18
Red house in winter
Jim left for Ann Arbor in September for a semester of teaching at the University of Michigan. He rented the apartment of the scholar and literary critic Austin Warren, who was on leave from the university. The adjoining apartment was occupied by a couple, Pansy and Dwight, whose goings-on—and those of the metal hangers in their closet—were clearly audible to Jim, who was as fascinated as he was annoyed by the situation.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tuesday, September 25, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] The woman who cleans was here today, worked three hours, and really worked. I haven’t seen a woman clean like that for years and years. She is colored. She will also do my laundry. She seems nice, very worried about Austin, called him “a poor old man,” and she’s in her sixties, I’ll bet; Austin is 57, was born 1899 at Waltham, Mass., according to a note in one of his books. […]
I sent Boz a little book yesterday, one of those little Potter ones that he should be able to understand and the girls can read it. It is about six in the evening now, and I’ll go out and mail this. I am hungry but can think of nothing I want. Except you, of course.
Much love,
Jim
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
September 26, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] The apartment is very nice. Its defects are that you can hear through the walls, and the bed in the same room with the kitchen. The living room is very nice, though crawling with books, ikons, pictures, which has a depressing effect on me, makes me feel anything but well-read. There is also a table with candlesticks, a piece of marble, a crucifix, a Roman breviary on it; it looks like an altar. Mr Rice1 isn’t sure what Mr Warren does with this, some kind of service, he thinks. Austin’s name is on the mailbox downstairs, but up here, on the second floor, there is a little card on the door that says: “Oratory of SS Basil & Gregory.” Apparently, Austin has been getting more and more … uh, ecclesiastical, as the landlord put it. He is Greek. Austin has joined the Greek Orthodox Church, I understand. […]
Mr Rice is a nice man, making a study of science fiction because he hates its implications so much, he says. He grouses about all the new buildings—for social work, he says, and says he’s only lately been able to accept the idea that the university in this country is—I forget his phrase, but he means what you might think. I haven’t yet got around to inviting him to leave the country, but he seems a very promising prospect.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Thursday morning, 11:00 a.m.,
September 27, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] I attended a faculty meeting yesterday—just the men teaching English 31, 32, and 45, or something—and how like the one I once attended at Marquette. This time it was Mr Carr; there it was Chub Archer. It just takes forever, mince, mince, and hardly a word intelligible. […] I have one MS to read, but more coming in, some to be dropped off here at the house. One fellow is coming to see me here for a conference, since he works day and night, having three jobs: bass in a jazz band, injecting monkeys with narcotics at the university (they are trying to find a cure for drugs), and writing news for a local radio station. He also has one of those waterfall mustaches (“waterfall” is original with me—I think—and I hope you know what kind of mustache I mean). Some woman called last night and in a kind of hillbilly voice asked if she could get in one of my classes. I of course referred her to Mr Bader,2 but in the course of the conversation she asked how I liked Ann Arbor, calling it “our fair city,” and then proceeded to tell me where to drive, to see this and that, flowers and best view of “all Ann Arbor,” and to all of this I feebly assented—except that she’ll have to see Mr Bader. She sounds prolific, is doing a Civil War novel—spare us, O Lord. […]
Much love,
Jim (Austin’s ballpoint)
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
October 10, 1956
Dear Betty,
Wednesday, no letter from you, one from K. A. Porter, and that was my mail. […] K. A. Porter wonders why Austin didn’t rent his place to her when she was here. She lived at the Union and sat on the side of her bed, she says, with a chair for her typewriter, and no one would bring her a cup of coffee in the morning. She stood in line with her tray for meals. I had heard, from Mr Rice, I believe, that she didn’t want to do any housework and that was why she stayed there. […]
I am listening to the World Series. Looks bad for the Brooks. Well, as you can see, I am brimming over with nothing to say today, but I trust you’ll appreciate getting a letter, even this one. I write it with some effort. Much love—and kisses for the boys and girls.
Jim
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Sunday evening, October 14, 1956
Dear Betty […]
The people in the adjoining apartment are entertaining again tonight. Real slow, unscintillating dinners they give. It has been good for me to hear how people live, as I do living next to them. The other day—it was during the World Series—he came in with the paper and said: “Well, well, Yogi Berra got another home run—and Skowron too. Say.” Which sounds like the beginning of a play for which no one is expected to be on time. Now I’ll close, and hope there’s a letter from you in the morning.
