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

Mr Rice is a nice man, making a study of science fiction because he hates its implications so much, he says. He grouses about all the new buildings — for social work, he says, and says he’s only lately been able to accept the idea that the university in this country is — I forget his phrase, but he means what you might think. I haven’t yet got around to inviting him to leave the country, but he seems a very promising prospect.

BETTY POWERS

507 Church Street

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Thursday morning, 11:00 a.m.,

September 27, 1956

Dear Betty,

[…] I attended a faculty meeting yesterday — just the men teaching English 31, 32, and 45, or something — and how like the one I once attended at Marquette. This time it was Mr Carr; there it was Chub Archer. It just takes forever, mince, mince, and hardly a word intelligible. […] I have one MS to read, but more coming in, some to be dropped off here at the house. One fellow is coming to see me here for a conference, since he works day and night, having three jobs: bass in a jazz band, injecting monkeys with narcotics at the university (they are trying to find a cure for drugs), and writing news for a local radio station. He also has one of those waterfall mustaches (“waterfall” is original with me — I think — and I hope you know what kind of mustache I mean). Some woman called last night and in a kind of hillbilly voice asked if she could get in one of my classes. I of course referred her to Mr Bader,2 but in the course of the conversation she asked how I liked Ann Arbor, calling it “our fair city,” and then proceeded to tell me where to drive, to see this and that, flowers and best view of “all Ann Arbor,” and to all of this I feebly assented — except that she’ll have to see Mr Bader. She sounds prolific, is doing a Civil War novel — spare us, O Lord. […]

Much love,

Jim (Austin’s ballpoint)

BETTY POWERS

507 Church Street

Ann Arbor, Michigan

October 10, 1956

Dear Betty,

Wednesday, no letter from you, one from K. A. Porter, and that was my mail. […] K. A. Porter wonders why Austin didn’t rent his place to her when she was here. She lived at the Union and sat on the side of her bed, she says, with a chair for her typewriter, and no one would bring her a cup of coffee in the morning. She stood in line with her tray for meals. I had heard, from Mr Rice, I believe, that she didn’t want to do any housework and that was why she stayed there. […]

I am listening to the World Series. Looks bad for the Brooks. Well, as you can see, I am brimming over with nothing to say today, but I trust you’ll appreciate getting a letter, even this one. I write it with some effort. Much love — and kisses for the boys and girls.

Jim

BETTY POWERS

507 Church Street

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Sunday evening, October 14, 1956

Dear Betty […]

The people in the adjoining apartment are entertaining again tonight. Real slow, unscintillating dinners they give. It has been good for me to hear how people live, as I do living next to them. The other day — it was during the World Series— he came in with the paper and said: “Well, well, Yogi Berra got another home run — and Skowron too. Say.” Which sounds like the beginning of a play for which no one is expected to be on time. Now I’ll close, and hope there’s a letter from you in the morning.

Monday morning. Dear Betty, he continued the next day. […] As to your letter, it’s a very wise one. I’m surprised how wise you are about the necessity of living in genteel poverty if one is a writer in these times. It is true, and I know it, but I don’t think I have formulated it as you have, in a law. It is one, though, and people like KAP3 try to go against it. And the worst thing is what they think is worth it, the junk they buy, or tell themselves when they are paying too much for something in a good store. […] All for now. Much love. […]

Jim

BETTY POWERS

507 Church Street

Ann Arbor, Michigan

October 30, 1956

Dear Betty,

[…] I had from Victor4 a transcript of the Critics program. Parts of it are snipped out by the BBC if they think such matter shouldn’t be perpetuated: apparently, where someone gets too critical, or nasty. But I seem to do all right with all the critics except the one for films, a woman by the name of Lockhart.5 She opposes the others, and in the end, after Walter Allen likens my work to Chaucer’s, saying you have to go that far back to find something like it (which of course soothes my soul), the Lockhart woman cries out that she prefers the Father Brown stories or Don Camillo! I will be surprised indeed if she isn’t one of the Faithful. Her tone is the very one of the Catholic reviewers over here who, wounded, cry out righteously and then, thinking to hurt their persecutor, try to play down my achievement as a writer. I will send the transcript to you in a day or so; I am still studying it. […]

I saw an item in The Times (London) to the effect that E. Waugh, the author, had sold his place Piers Court, where he had lived for 19 years; nothing else, except that it had been on the market from the first of the year. I dropped a line to Anne Fremantle thinking maybe she could tell me the meaning of this, worried that his hearing voices might be a factor in this strange removal.6 I had regarded Waugh as established there till death did him and Piers Court part. It seems a rootless thing to do, for him. […] I miss you all, and you most of all.

Love and kisses,

Jim

BETTY POWERS

507 Church Street

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Halloween, 11:00 p.m., 1956

Dear Betty,

[…] I have been listening to the lousy news from the Middle East.7 I must say I am confused. I would not have believed such a thing of the British or French — and resent such blah-blah experts as Randolph Churchill, who cables Beaverbrook’s press that Americans really admire the Anglo-French move but are waiting until the election is over to show it. The British do hatch a terrible kind of ass, it seems to me: people like R. Churchill and Nancy Mitford.

A card in my mailbox at the English office today— The Michigan Daily asking me to state my preference for president. I put down Stevenson, with some misgivings. Of course I wasn’t asked to sign my name. I should’ve written in something funny, I guess: Card. Spellman. […]

Much love,

Jim

BETTY POWERS

507 Church Street

Ann Arbor, Michigan

November 2, 1956

Dear Betty,

[…] I came home and got the United Nations session8 on a New Orleans station and listened to that until about 3:00 a.m. I am still shocked at the tactics of Great Britain. If, as seems likely today, Russia is marching back into Hungary — so what? I believe this is the end of the United Nations, even the theory of it. It seems incredible that Israel, Great Britain, and France should be the immediate causes; the executioners. I listened to the Israeli ambassador, and he was very convincing about the sabotage and violence along the borders, the constant raids, but … the but was still there when he was through. I don’t see how, if the Egyptians are defeated militarily, as they presumably are already, the Israelis expect to survive in the Middle East. They are outnumbered, greatly, and this conflict should make everything, bad in the past, only worse. Of course the canal will be lost to Nasser, and that is the objective most likely to succeed: the Anglo-French objective. It seems to me the Israelis have made a terrible blunder and will pay and pay from now on. Ah, well, why go on about it? It only confirms me in my own attitude toward government and politics. It also makes Ireland look better than England as a place to settle. Of course England is split, but apparently only on political lines, or so we learn. I did hear that the Abp of Canterbury opposed the Eden government on this. […]