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

7 Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected and became Pope John XXIII.

8 Stearns County pronunciation of “Joe and Jody.”

9 Joke — unfinished intentionally.

23. Back and wondering why

1 Del Flanagan versus Ralph Dupas. Del won.

2 One of Jim’s early short stories, made into a play.

3 They didn’t meet.

4 Bandas had been appointed to the forty-member Pontifical Academy of Theology, a position Knox had held before his death in 1957.

5 Del versus Jimmy Martinez. Del won.

6 Versus Joey Giardello.

7 Joey Giardello. Del was knocked out.

8 The school Katherine and Mary had attended in Ireland.

9 Tenants.

10 Frank Kacmarcik (1920–2004) taught art and print design at St. John’s, also painted and designed graphics himself; collected works of art in Europe after the war and brought them to St. John’s.

11 The proposed Continental League, which never came to be. The existing major leagues expanded.

12 Kacmarcik.

13 Glen Flanagan, Del’s brother, also a prizefighter.

24. The J. F. Powers Company: “The Old Cum Permissu Superiorum Line”

1 Salvage and surplus outlet.

2 Sportswriters.

3 For the children for Christmas.

4 Jim to Betty, November 26, 1956: “My fervent desire, as you should know, to have all the symphony orchestras founder, all the books go unread, for there to be nothing but trash in every branch of art and entertainment — if people can’t see the real thing, feel the need of it as of food and drink; anything but that they feel humanitarian about helping . That is burning incense before a god which doesn’t exist — and that is what? I don’t want to be party to it anyway.”

5 Second Vatican Council.

6 Reidar Lund (1910–1961), who for the last two years of his life was the sports editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press .

7 Match with Phil Edwards in London, March 8, 1960. Decision: no contest. Referee disqualified both in seventh round for “persistent holding.”

8 The result appeared in Critic 19 (October — November 1960).

9 The place to which Father Urban was exiled in Morte D’Urban .

25. No money is the story of my life

1 Stands for Jesus, Mary, Joseph — inscribed at the top of written work by the pious.

2 Françoise Sagan (1935–2004).

3 Paul Claudel (1868–1955).

4 NAB (Nationally Advertised Brands), a novel in which a “supermarket derby” and a “bureau of conscience” were to figure.

5 William Faulkner , part of Writers at Work series.

6 “The Fig Tree.”

7 Washington Senators.

8 Clark Griffith (1869–1955) and Calvin Griffith (1911–1999), successive owners of the old Washington Senators, which became the Twins.

9 Cookie Lavagetto (1912–1990), Twins manager.

10 University of Minnesota Golden Gophers versus Michigan State Spartans.

11 St. John’s Abbey Church, designed by Marcel Breuer.

12 Frank Kacmarcik had undermined Joe in the past.

13 To Art and Money’s house and attendant festivities.

14 Father Godfrey Diekmann, a monk at St. John’s and one of the prime movers in liturgical reform and the vernacular Mass.

15 Pope John XXIII spoke in favor of Latin being preserved as the teaching language of the Church.

16 Last issue was in 1960.

26. The day was like other days, with the author napping on the floor in the middle of the afternoon

1 Roethke.

2 It was actually published September 14.

3 Waugh gave Doubleday a quotation.

27. As a winner, let me say you can’t win, not on this course

1 “Keystone,” The New Yorker , May 18, 1963.

2 Where his daughter and her family lived.

3 The Disinherited was being republished with an introduction by Daniel Aaron, the author of Writers on the Left (1961), among other works, and one of the founders of American studies as an academic discipline.

4 Herman Kogan (1914–1989), Chicago journalist.

5 Joke.

6 Walter Winchell (1897–1972), newspaper-and-radio gossip reporter; habitually called New York “the Big-Town.”

7 Hedda Hopper (1885–1966), gossip columnist for the Los Angeles Times . On JFP: “A charming shy man, I imagine he’s quite lonely at times.”

8 He declined.

9 The Twins traded the pitcher Jack Kralick to Cleveland for Jim Perry.

1 °Calvin Griffith.

11 Metropolitan Stadium for a Twins game.

12 George Frazier praised Morte D’Urban in his column in The Boston Herald , April 22, 1963: “On the basis of a single novel, Mr. Powers seems to me the most gifted fiction writer in America today.”

13 “Keystone,” The New Yorker , May 18, 1963.

14 Hoke Norris (1913–1977), literary editor of the Chicago Sun-Times .

15 Van Allen Bradley (1913–1984), literary editor of the Chicago Daily News .

16 Will Wharton, a.k.a. Wallie Wharton, had been business manager of The Anvil , the literary journal founded by Jack Conroy.

17 Nelson Algren, Who Lost an American? (1963).

18 Kid Gavilan, Cuban boxer.

28. Ireland grey and grey and grey, then seen closer, green, green, green

1 The Empire Builder.

2 20th Century Limited.

3 Catherine Petters, born October 2, 1963, their seventh (and last) child.

4 He was working at the St. Cloud Diocese’s chancery.

5 George Henry Speltz was not appointed; he became coadjutor bishop of the St. Cloud Diocese in 1966.

6 Cardinal Bernardus Johannes Alfrink, who was Dutch, promoted liberal ideas at Vatican II.

7 Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, an Italian, championed the conservative position at Vatican II.

8 Georges Maranda (1932–2000), who was born in Quebec, pitched in the majors only two seasons: 1960 for San Francisco and 1962 for the Twins.

9 Kacmarcik.

10 Garrelts had commissioned a carved wooden panel from Joe for the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota. After having Joe deliver it and leaving him waiting — first he was out, then he was on the phone — he tried to get out of paying for it.

11 Irish pronunciation.

12 Joke.

13 Dick O’Connell, Joe’s brother, sent a package that fell apart in the mail.

14 Milwaukee Journal questionnaire typescript, July 1963.

Afterword: Growing Up in This Story

1 Jim to Joe and Jody O’Connell, December 19, 1971.

Family

Jim and Zella, Jim’s parents, on their wedding day, 1915

Jim’s sister, Charlotte, and her husband, Bill Kraft, 1944

Jim’s brother, Dick

1946: The Wahls plus Jim. Left to right: John, Betty, Jim, Art, Money, Pat, Tom

Friends

Quincy College Academy Little Hawks, 1934–1935. Jim, middle row, far right; Garrelts next to him; Keefe, same row, middle