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

1 Asking for his editorial comments, Jim had sent Shattuck stories for what became the collection Prince of Darkness, and Other Stories .

2 Novel by Edward F. Murphy, SJ (Bruce, 1944).

3 Ray Blades had been manager of the St. Paul Saints.

4 Eventually published in Accent (Spring 1947).

5 One of Betty’s teachers at St. Benedict’s.

7. Camaraderie

1 Columbia , July 1947. Review of Jim’s Prince of Darkness and Sylvester’s Moon Gaffney .

2 A version of Parcheesi.

3 Berlin-born poet and Quaker.

4 Caliri reviewed the book for Sign , August 1947 (“One would like to take Mr. Powers around and introduce him to some of the truly admirable priests that one has met”).

5 Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

6 British economist.

7 Bishop Bernard James Sheil (1888–1969), auxiliary bishop of Chicago and celebrated advocate of social justice.

8 Agnes Smedley (1892–1950), writer, journalist, Communist sympathizer, chronicler of the Chinese revolution. She was at the center of a divisive campaign launched by Lowell to eject Elizabeth Ames from Yaddo in 1948.

9 Joe Lasker (1919–), artist.

10 Robert A. Taft, conservative senator from Ohio, who wrote the Taft-Hartley Act.

11 Assistant at Yaddo; violently anti-Communist; resigned in 1948 during the Agnes Smedley imbroglio.

12 Artist, member of the Movement.

13 The Reverend Walter T. Gouch.

14 Elizabeth Ames.

15 Gordon Zahn and Leonard Doyle.

16 He planned to visit John Haskins and Robert Lowell.

17 Harry Sylvester.

18 “There was a [illegible] writer named Powers; / Got stinking on 3 whiskey sours, / And entered his car at the races; / But after he’d gone fifty paces / The horses had finished for hours.” Robert Lowell to J. F. Powers, September 24, 1947.

19 Henry Volkening.

20 Recommending Jim for a Guggenheim grant.

21 Morton Dauwen Zabel (1901–1964).

22 Jack Howe and Davy Davison, Frank Lloyd Wright’s two “young geniuses” from Sandstone prison.

8. I’ve a few stipulations to read into the rural-life-family-life jive

1 Preparatory seminary at the College (as it was called then) of St. Thomas, St. Paul.

2 Chicago seminary.

3 Avon’s population was around 880; St. Joe’s (St. Joseph’s) around 1,200.

4 Edward F. Murphy, SJ, Père Antoine (1947), published by Doubleday.

5 Caroline Gordon (1895–1981), novelist and critic. Recent convert to Catholicism and married to Allen Tate at the time.

6 The Gallery of Living Catholic Authors, a literary hall of fame for contemporary Catholic authors founded in 1932 by Sister Mary Joseph Scherer, an English teacher and librarian at Webster College in Missouri.

7 Invited to join the gallery, Lowell, a Catholic convert (for a time), told them that he had fallen away. (“I had to break the bad news to them, and now masses are being said for me — God rest my soul; you seem to be the only one that doesn’t go in for that sort of thing.” Lowell to J. F. Powers, February 5, 1948.)

8 “Bad” as in German “spa.” Joke.

9 The Portable Faulkner , edited by Malcolm Cowley.

10 Father Rudolph G. Bandas (1896–1969), a particular bugbear of Egan and Jim. Rector of St. Paul Seminary at the time; theologian; author of many religious books.

11 Francis Joseph Schenk (1901–1969), bishop of Crookston, Minnesota, at the time.

12 Joke.

13 Associated with The Catholic Worker and rural lifers.

14 Sports announcer and sports program host.

15 Randall Jarrell (1914–1965), poet, critic, novelist.

16 Garrelts and Keefe.

17 Lowell’s divorce from Jean Stafford.

9. The truth about me is that I just don’t qualify as the ideal husband

1 An instrument used for sprinkling holy water.

2 Review of The Loved One , by Evelyn Waugh, Commonweal , July 16, 1948.

3 Review of A Long Fourth, and Other Stories , by Peter Taylor, Commonweal , July 16, 1948. Taylor (1917–1994) was a short-story writer, novelist, and playwright.

4 Elizabeth Ames.

5 Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005), elected to the U.S. House of Representatives the next day.

6 Hoping for a Republican victory in the presidential election — which the Democrat Harry Truman won.

7 Alben W. Barkley (1877–1956), who was Truman’s running mate.

8 From Collegeville and St. Cloud.

9 Burlesque theatre in Minneapolis.

10. If you can’t win with me, stop playing the horses!

1 Roethke.

2 Renewal of the Guggenheim.

3 Father Bandas.

4 Prince of Darkness.

5 Play-by-play announcer for the St. Paul Saints baseball and hockey teams.

6 Lexington Park, St. Paul.

7 Kentucky Derby.

8 Joe H. Palmer, racing correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune . “Assistant,” meaning parish assistant (a priest).

9 Caroline Gordon.

10 Catholic Worker .

11. I’m beyond the point where I think the world is waiting for me as for the sunrise

1 Manager of the Brewers.

2 Good shepherd (Latin).

3 Don Humphrey.

4 For collections at Mass.

5 The Grand National at Aintree, the race upon which the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes was based.

6 Harry Sylvester.

7 Robert Paul Mohan, review of The Cardinal , by Henry Morton Robinson, Priest , June 1950: “Mr. Robinson … has none of the depressing negativity of Powers or Sylvester, who have also given pictures of the clerical scene.”

8 The Sun Herald . (Jim has the name wrong here.) A national Catholic daily newspaper (with an antiwar position) founded in 1950 in Kansas City, Missouri, it lasted six months.

9 Albany, New York.

10 “Youth” section in the St. Cloud diocesan newspaper (Stearns County pronunciation).

11 Bill Kraft.

12 Bookseller and outspoken advocate of good literature who had a radio show called Books and Brent .

13 Yaddo.

14 John Louis Bonn, SJ, novelist and teacher.

15 Huge college basketball scandal involving point-shaving and payoffs from bookies.

16 Joke.

17 From The New Yorker .

18 “Defection of a Favorite,” The New Yorker , November 10, 1951.

19 A society of Spanish-inspired flagellants in New Mexico and Colorado.

12. The water, the green, the vines, stone walls, the pace, all to my taste

1 “I don’t feel right about the Church here. Even thought the poor Protestants might be holding back the deluge, one finger in the dike.” Journal, November 4, 1951.

2 Parish priest (the pastor).

3 One of Father Fennelly’s pamphlets.

4 Clark Bars — Jim’s favorite.

5 Racecourse south of Dublin.

6 Two shillings.

7 A book of prayers.

8 Egan’s to-do lists.

9 Don Humphrey.

10 William Howard, 8th Earl of Wicklow (1902–1978), converted to Roman Catholicism in 1932.

11 Prince of Darkness .

12 Joke.

13 Como Park, St. Paul.

14 They hoped for a Republican president.

15 A. A. Stagg, University of Chicago football coach for forty-one years.

13. In Ireland, I am an American. Here, I’m nothing

1 “Tide Rips in the Teacups,” The New Yorker , December 13, 1952.

2 “The Devil Was the Joker,” The New Yorker , March 21, 1953.

3 Peter W. Bartholome (1893–1982), coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud, 1942–1953. He became bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud in 1953 and retired in 1968.

4 A 1952 movie, directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, and Barry Fitzgerald.

5 Jim’s agent, Henry Volkening.