by J. F. Powers
All for now. Write.
Jim
Journal, August 4, 1960
Saw Bishop Sheen on TV the night before last, for the first time I can remember—“Why the Gloom in Modern Literature?” Appalling spectacle. Obviously knows little and cares less about the subject. Down on Graham Greene—who, it seems to me, uses Sheen’s palette. No Americans mentioned, though for a moment I thought he meant me when he pronounced Proust as PROWST. He wrote an odd mixture of names on the blackboard he uses (after writing JMJ1 at the top): Beauvoir, Sagan,2 and Camus—only the last was written and pronounced “Le Camus.” Only names to be mentioned favorably were Claudel3 and T. S. Eliot. They, he said, had their hands against the dike, holding back the tide of gloom. He is the personification of gloom himself, Sheen, and it depresses the hell out of me to think of his success, considering what he does to earn it. “Ham what I am”—all the way. I had thought Fr Urban beneath him. Not so, by a long shot. The other way around. That voice, those gestures, and those red eyes. All ham and pride.
The 1960 expansion of both the National Football League and baseball’s American League brought the Vikings and the Twins (the former Washington Senators) to Minnesota, each playing its first season in 1961.
HARVEY EGAN
August 10, 1960
Dear Fr Egan,
As I see it, our team could be called many things—Eskimos, after the old Duluth entry in the NFL, but that would call undue attention to our climate, as would Zeros. Mosquitoes, though apt, would call attention to an aspect of our life that has been overstressed. Vikings wouldn’t be fair to our whole population. Likewise Swedes. Millers has special connotations that wouldn’t appeal to some of us. What it comes down to, in my opinion, is Lakers and Huskies and Maroons. The first and last have much to recommend them, but historically smack of failure. Looks like Huskies, therefore, to this observer, and I am giving that name my endorsement. However, I would support Lakers and Maroons, particularly the latter if A. A. Stagg would be available as coach. Any thoughts on the subject?
All well here.
Lack Tux and Will Not Travel … so come up and see us sometime.
Jim
Plowboys, do you think? Snowmen? Reefers? Northerners? Maybe you can give a thing like this too much thought, but Reidar did say recently that we ought to start turning it over in our minds. We now lead the nation in turkey production. Turkeys? Gobblers?
HUSKIES CLAW GIANTS 21–7
SNOWMEN ICE STEELERS 14–0
FROZEN TURKEYS BOW TO BEARS 28–21 (game played in snow)
Journal, September 19, 1960
If I were to begin another book today, I don’t know whether it would be the Movement Book (beginning with Bellocian walks and eating and drinking à la George) or NAB.4 Former seems more interesting at the moment—perhaps because of news that Leonard Doyle is planning to leave next summer for other parts: one more loss, or one more clinker dropping through the grate.
HARVEY EGAN
412 First Avenue South
October 10, 1960
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] As for our team being called the Vikings, I am hoping to see something negative on this in Archbishop Brady’s column soon; not representative of the whole community, etc. Since my name is Norman, I do not feel entirely out of it. […]
Jim
CHARLES AND SUSAN SHATTUCK
Christmas 1960
Dear Chuck and Suzie,
Sitting up here in the office, contemplating the past and so on, I thought of you and seemed to remember that I’d written to you last year about this time, perhaps on this day. I find I’m worse off this year than last at this time, novel within three chapters of being finished, but nothing in the bank, advance royalties at an end, no stories out or in the works, and one week more in this office—the building to come down then. I am the last one here, and there wouldn’t be heat but for a fly-by-night toy store downstairs (formerly Walgreen’s agency) and the barbershop in the basement. Not so long ago I moved among lawyers and insurance agents and their secretaries here on the second floor. I don’t look forward to finding another place. There is something about the J. F. Powers Company that doesn’t gladden the hearts of businessmen with offices to rent. I pay $15 a month here and work out of a Victorian easy chair and off a low table—and, though I am perhaps one of the better writers in town, there isn’t the interest here that there might be in me or my work. I’ll let you know next year how it all turned out. Betty is well, though desperate with caring for our children, and would like another go at Ireland. I don’t know. I tend to think in terms of great sums of money rather than far-off places as the answer to our problems. I realize this letter is all about me, but then what do I know about you? Or anybody?
