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

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? […]

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…”