening and not for me to interrupt with my personal feelings and also feeling that she would know whatever I had to say anyway. The usual reaction is one of guilt, I think, on hearing Dorothy or Ammon—but I do not have this. I am trying, so to speak, to get from A to B to C as a writer and parent—and it is all I can do now.
HARVEY EGAN
Lincoln’s Birthday 1960 [February 12]
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] For a long time I have been seeking a way to give my family the finer things in life. Could this be it? This synod Pope John called5 evidently means to require all visiting priests to wear cassocks and round hats while in Rome. What about a deal whereby clergy would purchase same from me (the J. F. Powers Company—the old “cum permissu superiorum” line) here in the States, using U.S. dollars, and simply pick up same on arrival in Rome, with my representatives meeting clients at the airport and railway stations?
Ammon was here, or was that before your last visit? Then Dorothy. There was a big evening with her (many present, that is) at Petters’s, and a small one at our place. I think I got her straightened out in one regard: better to take the train than the bus when traveling to Fargo.
I’m afraid that’s about it. Except, of course, that I was a little surprised to see where Del is booked to fight in England (today’s Pioneer Press). I hope he doesn’t come in too fine.
—Jim
You’ll be interested to know that Dorothy was going to Milwaukee to be taped by Donald McDonald. I heard this on two occasions while she was here and didn’t have the nerve either time to pursue the matter with her (she mentioned it to other people both times, as it happened), for fear of letting her see that I’d been let down and was still suffering the effects. Did I do the right thing? I kick myself, in a way, that I didn’t find out more from her. Perhaps all is not lost! I mean, if McDonald is still taping, why …
Ted LeBerthon, Jim’s friend and onetime roommate at the Marlborough in St. Paul, died at the age of sixty-seven.
HARVEY EGAN
St Cloud
February 19, 1960
Dear Fr Egan,
I just wrote to Ted’s wife, care of the Register, the only address I know that might reach her or Ted’s daughter. I, so far, have heard from nobody out there. God bless Ted. I hope to see him in heaven someday. “Little more coffee, Ted?” “Blaaaack. Jim, what’s your thoughts on…”
I might come down for a pre-Lenten spree. I must first find out when Lent begins, though. I am so wrapped up in liturgical observances that I can’t keep the seasons sorted out—and of course we are all under considerable pressure to make the Lennon Sisters,* brought here by that old friend of showbiz Pere Ramacher, a sellout. No adults, however, will be permitted into the concert hall. The program, so the reports say, is suitable for preschool children, high-school and college students; no adults. I say, could you make a hole in another pint? No, I’m buying.
I’ll be in touch with you in the next few days. The J. F. Powers Company is rather busy at the moment—one more letter to write before I can get to the Pioneer Press: the last one to my Polish publishers, who want to publish The Presence of Grace (one of my early books) and pay me under the “IMG program”—whatever that is. Since Prince did very well in Poland and I made about $150 out of it, I think I’ll just have them send it to me (next time) in hams, by way of Duluth. You know (who better, eh, pastor?) the ham and sausage supper season will soon be upon us. I could market these hams to hard-up parishes or give them to people for whom a ham would make a suitable gift, beginning with the hierarchy in church and state. […]
The opus is not going. I lie prostrate on the floor, with nothing between me and the bare boards but Pioneer Presses and Minneapolis Tribunes, and moan. I am going over the falls this time, and without a barrel.
No word from Donald McDonald, either.
Jim
JOE O’CONNELL
Nihil Obstat
The J. F. Powers Company
“The Old Cum Permissu Superiorum Line”
Suite 7, Vossberg Building
St Cloud, Minnesota
February 22, 1960
&
nbsp; Dear Joe,
In confirmation of our conversation of last night, I enclose a copy—my master copy—of the letter. I trust that you’ll not feel left out. I don’t know how your name happened to be left off the list, but I have asked that it be added, and I think it’s safe to say that should there be other letters to writers and reviewers, you’ll get yours. (Do not try to correspond with me at the above address. For some reason letters so addressed are returned to senders: just another handicap for the small businessman to overcome.)