Monday morning. Dear Betty, he continued the next day. […] As to your letter, it’s a very wise one. I’m surprised how wise you are about the necessity of living in genteel poverty if one is a writer in these times. It is true, and I know it, but I don’t think I have formulated it as you have, in a law. It is one, though, and people like KAP3 try to go against it. And the worst thing is what they think is worth it, the junk they buy, or tell themselves when they are paying too much for something in a good store. […] All for now. Much love. […]
Jim
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
October 30, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] I had from Victor4 a transcript of the Critics program. Parts of it are snipped out by the BBC if they think such matter shouldn’t be perpetuated: apparently, where someone gets too critical, or nasty. But I seem to do all right with all the critics except the one for films, a woman by the name of Lockhart.5 She opposes the others, and in the end, after Walter Allen likens my work to Chaucer’s, saying you have to go that far back to find something like it (which of course soothes my soul), the Lockhart woman cries out that she prefers the Father Brown stories or Don Camillo! I will be surprised indeed if she isn’t one of the Faithful. Her tone is the very one of the Catholic reviewers over here who, wounded, cry out righteously and then, thinking to hurt their persecutor, try to play down my achievement as a writer. I will send the transcript to you in a day or so; I am still studying it. […]
I saw an item in The Times (London) to the effect that E. Waugh, the author, had sold his place Piers Court, where he had lived for 19 years; nothing else, except that it had been on the market from the first of the year. I dropped a line to Anne Fremantle thinking maybe she could tell me the meaning of this, worried that his hearing voices might be a factor in this strange removal.6 I had regarded Waugh as established there till death did him and Piers Court part. It seems a rootless thing to do, for him. […] I miss you all, and you most of all.
Love and kisses,
Jim
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Halloween, 11:00 p.m., 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] I have been listening to the lousy news from the Middle East.7 I must say I am confused. I would not have believed such a thing of the British or French—and resent such blah-blah experts as Randolph Churchill, who cables Beaverbrook’s press that Americans really admire the Anglo-French move but are waiting until the election is over to show it. The British do hatch a terrible kind of ass, it seems to me: people like R. Churchill and Nancy Mitford.
A card in my mailbox at the English office today—The Michigan Daily asking me to state my preference for president. I put down Stevenson, with some misgivings. Of course I wasn’t asked to sign my name. I should’ve written in something funny, I guess: Card. Spellman. […]
Much love,
Jim
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
November 2, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] I came home and got the United Nations session8 on a New Orleans station and listened to that until about 3:00 a.m. I am still shocked at the tactics of Great Britain. If, as seems likely today, Russia is marching back into Hungary—so what? I believe this is the end of the United Nations, even the theory of it. It seems incredible that Israel, Great Britain, and France should be the immediate causes; the executioners. I listened to the Israeli ambassador, and he was very convincing about the sabotage and violence along the borders, the constant raids, but … the but was still there when he was through. I don’t see how, if the Egyptians are defeated militarily, as they presumably are already, the Israelis expect to survive in the Middle East. They are outnumbered, greatly, and this conflict should make everything, bad in the past, only worse. Of course the canal will be lost to Nasser, and that is the objective most likely to succeed: the Anglo-French objective. It seems to me the Israelis have made a terrible blunder and will pay and pay from now on. Ah, well, why go on about it? It only confirms me in my own attitude toward government and politics. It also makes Ireland look better than England as a place to settle. Of course England is split, but apparently only on political lines, or so we learn. I did hear that the Abp of Canterbury opposed the Eden government on this. […]
A letter from a Miss Riordan, who wants the author of The Presence of Grace to write an 800-word story for her magazine for blind children. Is this not the woman who got me to write one before and then wanted me to change it after I did write it—to which request I never responded? For a long time I had her letter around in my study. Now I must close. […]
Much love,
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
November 10, 1956
Dear Fr Egan,
Long time no hear. I am established here in two rooms with a view, the radio is giving me the Michigan-Illinois game, The New Yorker is on the stands with my latest story,9 the first chapter of my new novel, I am smoking “Erinmore Flake,” a product of Northern Ireland, smoked on my arrival in Ireland and so full of sweet dreams for me. Tomorrow is Katherine Anne’s birthday, Tuesday is Boz’s, and I’ve just purchased a wristwatch for him: I want him to learn the value of time. He and Betty are arriving for a short visit on Tuesday. Except for the necessity to introduce Betty to the faculty, and probably have some people in, I am looking forward to the visit. […]
It is now 1:30 Minnesota time, and I must try to get the Iowa-Minnesota game. I suppose the Hawkeyes will play dirty again, as they always do against our guys. Regards to Sr Eugene Marie.
