I don’t get enough mail, contrary to what you might think. No offers at all. Well, there was one to speak before some creative writing group in Mpls. The letter was written on Pillsbury Mills stationery, and for a long time I just gazed at the envelope, smelling a grant. Not a word about expense money even. I should come down there on a Sunday evening and listen to their manuscripts being read. I gave them the green Montini.6
I haven’t got TV yet. Am waiting for the big break still. I crave it but can’t bring it off. Lots of surgery coming up: Boz’s eye (same kind of deal KA had) and KA’s tonsils. And I haven’t made good on my pledge to Cathedral High School. […]
Did you know that Mickey Spillane is a Jehovah’s Witness? I read it in an English paper. His publisher was in London and said Mickey has decided to mend his ways as an author. Won’t that be awful? All for now.
Jim
JACK CONROY
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
April 4, 1956
Dear Daddy-O,
Thanks for that flattering review.7 Whatever else you were, we’ll say, he was good to his friends. I have had some good reviews, though nothing as far west as Chicago until yours; nothing at all in Minneapolis or St Paul; and I guess this is what comes of not playing the regional author game, of not seeing anybody who can read. […] I don’t recognize this colony you call the Huntington Hartford?8 What kind of purses? I prefer to race on turf, you know. Actually, I am a victim to family life. Four children now, Jack. And this year, the man said, bock beer is not available in this area. This is one hell of an area, Jack. I am ordering Whey-Plus.9 I hope it changes my life. I haven’t been to Chicago for a couple of years, and the last time just passed through, from station to station at night. All for now, and again thanks for going to bat for me, Jack.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Saturday afternoon, 1956
Dear Fr Egan,
Has spring come to Beardsley? Has anything? I am engaged in reading twelve MSS, about half of them book-length, for the Hopwood Awards, University of Michigan, for which I am to receive $200. It is not nice work, but I can get it. […] We are going through our worst period, economically, in many years, but in two weeks, when I get these MSS read, and the money comes from England, and I come to another agreement with Doubleday, we’ll be all right. I am not complaining, understand, but would welcome the chance — like the French and Italians — to register a protest vote. […]
I can’t think of anything you should be told. No TV here yet, to put it mildly. I don’t know what I’m doing next, as a writer, I mean. Fr Kelly resists me. Enough of this raillery (which will hardly make the judicious grieve).
Jim
There was no trouble about the girls and First Communion. They were examined for an hour and a half yesterday by our pastor, passed, and, as Betty found out later, had been given a half-dollar by him. The Polish in him, I guess.
JACK CONROY
509 First Avenue South
May 20, 1956
Dear Jack,
[…] Life is very dull here, Jack. My only friend, a silversmith who makes chalices, who had been doing that for a living for several years, has taken a job.10 That leaves me St Cloud’s last self-employed artist, and sometimes I think I can make out my name on the wall. Still I turn down jobs now and then, at good money, but teaching writing courses in remote places for a year or two. We have an old house here, the use of it, with a big yard, and get by on very little, and so I stay on. When I move, I want it to be abroad — but how, with taxation worse in Ireland and England than it is here, I’ll make it isn’t clear yet.
All for now, Jack.
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
Memorial Day 1956
Dear Cal,
Very happy to hear from you, after so long and after sending you a copy of my book — I’d begun to think it was a mistake. I sent Buck Moon a copy and have not heard from him; as a result, I can only deduce … I wasn’t pleased to hear that you are driving a car still, even if you are getting better. Is it the Packard still? Elizabeth is right in criticizing you. To have great drivers, we must first have great critics. […]
When Betty read of your coming blessed event, she said, “Poor Lowell.” Which is no reflection on Elizabeth, who must bear it and, doubtless, take care of it single-handed. I guess we think of our contemporaries — those who are writers — who are childless as gods, sporting about the world and going out for dinner with no thoughts of babysitters. We go nowhere. Of course, here in St Cloud there isn’t much temptation to go out.
Aren’t you a little young to be writing your autobiography? I expect to bring out a book of verse before I do mine. That means I haven’t given it a thought. When I do — and it first occurred to me when you mentioned yours — I realized that is one book I don’t even have material for in my dreamiest moments. In those moments, it isn’t hard to compile a long list of novels and plays I might write. Well, if you get to Yaddo in the first volume, and I realize you probably won’t, I have several nice glossy prints of my old car with whom you were on such intimate terms. Also a nice snapshot of Ted Roethke in a rowboat smiling at a little bass he caught. And one of you not smiling at one you caught. This is from your wading and night-fishing period. All for now. Best to you both, and write again.
Jim
Jim took a vinegary pleasure in being attacked by Catholics who were scandalized by his portrayal of the clergy. He was especially taken with the review of The Presence of Grace by a certain Father Ferdinand C. Falque in the Catholic newspaper The Wanderer. Falque wrote: “If you are interested in some literature that lays bare the studied affectations of a diseased and twisted mind, the book will prove invaluable … The stories are as unreal as the visions of an opium addict and even more vague, vapid and vain. Like the portrait of the author’s feminine face behind a masculine pipe, they are soft and weak and in no sense literary. They reek with revelations of psychological frustrations in their creator. They are sordid … tedious and emotionally vicarious. They are as grotesque as his pitifully, almost clinical portrait on the inside flap of the jacket.”11
HARVEY EGAN
509 First Avenue South
June 11, 1956
Dear Fr Egan,
Glad to hear from you. I was wondering what ever happened to you. I see where Fr Dunphy is retiring at 82. I don’t know why I mention that in this connection, except one of these Junes I hope to see where you’ve gone up in the world — and no one knows better than I how unrewarding that can be. I mean, life is a bowl of cherries. This letter may strike you as something less than crystal clear. It is because I’m listening to Halsey Hall broadcast the Minnesota-Mississippi game from Omaha. I went out for the St John’s — Minnesota game, my first in years. The usual thing. St John’s should have won, etc., and they would’ve if they hadn’t let them drop unattended (the balls hit between two fielders) … I am trying to interest Doubleday in taking a piece of the fence (the spot between Bert Baston’s Chevrolet and Gluek’s Beer) to advertise my book, signed copy to any player who hits a home run over that spot, not a new idea, I know, but never before applied in the field of book advertising. I am speaking of the field here, Municipal Stadium, where the Rox12 play. […]