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

Jim had struggled for weeks trying to write a review of Gordon Zahn’s German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars: A Study in Social Control (Sheed & Ward, 1962) and found himself contemplating again the German character, one of his preoccupations.

Journal, May 12, 1962

Wondering if I could someday (if I live long enough) write a War and Peace novel about the 2nd World War, with the main characters Germans, rise of the Nazis and fall of what good there was in German politics — very little, I think. I must try to understand the position of the army — a holy order of men, to the Germans, it seems. In a world of bullies, may God bless ours — is all it comes down to, I think. Fear, fear, fear.

LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE

[May 1962]

St Cloud

Dear Leonard and Betty (if I may be so bold),

[…] St Cloud State is spreading out. It has played hell with what was the best part of town, and though the editor of The St Cloud Times keeps talking about the increase in payroll, it does seem too bad. Still, very few people realize it, and the student body must be humored, which I guess is the best reason to do away with trees and greenery, to make the terrain more and more like where the students come from. There is now a turnstile in the library, for checking users in and out, and that has made me reluctant to be seen there (I used to go there and read Publishers Weekly and Variety ).

I did a review of Gordon’s book for The Reporter , but it was, after being set up in galley proof, returned to me: it was believed I was being too hard on the German hierarchy, a grand bunch of fellows if ever there was one, and there were many, in Hitler’s Germany. Review then went to the Saturday Review , on Gordon’s suggestion, and was returned to me with a printed rejection, the first of those I’ve had in fifteen years or so. I am now thinking of submitting it to Fr Egan for his church bulletin. Very frustrating to one of our best loved, to say nothing of immortal, authors.

What else? My book is scheduled for September 21,2 is not, so far as I know, being sought by major book clubs, the movies, or Broadway. […]

Jim

JACK CONROY

412 First Avenue South

St Cloud, Minnesota

July 23, 1962

Dear Jack,

Glad to hear from you. I did get your jeering postcard from Moberly. I was never one to underestimate the strength and cunning of the Greyhounds, but then the Hawks, when the backfield was sober, weren’t so bad in their day. Myself, I was never a student of Quincy College* but only of the Academy (we were known as the Little Hawks), and so did not play against the Greyhounds. I have shed blood in Missouri, though, in three sports, baseball, football, and basketball — in Hannibal and Monroe City. Actually, I never did very well in Missouri, come to think of it — or, come to think of it, anywhere else. Oh, a star, yes, but nothing like the star I am in our literary firmament. About my book, I don’t know whether it’ll win, lose by a short head, or run way out of the money. For the last year, I thought I’d really pulled it off — done almost as well as I’d hoped I would — but lately I’ve begun to doubt it. Maybe it’s too odd a world I describe, to go over big. I don’t know. […] Just — Jim

HARVEY EGAN

412 First Avenue South

St Cloud, Minnesota

July 27, 1962

Dear Fr Egan,

Glad to hear you like the book — gladder perhaps than you would think, for though I would still back it against your “Pass this one” or “Not today,” I would prefer to bet with you. In the past week, I have had several good signs, word of a favorable comment from Evelyn Waugh, which Doubleday will doubtless be using; a nice long paragraph in Publishers Weekly , in their forecast department, although it does say the book is too underplayed for mass appeal; and your comment. At least it will not be left at the post, the book. I’ll simply tell No boy (my jockey) to see that the horse doesn’t get bumped at the start and boxed in at the eight pole. Anyway, your note made me feel pretty good.

The seats for the Yankees look good to me. How far will Roger Maris be standing from Mickey Mantle? That is what Hughie asked me today (he wants to see Maris, he says, more than Mantle). We have a new bat autographed by Mickey, but it seems to be a little heavy for the boys, and so I’ve just purchased another, autographed by somebody who calls himself Crackerjack. […] Katherine should’ve been a boy as she has a lot of power at the plate. As for me, my arm is pretty well gone, but I have a lot of savvy and am getting by on that and luck. […]

Jim

EVELYN WAUGH

412 First Avenue South

St Cloud, Minnesota

August 14, 1962

Dear Mr Waugh,

I didn’t realize you’d been sent galleys and am all the more grateful for the favorable comment.3 No, I haven’t been on Christian-name terms with you in the past, and, to answer your question, it was the bishop’s ball that broke Fr Urban’s old spirit. I hope you don’t mean I should’ve gone into the medical aspects of his case — injuries to the head (and spine) are very hard to diagnose, and though this would have been easy enough in fiction, I preferred to skip it. Perhaps you mean more than that. As I saw it, and see it, the change in Fr Urban had to come from without — a rude wind. Perhaps the book loses by it, the involuntary quality of the change, but otherwise there could have been none in Fr Urban, in my hands. I’m afraid you’re right about my being more of a short-story writer than a novelist. I know I don’t like to think of taking on another novel, though I must. Some of my devoted readers among the clergy have been after me to try a nonclerical book, and maybe I will. […] Best wishes.

Morte D’Urban was published by Doubleday on September 14, 1962.

JACK CONROY

412 First Avenue South

St Cloud, Minnesota

September 18, 1962

Dear Jack,

Thanks for sending on your review (and the one from the Tribune , about which I won’t say more). You were good to me, Jack, and you wrote a beautiful, creative review, doing everything you could for me in the space and doing it so that it was a pleasure to read as writing. […] The Mpls Tribune man slugged me good on Sunday: I think he regarded the book as a threat to earnestness in business and the arts in Mpls, and humor with a capital H , as in HA HA, and so he called it banal, said I eschewed “rugged plot”—what the hell, I wouldn’t mention it, but people see me on the street here and look away as if I’d been taken in adultery with a chicken. The Sunday Visitor , Catholic weekly, the other organ of book reviewing that enters St Cloud, also blasted me. […]

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

Between the Bookends

September 1962

Publication day was marked by two events, a phone call at 4:00 a.m. from Johnny Berryman, poet, critic, University of Minnesota professor teaching this year at Brown, in his cups, and reading the book, and saying he’d phoned (from Providence) to tell me that a night letter was coming, which did, in fact, arrive. The day itself was like other days, with the author napping on the floor in the middle of the afternoon, and then in the evening there was a surprise party preceded by any number of telltale clues, Betty not going to bed at her usual time, having her hair combed, and wearing shoes, plus the porch light being on, and somebody had even flushed the toilet. A gay evening, Guinness mixed with beer. Today no mail at all, and so it goes. I am much cheered by your predictions of success and would still not bet against the book, but let’s face it, it’s being slammed into the rails on the turns. Still nothing from The New Yorker , and so I’m not moving from my cabin door. Sometimes I think I’m dead — ever get that feeling? All for now.