Jim
Betty and Boz came for a visit; Jim gave a party; both ventures were surprisingly successful.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
November 17, 1956
Dear Betty,
Nine o’clock here, in an hour you’ll be arriving in Chicago, and since I left you, I’ve been thinking about you, both of you, and hoping all goes well. […]
I put the table back in the living room but otherwise have left everything untouched. It is cold here tonight, or can it be that you’re gone. The Man Downstairs is entertaining tonight. Pansy and Dwight are quiet, even to the hangers. I regret that I must have seemed rather dim and unresponsive in the station. All for now. Write when you can. And love to the girls, Hughlie, and to you and Boz.
Jim
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
November 23, 1956
Dear Betty,
The morning after Thanksgiving, with George here reading a book. […]
I had a miserable night with George. He snores, spins rapidly in bed at intervals, and in general gives you a rough time. So I was tired all day yesterday. He may come and see us around Xmas time; I urged him to do so. […] Much love to you all, and especially to you.
Jim
Dwight: I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Pansy: You don’t take care of yourself. You’re too proud to wear your sweatshirt.
Hangers: Clang, clang, cling.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., December 5, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] I have just eaten one of my little dinners, quaint I guess you’d have to call them: spaghetti, half a can of corn, tea, and cookies. It was between that and pancakes, but I decided to hold off on them for a bit. I have MSS to read tonight because I have two appointments in the morning. […]
I went down for the mail this morning and met Mr Collins. He asked me to mention to Mr Rice that some apartment or other would be vacant on December 15. I looked at him, wondering if he’d said something that really concerned me. I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about this apartment. No, he meant the one at the head of the stairs. “They’re going back to California. He doesn’t like the climate here.” I rocked and teetered at this news. Finally I said, with a winning smile: “Well, it’s better than California.” To which he nodded and smiled. So Dwight and Pansy are departing, and that little scene I conveyed to you was pregnant with meaning, as we say in creative writing. I feel I should give them some kind of going-away party, but the trouble with that is that I haven’t yet met them. Maybe just a gift. Even that presents difficulties, for I heard Pansy, through their open front door as I was coming up the steps, telling someone that they were asking so much for this and so much for that. They are selling their furniture! How can they do it? They’ve lived with these things since last September.
Now I’ll close. Mr Kennedy and Mr Whelan10 are taking me out for dinner tomorrow night. I was surprised to learn from Mr K. that Mr W. has only just in the last week rec’d his master’s. I told Mr K. that if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have been quite so friendly with Mr W. We have to draw the line somewhere, after all.
Much love,
Jim
Jim and Betty planned a Boxing Day conversazione to be held at the red house.
HARVEY EGAN
GO BLUE!11
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
December 6, 1956
Dear Fr Egan,
It was good hearing from you after so long. George, who at Thanksgiving trained in and planed out, said he’d seen little of you. I wonder who your friends are, now that you’re cut off from janitor supplies and hardware and merchandise in general. I passed through the Twins last week, not stopping except for a tasty breakfast in the Mpls station.
My calendar grows more and more interesting: only eight more classes to be held. I’ve been a regular con about marking off the days. Not that it hasn’t been good. I am better for it, of course. I was getting a little shaggy, intellectually. With my basically brilliant mind, it wasn’t long before I was making sallies with the best of them. Another thing I’ve been doing in collegiate gatherings is suddenly hitting someone on the arm, the idea being to leave a black-and-blue mark. We all do that. I tried ripping open a few flies—some, like Hask, majored in that at Quincy College Academy—but the zipper has done away with all that. Tripping, of course, is still done, and breaking wind. The more we change, the more we’re the same, I always say. As I say, it’s been good, not only for me, but for those I meet. I seem to be very popular. I have been asked to read from my work here and there, but of course I had to refuse, at the money offered.