Jim
February 4, 1960
Dear Mr Lund,6
You scarcely qualify as a writer in the limited sense I give the word, but I often read your column, and today, after noting what you say in it—“Incidentally, some gimmick will be decided upon soon on how to pick a name for the team … and it will probably wind up in a contest of some kind”—I decided to send you a copy of my letter to my fellow Minnesota writers and to ask you to do all you can to suppress such news until we—we Minnesota writers—can consolidate our forces and name our team according to the plan outlined in my letter. Get Joe Hennessy to lay off. If what you say in today’s column appears as one of Hennessy’s Tips of the Morning in the next few days, I will know that I was too late.
Sincerely,
J. F. Powers
[Enclosure]
January 30, 1960
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
Dear Fellow Writer,
As you must know by now, our area will field a team in the National Football League in 1961. Some there were who said it couldn’t happen here (and some there are who say we’ll never acquire a baseball franchise in one of the major leagues), but be that as it may, we will have a team representing us in the National Football League in 1961.
Fellow writer, this team of ours must have a name, and I think it is up to us writers to see that the name chosen is a worthy one. Doubtless there will be those (secularism being what it is) who will rise up and say, “Why should these fuckin’ writers be the ones to name our team?”—and that is why I am writing to you today. At this very moment there could be taking shape in some businessman’s head twisted mind a plan to run a popular contest to name our team, with prizes and a tie-in on season tickets, with all the usual boring ballyhoo and sad results. (I’m ashamed to say that the baseball team in my town, a granite-producing center, is called “the Rox.”) We must, therefore, act at once to assert our authority in this matter. Let’s stop drifting! It is no exaggeration to say that most people seldom give us a thought nowadays. Some years ago, in Minneapolis, T. S. Eliot, the prominent poet, attracted a crowd of 14,000 and much favorable comment from people in all walks of life, but we have not gone and done likewise. I might add that in the great days of the quiz shows of television it was eggheads in general, rather than writers, who were looked up to.
This, then, as I see it, is a splendid opportunity to let the people know of our continuing presence among them, and, what is much more, to do our job. In the matter of naming our team, we should see ourselves as surgeons performing a delicate, dangerous operation—and so, let us hope, the people will see us and draw back at the very thought of wielding the scalpel themselves, i.e., of naming our team.
I have some excellent names in mind for our team—the Paul Bunyans, or Buns, the Blue Oxen, or Blues, the Twins, Swedes, Vikings, Eskimos, or Zeros—and perhaps you’ll be able to think of others as suitable—but that must come later. Here is what must be done first. We must announce that we are united and prepared, in our special capacity, to think of a name for our team; then, from time to time, word should leak out that we are pondering away in our studies and on our long walks; then that we are gathered in solemn enclave in some likely place—Schiek’s Café or Izatys Lodge, up north; then, finally, would come the chosen name. In response to popular demand, we would run out into the field with the players at the start of the first game, or crawl out, as the case might be.
Before any of this can begin to happen, however, we must unite—under one name and one letterhead. What say you, fellow writer? I’d be glad to hear.
