J. Powers - Suitable Accommodations - An Autobiographical Story of Family Life - The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963

Jim […]

Do you suppose from all the Latin Joe H. Palmer uses he’s an old assistant that went south?8

“If you can’t win with me, stop playing the horses!” —Clocker Jim

ROBERT LOWELL

150 Summit Avenue

St Paul, Minnesota

May 25, 1949

Dear Cal,

Are you mad at me or just in a tunnel? I haven’t even seen your name mentioned in Time or Life . The last I heard was some time before I applied for a renewal of the Guggenheim that I didn’t get. A few weeks back I wrote to Mrs Ames about coming to Yaddo for August, Betty and me, and she said it would be all right. I wonder if I can hope to see you there. Or will you be going to Europe with everybody else, or can’t you go? I hope you’re working well.

I took a new grip on myself when the Guggenheim failed me and wrote a couple of stories for publication. To date nothing has happened to them that would lead me to think my plan to live by writing was a good one. So recently I signed up to teach creative writing at Marquette come September. I’ll have six hours only, and they say they’ll find us a place to live. Not the way I’d like it, but it does beat depending on the whims of editors of the magazines that pay a living wage. I remember you told me that in the beginning or what now seems like the beginning. So barring the unforeseen, I’ll be in Milwaukee for at least a year.

I signed up for a writers’ conference at Kansas last winter, and now that it’s almost upon me, I wish I hadn’t: mostly I mean I have to write a speech, and it is gradually dawning that I have nothing to say. I don’t know the truth about any writer, about literature, about culture, and so what my thesis will be is still a mystery. You don’t have an old college essay lying around that I might read, do you? As my own, of course. Perhaps I could say a few words about the eating and drinking habits of poets, with particular reference to Roethke. That is more in my line. Allen Tate and his wife9 will be at the conference. I don’t know them, though, and suppose I can’t look for much help there. They were here a couple of weeks ago — he gave a reading at the university — but I was out of town, on some kind of a trip with a clerical friend who was trying to get away from it all. We went fishing up on the Canadian border. Didn’t catch anything. Seems you have to have a pack of guides and an airplane to do it right. Some people from Chicago, two couples with two Cadillac convertibles, twins, did it right. It was good to see them going off in the morning and returning at night with all their army and equipment.

Waugh was here in March. Said he came to Minnesota to see me and the Indian reservations. He is also interested in Father Divine. He was all right, and his wife, but it wasn’t anything like the bout I’d anticipated from his books. Suppose that’s life. Drank wine. Still don’t think I care for it, not dago red at ten in the morning. He wanted to know how old you were when I asked if you’d met yet. He wanted to know how old I was too. Seemed relieved to know he’d been younger when he pub’d his first book. I may be wrong about that, but that was all I could make out of it. The other day I rec’d a beautiful edition “edited” by him of Msgr Knox’s sermons.

I met R. P. Warren at a party in January or February, very fine, up to what you and everybody always said about him, though we didn’t see a lot of each other. It was a party for John Dos Passos given by the descendants of the Washburns, the flour people, and I was there, I know, as a prop, as were all the others who might conceivably qualify as writers. How about a catering service for such parties that would fly out some writers from New York, like seafood? Just an idea. I learned one thing that night (many of the other “writers” were off to Mexico or somewhere): a writer ought to own a chain of drugstores.

Pax,

Jim

P.S. — I ought to tell you that in a piece on St Paul I did for Partisan Review , I made use of your prophecy concerning the war between New York and Chicago. I thought of giving you your due in a footnote, but it seemed a little gauche to do so in print, not knowing your mind, so I didn’t. I had to use the idea, needing substance sorely. I hope you don’t mind.

Jim and Betty went to Yaddo at the end of July, leaving Katherine and Mary in St. Cloud with Betty’s sister, Pat.

HARVEY EGAN

Saratoga

Track Good

August 1, 1949

Dear Fr Egan,

Just a few lines to warm up on. We arrived here two days ago. The place is unchanged. We have the same rooms as last time. Today the races begin. It is also Monty Woolley day here. After Mass yesterday I got a Form . It’s going to be a hard day, tough, and I may not bet a race: two two-year-old races and a steeplechase. I was over at the track yesterday morning. Very pretty, the rose and green grandstand, and the men dragging the track to dry it out. […]

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

Yaddo

Wednesday night, August 18, 1949

Dear Fr Egan,

Your letter and five spot rec’d. I am happy to report that you are still breaking even, i.e., beating the game, for I have not risked it yet. I have been three times, losing a little each time. I know you won’t believe that, but there it is anyway. The way it is, so many two-year-old races and the daily hurdles, eliminates opportunity to get ahead. I have to concentrate on the remaining races, and haven’t done badly, but am a lot away from that $90,000 I set for myself. […]

The absolutely big news I have for you is that I dropped Joe H. Palmer a line, and this evening he phoned, and we have an evening planned for here Friday night. I saw him at the yearling sales one night, with his wife, at a distance, and got to thinking I just had to see him. So I risked a note. He sounds on the phone something like he looks: “Hallo, this is Joe Palmer.” Wish you were going to be here. I am not telling the other inmates. They would not know about him anyway and also might not have enough sense to honor him as I intend to. It means I’ll have to get a bottle of bourbon in. He’s from Kentucky. I’d like to ask Jack Conroy (a writer) down (he lives above us), but I don’t want to set him off. He’s been on one toot since coming about a week ago. He is from Moberly, Missouri, originally, but for many years was considered the white hope of the proletarian novel. Nice fellow. Lot of stories. I have not seen a radio since coming here and might be said to be taking the cure.

I see where the Holy Father is routing us contemplatives out of our tunnels, says we’ve got to mix more. How do you feel about that? (I have had two good ones, one paying $33.00, one $27.50, but I had them to show, and those are the win prices.) A fellow selling tip sheets in the grandstand said: “Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed.” I plan to attend the morning works tomorrow. I sit behind the clockers. There are two sets. Those who work for the track handicapper, and they are Negroes; those who work for the Racing Form and Daily Telegraph , all white. The former are better for dialogue, though the others have their points. They have big binoculars, notebooks, handbooks, encyclopedias, and typewriters. When a horse comes on the track a quarter of a mile away at the gate, up go the binoculars, and that is all they need, just a glance, to tell which one of thousands it is. Would that I were one of them, but, no, I had to be what I am.

We have a place in Milwaukee lined up. Three bedrooms, so we’ll expect you now and then. I’ll tell Joe he is your favorite arthur. (“Arthur” is one of Conroy’s words. When he was famous, after the success of his first book, he sent for all his old friends in Missouri, and they came like a plague of locusts, eating and drinking all before them. It was the habit of their leader to ask at literary parties: Sir, are you a published arthur?)