Happy New Year.
Jim
MICHAEL MILLGATE
St Cloud, Minnesota
December 30, 1960
Dear Michael,
Glad to have your card. Your handwriting isn’t easy for me, but I gather you are now married (on which I’ll have nothing to say except God help you both) and are coming out in a paperback5 and may visit these shores in a year or so. We have no plans to go abroad. We have none to remain here. […]
Now about politics, which I see is still with you, I took no part in it, as usual. I did not, and do not, like Kennedy. That doesn’t mean he’s no better than Nixon. If I permitted myself to entertain serious thoughts about politics, I’d be sorrier than I am that Adlai lost out. Gene McCarthy nominated him, as you doubtless know, in the best speech of the convention. Too bad it isn’t Gene instead of Jack, if we have to have a Catholic. I understand Pope John’s already packing. I think we can use him, too. What this country really needs is a monarch, as you people* keep telling us, and why not Farouk, whose interests are surprisingly American? All for now. My blessing upon you both.
Jim
Jim, forced to move out of his beloved office, managed to find another one, also in downtown St. Cloud.
HARVEY EGAN
January 9, 1961
Dear Fr Egan,
You will remember me, probably, as the occupant of room 7, the Vossberg Bldg, over Walgreen’s. Well, today I moved, of necessity, since they are going to demolish the building soon, and now I am on the next corner, east, in what was formerly known as the Edelbrock Bldg, but is now better known as the Shanedling Bldg (pronounced Shanley, or Schaneedling, which I frankly prefer); room 5, second floor, next door to your friendly Household Finance Corporation. The rent went up to $25, from $15 at the Vossberg Bldg, and I should be paying $45, but will move should a legitimate tenant covet my space. I have 200, or 300, square feet, I forget which; two telephones (disconnected); a place to brush my teeth (with a leaky pipe), i.e., a lavatory sans jakes, alas. With jakes and a bed, I don’t know that I’d complain. I also have a fluorescent fixture for lighting, but I am hoping I’ll be able to rig up a lamp of some kind. That’s about it from here. […] I know it’s weakness, but I loved that old place and had to take myself in hand, leaving it. It was more my sort of thing.
Anon.
Jim
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
January 11, 1961
Dear Katherine Anne,
I got your card, for which thanks, and today your letter. […]
I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your stories in the Atlantic and Harper’s; I’d like to read more about Eliza, who dissected her food and said “Hum.”6 The ending is very fine in that one. The other story, “Holiday,” is one of your finest on another level, a level you have all to yourself. No one else can go there. It is a great piece of writing, and I hope it has been recognized as such, though I doubt it. […]
Best,
Jim
One of the amazing things about “Holiday,” and one I was following with you bit by bit, going over the same ground after you, like another explorer, is the insight into Germans. I have been surrounded
by people of German descent all my life, it seems—this is another German town—but I can never believe that what I feel to be true of them is enough to account for them as human beings. I had a German grandmother (on my mother’s side) who worked all her life, and saved, and finally had to spend her last years with the mind she’d never really used, her body at last failing her, and it was very sad to see. She used to compliment me on the fine head of hair I have, as if it were money in the bank. One day, when I was in my early twenties, she showed me a dollar bill and said, “He was our first president, wasn’t he?” and then said she wanted me to have it, that dollar bill. At Christmastime, she got out old scraps of cloth and wrapped them up and presented them to members of the family—always a great thing for my father, who, I think, saw himself vindicated as a non-saver at such times. Well, you know all that, but you haven’t let it go at that in this story, and what you have is so much more.