J. F. Powers
HARVEY EGAN
April 12, 1960
Dear Fr Egan,
Thanks for the clipping on Del in London: I’d missed that one.7 If he keeps on, I’ll write his biography. The next snipe hunt he puts on, we must attend. I think he would have been great anyway, but the St Paul sportswriters have done their part. Joe Hennessy writes that Del’s in peak form, training as never before, and then Joe goes to Vero Beach and does the same kind of job on the Saints: Looks like Slugger Howard will be assigned to St Paul and will make the club a threat; Howard to Spokane. […]
On the sunny side of the street: Donald McDonald back in the picture with new date for taping (May) to which I have naturally consented. Bring plenty of tape, I told him. I intend to attack everybody but Pope John.8 […]
Jim
JOE O’CONNELL
ST CLEMENTS HILL RETREAT HOUSE9
ON BEAUTIFUL HOLY SPIRIT LAKE
NEAR DUESTERHAUS, MINNESOTA
Date: June 14, 1960
Dear Mr. O’Connell,
It is our intention to sponsor a Spiritual Writers’ Conference at the Hill this summer. Doubtless you have heard of writers’ conferences, but unless I miss my guess, you will not have heard of one like ours—A SPIRITUAL WRITERS’ CONFERENCE. This means exactly what it says: we will cater to writers engaged in work of a spiritual nature and to those who are thinking of entering this rewarding field.
Naturally, I am writing to you in your professional capacity. It is my hope that you will be a member of our staff and will take charge of “Reviewing.” You will also be expected to give one public lecture or chalk talk. You may be interested to know that I am writing to other well-known writers (among them Emerson and Arleen Hynes, Leonard and Betty Doyle, J. F. and B. Wahl Powers), and I have every reason to believe they will accept. I understand that your wife is not a writer, or I’d invite her too.
Since this is to be a spiritual operation in every sense of the word, I will not bother you with material details save to say that you will, of course, be provided with a place to sleep and will be fed at our expense during your stay at the Hill. Our fare is plain, but outsiders tell us it’s good and nourishing. We have our own bees.
The dates set for the Conference are August 7–12. (Please try not to arrive before Aug. 7.) I trust you’ll give this invitation every consideration. We want you with us, Mr. O’Connell. The world needs reviewers of your stripe. I might add that a stock of published work by the staff will be on sale during the Conference and the public will be strongly urged to buy. Expecting to hear from you in the very near future, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Father Wilfred, OSC
Rev. W. Bestudik, OSB
J. J. O’Connell
R.R. 2
St Joseph, Minnesota
P.S. His Excellency Bishop Bullinger has given us reason to hope for an address from him in connection with a Field Mass.
25
No money is the story of my life
July 6, 1960–April 3, 1962
Shanedling Building, room 5, next door to your friendly Household Finance Corporation
As was the case in 1956, the prospect of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, in all their televised grotesqueness, drove Jim to purchase a television for the Powers household.
JACK CONROY
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
July 6, 1960
Dear Jack,
Good of you to write, and, yes, I’m still here, two or three blocks away from where I was when I last wrote: old rockin’ chair’s got me, you might say. That doesn’t mean I’ve deteriorated physically: I am ready to serve, if elected, but I don’t expect it to come, if at all, until about the 28th ballot. I hope you can control your delegation. We need an arthur in the White House—and a Catholic arthur at t
hat. I will not take second place. It occurs to me Kennedy is an arthur, and I don’t want you to think that’s what I mean. I am nonpolitical and always have been. I was laughed at when I suggested an Earl Long–Hubert Humphrey ticket some months ago (when Humphrey was still running for president), but it begins to look better now, doesn’t it? Enough of that, except to say that I wish I had the price of a TV set, for I do enjoy the sight of those cotton-pickin’ faces at conventions.
I wasn’t surprised to read about your trip turning out as it did. It seems to me I’ve had other letters, in the past, from you to that effect. Why do you travel, Jack? People are pretty much the same all over. I am writing from my downtown office, in the heart of things, and don’t have your letter, but I remember you did what you could to encourage me by quoting from the TLS and Bernard Malamud, for which I thank you. I feel more and more like a back number. It has been some time since I saw myself included among the important arthurs of our day, but then that happens to the best of us, doesn’t it? Probably I have achieved what immortality I’ll have. I continue with the novel, parts of which have appeared in The New Yorker, and hope to finish it this summer, when my advance royalty payments run out. There are times when I wish I’d gone into oceanography as a youth and were presently on an expedition somewhere. I think a lot of money as I grow older, and as my children do. […]