I’m glad you thought the last story good. I never know what you’ll think. The response has been light except from my immediate family. Actually, I think I’m outgrowing my public. I’m shooting for immortality.
About Yuletide cheer, we are planning a really big affair. You’ll get an invitation, and in your case and George’s we can offer overnight accommodations. We are flushing the woodwork for guests, and it should be plenty gala. I am going into Detroit on Saturday to look for a punch bowl. I saw a beauty in Chicago the other day, but it was priced a little high ($500) when you consider you don’t use a punch bowl every day. In the end I may settle for a commode belonging to the Mitchells. I don’t know Phil Silvers’s work. I think Sid Caesar’s skits good, though, and like to look at Jackie Gleason, who always reminds me of Dick Keefe.
I am glad to hear that The Wanderer is getting after Elvis. Somebody ought to, not that there isn’t a lot of good in him, or in the way our merchants prepare us for Christmas, for that matter (vide L. Cowley). I don’t know what can be done for Gordon.12 I do think, and hope, he’ll be spoiled for the grey life he was leading in Chicago, not that there isn’t a lot of good in a grey life, and certainly Chicago is a good place for it, not that Chicago doesn’t have its … Say, how do you like these apples? About that marriage course for student nurses, skip it. Not that such a course isn’t … Hey, I can’t stop this! How would you like a rubber Santa Claus over three feet tall, more than thirty-two inches around, roly-poly, and best of all you just pull the tape and he actually talks, says, “Merry Christmas”??????
Jim
Please try to make it up for the fete, for which you’ll soon have an invitation.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Sunday, 2:30 p.m., December 9, 1956
Dear Betty,
I carried your letter to church. […] They had the pledge,13 after a long fatuous explanation, and I remained seated, conspicuously. I didn’t have anything but exasperated thoughts all during Mass. To hear that awful apology for what the man himself knew better about, but making the most of it because it was demanded by the cardinal.14 I think there is nothing drearier than that aspect of the Church in America and cast around in my mind for a way to act. In Grace, though, that story, I’ve said about all there is to say. I noticed a little more nervousness in the man about to ask the people to rise and join the Legion, but of course it will go on and on. So much for that. My Sunday Sickness is on me, and bad today.
Much love,
Jim
The payoff on my experience in church this morning was that I stumbled going up the steps on the way out (it was in the basement of the church proper) and was down for a moment. Pride goeth before a fall!
Did you see Mr K.’s poem in Dec. 8 New Yorker?15
Invitations look good.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
Monday, 12:15 p.m., December 10, 1956
Dear Betty,
I’ve just finished a morning of heavy reading of MSS. The mail came a few minutes ago: two from you, one from Fr Egan, who wants to know what to wear and when it is and, if there is to be boxing, whether he should wear his aluminum cup. […]
I was dismayed to hear about KA and Mary getting lost. I must reread it when I have time, your account, and see if it makes any more sense to me. Yes, that should be the end of such junkets unchaperoned. […]
You can look for Fr Egan at the conversazione, and probably George, though maybe not. For he’s sure to have something planned. I do hope Barnharts won’t come. But if they do, I think it won’t make much difference, considering how gala everything and everybody will be. […]
Much love … and keep things under control, as you’ve been doing.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
December 11, 1956
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter rec’d, and I hasten to fill you in. Boxing Day, as any dictionary will tell you, is the day after Xmas. You are to come at 8:30 p.m., though in your case we’d like it if you came earlier, since you are so handy. I have a lot of decanting to do at the last minute, and somebody will have to park cars—I am buying one of those batons they use to direct traffic at night. Can you see Snyder’s Drugstore (or Fr Stelmes) about the use of klieg lights, or searchlights, or whatever you call them? I want this thing to be memorable, plenty gala. Yes, do wear your cup. It may get rough later on, with most of the guests (I daresay) only one short generation away from utter alcoholism: prim characters like Doyle and Hynes, I mean, their closets jam-packed with skeletons: it is these I hope to bring out. We are serving Xalapa Punch, and no substitutions. I am of the opinion that none of us is as bad as we seem to all the others. I am making one more effort to encompass us all with fellowship. […]