HARVEY EGAN
January 25, 1961
Dear Fr Egan,
I have been hoping for a miracle in the mail, that I’d get some money from somewhere, but rather than wait until the 11th hour, I’ve decided to apply to you for a loan of, say, $500, or less if that is too much for you, and save a little wear and tear on Betty’s nerves (and mine). I have begun a story that has possibilities, I think, if I can end up with what I have in mind. In a month I should know about that and also have enough of the novel typed up for Doubleday to deal with them. I exhausted my advance royalties at the beginning of December but should be good for more if they can get a good chunk of manuscript in their hands. I fear my reputation isn’t of the best, as a producer, and unlike Del—the J. F. Powers of boxing—I can understand why. Anyway, let me know how you are holding, and don’t hesitate to tell me if you are strapped for funds. […] I gather, from accounts of the fight, that Del did not slice up Lee like country ham. […] All for now from the Schaneedling Bldg.
Jim
Gene McCarthy vs Barry Goldwater tomorrow night on TV—that might be good.
HARVEY EGAN
February 10, 1961
Dear Fr Egan,
Just to thank you for the check. I have a lot of time to think, or at least take a lot of time to think, but I don’t come to any conclusions that strike me as good enough to act upon, with regard to the future. Our “nut” is too big here: $110 for rent at home, $25 for my new office; the schools are lousy; camaraderie is at an all-time low; but. Even if I were rich, though, I don’t think I’d know which way to turn, to get out. Meanwhile, I work on this story as if everything depended on the next few words, work in the dark, unsure that I can make it come out, that I’ll reach the last page … I see Del is going on in Rochester on a twin bill. […] Baudelaire tells us that April is the cruelest month, but what about February?
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
April 19, 1961
Dear Fr Egan,
Yours rec’d yesterday but read only once, and here I am at the office remembering you said something about the Twins and the Solons.7 I couldn’t possibly make it down there this weekend, much as I’d like to, and I am interested in the Twins. I think of the Griffith clan8 as hillbillies somehow, but Cookie9 looks good to me. We used to get a Cuban now and then down in Jacksonville when I was a boy, usually a pitcher for the other team. We had these Sunday games with Ray Zelle pitching for the Indees (us) and Clark behind the plate (when he could get out; he was a patient at the asylum). I was just a boy then, but my mind was formed, or touched, by it all. Ray looked awfully good—a tall pink-skinned lad with platinum hair—but they used to get to him in about the third inning. Ah, well, little you care about this, you with your Association ball and highfalutin ways. […] I wish I could send Katherine Anne in my place for the game. She’s nuts about baseball, and I don’t know whether I approve or not. I don’t want her to end up playing pro ball with some team in Gary, Ind … but I will be in touch with you. Do you get a new magazine called Country Beautiful?
Jim
Journal, May 16, 1961
Want to finish this book—then do NAB—then family-life one: latter appeals to me, the contrast between Bellocian life—wine, food, ideas, walks, travels—and what, in fact, happens to you in this country if you live in a place like Collegeville, have a lot of children, teach at a place like St John’s … Dangerous idea—this Bellocian one—for someone like me. People like the Hyneses, who you might think are with you, don’t get hurt. They work with a net under them; they live that way, I mean.
HARVEY EGAN
August 19, 1961
Dear Fr Egan,
I must tell you I rec’d word this morning that Esquire wants the story (“Twenty-Four Hours in a Strange Diocese”) but will pay only $750, this although I sent my special jacking-up letter when I sent the MS. I can’t do better, though, and so I must ask you to carry me on the books a while longer. Now, I know you’ll do this with a smile, and probably don’t even like to hear about it, but still I feel I must report in from time to time. We will now buy shoes and so on and probably get through October, by which time I trust my book will be finished and I can get back on Doubleday’s relief rolls. […]
Jim
Journal, September 22, 1961
No money even before I started writing for a living—no money is the story of my life.
In the autumn of 1961, the Doyles moved to Angola, New York, for a year, where Leonard taught at Calasanctius Preparatory School. While away, Leonard provided Jim with a Latin translation for a passage in Morte D’Urban. Emerson Hynes and his family were living in Washington most of the time, where Emerson was Senator Eugene McCarthy’s legislative assistant.
LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE
October 21, 1961
Dear Leonard and Betty,
I don’t know whether you remember me or not, but at one time I was prominent in apostolic circles in these parts. I have since fallen out of favor with just about everybody, and though there is a tendency in me to sulk and to think ill of myself simply because others do, and—what is worse—to think ill of others, necessity demands that I write and ask if you’ll do some Latin for me, for which I’ll pay you, say, $25, when I can afford to; at the moment, I can’t. […]
Nothing has happened since you left—nothing at all.
Jim
LEONARD DOYLE
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
November 4, 1961
Dear Leonard,
Your wire rec’d yesterday, and your translation today—for which very many thanks. […] When I can, I’ll try to reward you in part anyway for the time and trouble. Times have been hard for me for a couple of years now. At the moment they are the hardest, with Xmas and all that coming on and the mail disappointing me daily. Still, I have finished the book, and for me at least that is something. I am now rewriting the early chapters, which have proved a sore disappointment to me.
I feel you’d be happy if I could fill you in on the local scene. I feel that you must think something must be happening, as I did when I was away, but I don’t think a thing has happened since you left. […] Whether you are missed by others, I don’t know. It is a moot question whether anybody can be missed in this life we all lead. The O’Connells we see about once a week. Joe is still going back and forth to Mankato. He may do the jacket for my book. Hyneses, of course, were here in all their reflected glory, reflecting it. Em has written me a line since, saying Dick Keefe—remember him?—was in our nation’s capital doing good work for education, as well he might, and who better, considering what it’s like. Fred Petters, Dick Palmquist, Joe, and I went out one afternoon and put up Don’s tombstone, but I understand it’s loosened up in the meantime, in its foundation cement. I haven’t seen Mary Humphrey for months. Fr Egan is returning from a couple of months abroad, looking into the cathedral situation with the idea of building one of his own. What else? The Gophers beat the Spartans10 this aft
ernoon, a stunning upset. Buses, I understand, a dozen or so every Sunday, come to St John’s with students, nuns, et al., to see the new church, as it’s called.11 Our home life is all children and their fights and falling-outs. Let me know, if you find out what you’re living for, but do not give up. The Baks, it seems, have taken your place on the highways, Hetty delivering children to various schools all day long. Now I must sign off. Best to youse both.
Jim
LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE
St Cloud, Minnesota
December 7, 1961
Dear Leonard and Betty,
Whatever you say, there is something nice about getting a Christmas letter from me—something that might not happen to you if you weren’t away from home—if that is what we have here. Myself, I’m afraid we have here no lasting home, any of us, except the Hyneses, of course, who have the marvelous faculty of being away from it without really leaving it (to hear them tell it), so there isn’t the onus of treason or desertion in their case such as there’s always been in ours. […]
Joe is getting on with the job. He is also working on a jacket for my book. Jody has a new dog whose name is Mac. Joe has had a couple of feelers from St John’s, one small job, one in Puerto Rico—you get the feeling they feel guilty about freezing him out and now that Frank12 has been “fired” again are not afraid to approach Joe. Oh hell, don’t ask me why Frank was fired—it would take you to get it all straight, and, of course, he isn’t really fired. It happened before the Walker Gallery showing of the new church plans, pictures, etc. The payoff on this (the Walker show) was Bruno Bak being invited with other notables to the private showing and walking in with the abbot, and Fr John, and others—and then seeing that Breuer had made up some glass for the occasion. No sign of Bruno’s work. We’re told (by the Baks, though) that the abbot was humiliated by the situation he found himself in, as was Fr John, and that the Walker people were disgusted, too, by this kind of dirty pool (Breuer’s men, presumably, arranged the exhibit), which, I think, has the odor of Frank about it. Ah, well. If I never hear another word (happy thought!) about that church, I’ll be happy. There are times when I think I may have to immortalize them all there. I am not sure, though, that even if I did it as it should be done, they’d recognize it, or themselves. Intellectually, and aesthetically, they just don’t burn with a hard gemlike flame. Have to go out there on Sunday, however, so as to escape the pledge taking that will go on everywhere else. […]
