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

March 21, 1963

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] I do have a lot of mail, as a matter of fact, but not as much as you’d think, and it is already tapering off. Nothing is different — and the prospect ahead gives me the shakes. By which I mean the exodus. I find, at this point, I have no needle on my compass.

I’d be glad to tell you of my adventures in the Big Town, actually not so exciting, since I was bent on staying vertical and in fact managed to do so. High points: Hedda Hopper, Ed Skillin (who I hadn’t met before), my acceptance speech, the hit of the evening, my dazzling performances with the interviewers, my relentless affability — so that I became thoroughly sick of myself and was glad to get the hell out of town. […] I was decent all the way, telling Doubleday I’d rather wait and see before signing on for more advance royalties. It will come to that, of course, in time. As a winner, let me say you can’t win, not on this course, and perhaps not on the next. Anon.

Jim

Journal, March 29, 1963

Word today from Ken McCormick that I, if willing, can have honorary degree from Adelphi College on June 12, with Leopold Stokowski, Mary Martin, and William Schuman. I don’t think so.8

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

St Cloud

April 11, 1963

Dear Katherine Anne,

[…] The award […] made my life difficult where you were concerned. Your letter of congratulation relieved my mind, but I hated my part in the business, though God knows I needed something of the sort. I had counted on my novel to sell enough to give me a house of my own in Ireland, or somewhere, and a couple of years. I was insane to think this could happen, people told me in New York recently, said I was lucky to have done as well as I had with the book. Well, if so, I don’t know how to look the future in the face, for I don’t expect to write a better book and certainly not a more salable one. […]

Yours …

Jim

Jim won the Thermod Monsen Award from the Society of Midland Authors, presented in Chicago on May 24, 1963.

HARVEY EGAN

May 3, 1963

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] Boz thinks the Kralick-Perry trade is a good one for our Twins.9 I don’t know myself (know thyself, right?), but I do not think Cal10 will ever put our welfare before his own. About a day at Met,11 I’ll have to go down sometime, I know, but dread it. Maybe by bus or train, with cab to and from Met. I wish, as always, Betty could drive and bear more of the burden. Marriage isn’t a 50–50 affair, I know, before you sic your curate on me.

Big fund-raising campaign beginning here, with out-of-town strong-arm men masterminding it. One thing they plan is to make anyone who doesn’t come up with it wear a scarlet A back and front. Fortunately, they will accept payment in livestock, agricultural products, or old manuscripts. […]

Word from Chicago is that the affair will be in the King Arthur Room of I’ve-forgotten-which hotel and that some of the men will wear black tie. I plan to wear white sneakers with brown rubber soles and a towel around my shoulders. […]

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

May 7, 1963

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] I hate this lousy heat, which is all very well when you’re wheeling around in a monastery garden, with your sandals on and the swallows twittering around your toes. On St Germain Street it’s murder, and I often think, yes, this is how I’ll go: down on the pavement, with the butts and Popsicle sticks and Mr Goodbar wrappers, to the music of hillbilly music in the passing convertible, farewell, Household Finance, S. S. Kresge, Three Sisters, it was good while it lasted — or was it?

Boston, judging by this column12 I enclose, sounds like a much better place to live, or do I mean die?

Jim

CHARLES SHATTUCK

412 First Avenue South

St Cloud, Minnesota

May 27, 1963

Dear Chuck,

Thanks for the letter. I am glad you like the story13 as you are the highest court I recognize in such a matter. […]

I played Chicago last Friday night, the King Arthur Room of the Sheraton-Chicago (actually the Medinah Athletic Club), and, as usual, knocked them in the old Kent Road with my speech. For the first time in my life, I wore a tuxedo (rented) and liked my looks so much that I sat up for hours, after the ball was over, just admiring myself in the mirror. I mean to get one first thing when I am rich. I don’t know what it means — secret hankering for order, holy orders, great wealth, you name it. This was in connection with the Monsen award given by the Society of Midland Authors, $500. I was sorry I missed the Pulitzer, as I’m told it’s good for sales. My sales, however, have been good since the National Book Award, have now reached 23,000, which is just a little less than half of what I’d hoped for about this time last year, before the book was published. It is going as well now, though, as it did at any time last fall, and I hope it continues so I can get out of the field entirely and into something more remunerative, something, perhaps, that would require that I wear evening dress. Am I entering a new period — my “Raffles” phase?

We still don’t know where* we’re going by summer’s end, or perhaps before if the house we’re living in is sold out from under us. I think I told you deaths in Betty’s family will require that we move on.

I have had some good job offers but have turned them down.

Best to you both …

Jim

JACK CONROY

412 First Avenue South

June 29, 1963

Dear Jack,

Thanks for the publication with my picture (and the other NBA winners) in it: I don’t mind being from St Cloud, Illinois — it may lead to a clarifying footnote in years to come, and it may change my luck. […]

I was sorry not to see you in Chicago but needed the time I might have used for a decent meal with you, needed it for my speech, which turned out all right but gave me a lot of trouble and worry until it was over. I didn’t meet Hoke Norris14 (whom I’d met in N.Y.) but did see Van Allen Bradley15 again and met Herman Kogan for the first time. I had the feeling that I was better known to them than to the ordinary membership, but I am used to that: my fame and fortune, if any, will be posthumous, I fear. […]

I’m sure Wharton16 would’ve done a better job than the Jesuit: he had no idea, of course, that the book would create the stir it did and was only doing what he could to downgrade it, a thing that happened to me here and there, with a certain amount of malice aforethought. Why, I don’t know, for to know me is to love me.

If I live long enough, and don’t find another, better way to make a living, my next book will have little or nothing to do with the Church … and we’ll see how they like them apples.

I’ve read most of Algren’s new book,17 and find some good lines and touches and a point of view that holds up, but the book misses in too many places: things like his Ked Gavilans,18 for God’s sake. On the other hand, I enjoyed his treatment of Mailer and Baldwin, neither of whom I know, but both of whom make my arse tired, they themselves rather than their work, though I did find Baldwin’s last novel unbelievably bad. But all of them, including Algren, still believe in Santa Claus, which I guess is the distinguishing mark of the American, writer or not.

May large birds defecate on the heads of most of the reading public for not buying the works of J. F. Powers.

I am, sir — Jim

J. F. Powers

HARVEY EGAN

August 6, 1963

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] I am crazy with the heat, and so is my typewriter, which, ever since Scotty, of Scotty’s business machines downstairs, fixed it, hasn’t been the same. Instead of a twenty-dollar gold piece when I die, so the boy’ll know I was standing pat, I want my typewriter in the coffin with me. I love this little machine.