I am also inviting, from St Cloud, Mr and Mrs Wormhoudt: he is the author of The Demon Lover and other books dealing with literature as a kind of wet dream (a Freudian).16 Hyneses have been wanting to meet the Wormhoudts, regarding them with some alarm, I think, as perhaps representing a threat to Christian family life and its approach. Me, I say they’re all, intellectually, very shady characters. If that Legion of Decency pledge came from the hand of your new archbishop, as I think it did, he is still suffering from the same thing as my own bishop, as you’ve noted on occasion, tautology. I say “still” because his statement on Abp Murray’s death might have come from Amos and Andy, from the latter to be exact. However … it becomes more and more apparent to me that the function of the American hierarchy is to test the humility of those under their guidance. I thought this as I listened to the priest here Sunday explain the purpose of the Legion of Decency pledge. I am still unpledged. I wish the whole thing would get lost. I am sending you some Trollope, a paper edition, and suggest you read Barchester Towers; Mrs Proudie’s reception is sort of what we have in mind for Boxing Day.
Academically,
Jim
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
December 12, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] Late last night I got to work on Fr Urban. I had my best night since coming here and also, I think, one of the best nights ever: it is Christmas Eve at Duesterhaus17 and all through the house … only the noise of checkers. […]
Much love,
Jim
The door to their apt stood open, the apt was bare, and obviously Dwight and Pansy had flown.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
December 13, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] I’m worried about all the sickness, though the last things you said were hopeful. I wish we could find out why we have so much of what KA has now.18 It is really a disagreeable habit for a family to get into, and we seem to have done that, for several years now. I am not blaming anybody, understand: it is a development I don’t like to see, and that is all I have to say. […]
I had a malted and hamburger at a drugstore where I came across an article by Leslie Fiedler in The Reporter.19 I then went to work on a letter to the editor, a copy of which I enclose.20 I don’t know if they’ll use it of course, or what the effect will be, but I think it’s time someone made the points I do. Or think I do. […]
A letter came yesterday, airmail from England, for a James Purdy. This morning I see it is still outside the mailboxes, now marked “not at this address.” I went down, after thinking about it, and had another look, brought it up, compared the typing on the envelope with that on an envelope of Gollancz’s. I decided to open it, remembering that Austin has some Scotch tape and the phrase “opened by mistake.” It is a letter from Victor,21 which I enclose. […]
I was amused to hear of everyone having so much trouble with Boxing Day. I think they have more than we planned: I think of them, more than ever, as barnyard animals going their familiar paths from stall to pasture and back, day in and day out. Any kind of reading would have familiarized them not with the exact day but with the word. […]
Jim
JACK CONROY
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
December 18, 1956
Dear Jack,
I’m sorry to say that I have joined the academy too, and so what you say about us two, degreeless and alone, isn’t true for the moment. Yes, in fact, it is true. I am still degreeless, and I’m left pretty much alone. I came here in September and will finish up in mid-January. I thought I needed the money, Jack. We had been running down ever since 1953, my last good year, everything wearing out and machinery giving up. I see by my little calendar, which I keep amending, an old con doing time, that I have only five classes to go; one tomorrow and four in January. Then back to St Cloud and Ignorance!
Yes, I did see Leslie Fiedler’s article. I have written to the editors about it. If they publish my letter, it will be worth reading. I concentrated on the dig about publishing in The New Yorker. I know Fiedler, and like him, but decided to return the frankness, if that’s what you call it. It is a problem what to do about the books of one’s friends, a problem I’ve tried to avoid. What I really dislike about the article, and this I don’t mention at all, is that I and the others were invited to the ball, as it were, but in the end he’s dancing every dance with Saul. I doubt that Saul’s as good as he says in this book.22 Someday I’ll read the book and see. At the moment I’d rather not confirm my suspicions. Actually, as you must know, Jack, I don’t have much heart for literary controversy. What I’d like to be is a horse trainer, or simply a man of great wealth, and go about doing good, not forgetting myself.
When I finish up in January, I intend to look you up for lunch. It’ll be the 17th, I think; a Thursday. Could you hold that open? I’ll let you know if it’s to be another day.
Academically yours,
Jim
Very glad to hear Clocker23 is abroad again and at Oxford. I have noticed that he’s become an expert on British writers, have read his reviews here and there. Tell him I’d like to see him at Oxford, sunning himself at Parson’s Pleasure or bicycling on High. I often think of Clocker. He is, in fact, as we used to say in fun, a sweet guy. Would that we could go racing together in England!
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
Tuesday morning, December 18, 1956
Dear Betty,
[…] Who the hell sent the envelope addressed “Earl”?24 Mrs Barnhart, I imagine, just to make it perfect, and you did say they’d accepted. The hand is what you’d have to call illiterate, and so I eliminate Mrs Wormhoudt. Ah, well, I’m glad the printer didn’t make that mistake. […]
Don’t worry about the liquor. I’ll just buy a case of everything. I may get the wine in St Cloud anyway. I expect to have a merry time of it on my way home, stopping people all along the way and wishing them “Many of ’em!” After all, all I’ll be carrying is my canvas bag, a punch bowl, twenty-four cups, a half-dozen fifths of whiskey, gin, rum, etc. “Same to you!” […]
Jim
The conversazione was a great success and remembered as such into the twenty-first century by survivors in the Movement.
HARVEY EGAN
The Cloisters
St Cloud
January 2, 1957
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Nothing has happened here since the conversazione. The last few guests left this morning. No one stayed overnight, though we’d made up beds for four. I gather that it was a success, and if so I’m glad. That is all I hoped. I knew I wouldn’t hear anything memorable at such a gathering. There remains the problem of refusing invitations resulting from it, but we are comparatively safe with the children as alibis for staying home. […]
We were very glad you could come and stayed as long as you did. Maybe in Ireland when we give a hunt ball, you’ll stay all night. I have no plans for that, however. I’d like to finish a novel quick. That doesn’t seem to be how I do things, though. […]
Ace Brigade
Merton sent me his new book, but I haven’t read it yet. Mary Humphrey got right to it. She does most of my spiritual reading, she who doesn’t need it. But as you say Doris Day used to say, “That’s life, I guess.”
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
January 8, 1957
Dear Betty,
[…] It is now 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, and I’ve just had a call from Clyde Craine25 of the University of Detroit. Apparently, he knows me better than I know him; he calls me “Jim.” The whole affair grows. I am to be interviewed on WWJ, the NBC Detroit outlet, at 2:30 or 2:45, I guess it is; then I call Clyde; then we have dinner; then we put something on tape; then there is the reading itself; then we see some people afterward; and then I either stay overnight at Clyde’s or return on the midnight train. In fact, it isn’t as busy as it sounds, and Clyde isn’t, actively, pushing me around, but the thing just builds up, of itself. And I keep wondering what it means. I am not that well-known. I wish I were. Boredom, I guess, on the part of everybody. Even I am looking forward to it, but tell myself to watch that I don’t drink or talk too much; I must put the whole thing under the glass of analysis. Clyde was for my reading “The Valiant Woman,” though the story always bothered his boss, he said; a Jesuit, evidently. I got the impression that there might be crusaders in the audience, book burners and the like. I hope so. I wish that I could purchase some pneumatic horns, attached to glasses, say, that I could blow up and put on for reading. I am to read “The Presence of Grace.” Well, that’s enough of that. Having just spoken to Clyde, I am still full of it, you understand. […]
Much love,
Jim
I am wearing Austin’s rubbers here.
BETTY POWERS
507 Church Street
Ann Arbor
Saturday, January 12, 1957
Dear Betty,
[…] Now for my day in Detroit. I arrived by bus around 1:15, looked in the windows of a whole row of shoe stores, asked about a couple of pair—whether they came in black; they didn’t—and forgot about that. I appeared at WWJ, waited a few minutes in the lobby, then Fran came in—a combination of Mrs Hancock, in “Blue Island,” and Mrs Mathers—and up we rode in the elevator, we being the aforementioned and Lanny Ross26 and his entourage, girlfriend, photographer, another man. In the fifteen seconds it took for us to go down the hall after leaving the elevator, before we entered the studio, Lanny questioned me. Obviously, he was annoyed that he was having to share the program with me. “Writer,” I said, asked what I was, though Fran had told him as much when she introduced us. “What kind of writer?” “Short-story writer.” “Something like this?” he said, pulling out a pocket-size pulp magazine—detectives, or something. “No,” I said flatly. “Well?” he asked. “The New Yorker,” I said. “Oh,” he said. “That’s kind of whimsical, isn’t it?” “I suppose,” I said. Then I heard him saying to Fran, as I was removing my coat and putting it on the grand piano, “Is this going to be a round-robin?”
Well, to make a long program short, Fran has heard of me through Time magazine, through having seen the best books of the year, and I am introduced as “James Powers.” And at first she and Lanny sort of give way to me in the program, asking me questions, and I answer them as sweetly as I can, but there is a disturbing drift toward the negative, culminating in my saying a literary man could no longer associate himself with a newspaper. Fran wants to know right away if I know this station is owned by a newspaper. I say, yes, and that I sometimes read the paper on Sundays but that I am not singling out Detroit papers, just all papers. I say I am able to read a few of the British papers, which are “written,” and Lanny says, “Like The Manchester Guardian?” and I say yes and add The Observer and Sunday Times.
All the sudden we’re off that and into Lanny’s new project, which is singing in supermarkets, in behalf of a new series of records, Master-Something-or-Other Records, “lovely Strauss waltzes,” and “My Fair Lady,” very popular with teenagers in Fran’s family. Well, I detested Fran, but I rather liked Lanny. You could see the nasty yellow hair dye, and he looked pretty burned-out around the eyes, but he was a man and he’d been somebody once and maybe he still was. He saw that I wasn’t trying to hog the microphone; he saw, I think, I didn’t give a damn. Toward the end of the 15-minute program he broke into folk song, rather a surprise to me, but I was glad to hear something else. I haven’t seen anybody dressed like Lanny since Ken McCormick appeared in Milwaukee. Subtle grey herringbone topcoat, black shoes, grey and black tie, white shirt—sombre, crisp though, like the grey side of the dollar bill. I was walking out without a word, since the photographer was snapping Fran and Lanny together, when Lanny came over and said he’d been glad to meet me and was going to look up my work—the Gollancz edition was in my hand—and Fran too said she’d been glad to meet me. There you are, a short résumé of that part of the trip to Detroit.
I then called Mr Craine. We had two drinks at the Detroit Athletic Club, drove forever to the restaurant, where we dined with his wife, Fr Farrell, dean of the graduate school, and another couple. This was rushed, time being short, and before the reading I cut a tape with a fellow who asked me a typed-up question which I looked at before we started cutting. This ultimately took a negative turn too. Then came the reading, a much bigger crowd than they expected, about 200 people, I’d say, and they’d expected under 50. The reading seemed to take forever, and I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. The questions afterward, however, went on for over an hour. This was pretty stimulating, I was told. I won’t go into it all—except to say that things took a negative turn. I did sense, however, that Mr Craine and others felt that it was quite an evening.
Then we went to one of the faculty’s house and had one drink. It was rushed so I could catch the 11:59 train for Ann Arbor, which I did. I walked home, feeling I needed the air. Then I smoked a pipe here, thought I ought to set this sort of thing down in a journal but felt it was too much trouble, that I should say what I have to say in my work—and wondered, though, whether the journal, if I kept one, might not have a more lasting value even as literature. […]
Before I close, I want to say that there were some wonderful faces among the clergy there last night. One wonderful old man whom I’d been conscious of during the reading and questions came up and said I was too kind to the clergy, we’re worse than that, he said. This was nice but irrelevant to my real interest—which was in him himself, what a wonderful face, so round, the hair, so white, the eyes, so blue. I hated to think of him dying, as he would in a few years, all that perfection disappearing from the earth. All for now. It won’t be long now. Time is working for me now.
Much love,
Jim