Jim
LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
February 1, 1962
Dear Leonard and Betty,
Your letter rec’d and passed on to the O’Connells. I feel that it requires an answer of some sort — that you ought to be kept in touch with the situation here. But, as we say in the spiritual life, you can’t give what you don’t have yourself, and I am not in touch myself. The truth is, of course, there’s nothing to be in touch with. But for what it’s worth:
Mary Humphrey, at Fr Fehrenbacher’s behest, had an evening at which, as it turned out, we not only got to meet a Hindoo but got to hear him lecture — for about an hour and a half, immediately after which I gave Betty the high sign and we got the hell out of the house. When we arrived, Mary was on the phone (you won’t like it, Susie told me when I inquired what was going on), calling The St Cloud Times, saying she had an Indian from India and an Indian from Onamia, and wouldn’t the paper like to photograph them together? Yes, a little while later, in comes Myron Hall and acts as though he expects everything will stop (by everything I mean the lecture) so he can get his picture. It didn’t stop, and I shook his hand (quickly) on the way out as I was leaving and expressed sympathy, for he had to sit there an hour with his camera hanging out before he could consummate his business. So much for that: the worst deal I’ve been exposed to, of its sort, and that is saying something. […]
Jim
In February, the production company MCA (Music Corporation of America) offered Jim a thousand dollars for a seven-year option on his short story “Defection of a Favorite” for a segment in its Going My Way TV series. Jim turned it down, saying he wanted control and a percentage of the profits. MCA doubled the offer to two thousand dollars and reduced the time to three years. Jim turned it down.
Journal, February 26, 1962
P. 545 Dictionary: firefly, any of several winged beetles whose abdomen glows with a phosphorescent light; the larvae and wingless females are called glowworms. Would be good description of women and children in family-life novel.
Journal, February 27, 1962
15 below 0. Car trouble, coming as it usually does, it seems — when we’re scraping the bottom. New battery, new spark plugs, and possibly more. This is a bad time — and I don’t see how we’ll get through it unless money comes from out of the blue … I feel completely out of touch with sources of possible income — and very close to sources of expense: car, rent, food, and so on. No mail again.
Journal, February 28, 1962
29 below 0. Had to call tow truck again this morning … Pinch is really on — in several ways: my work, my finances, my future. This has been a mean month.
The galleys of Morte D’Urban arrived on March 21, 1962.
CHARLES AND SUSAN SHATTUCK
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
April 3, 1962
Dear Chuck and Suzie,
[…] I often think that if I’d had someone like you to push me around, editorially, I might have accomplished much more, but then I can see it wouldn’t have been much of a life for you. Anyway, let me say, now that Accent’s gone16 (something I didn’t know until I went to St Louis), that I am very grateful to you, Chuck, for your help and all-around kindness — at which point I think of that tar I tracked into your house on my first visit to Urbana and of the big party you gave for me on my last visit, and thank you, too, Suzie.
Yes, I too am glad the novel’s over. I was through with it last December but had to take my place in line at Doubleday. A couple of other big authors ahead of me, Dick Nixon and Herman Wouk, were pushing the presses to the limit. It was not, […] I was told, that they were better known than JFP, but just happened to be there ahead of him. Well, the book has some rough places in it, such as it wouldn’t have if you’d seen it, or if more of it had been published in The New Yorker, but I am not unhappy with it. I feel pretty sure it’s immortal — just how immortal is the question. […] Just*
Jim
26. The day was like other days, with the author napping on the floor in the middle of the afternoon, April 12, 1962–September 1962
Jim and Morte D’Urban
Journal, April 12, 1962
Could I, by next year at this time, be working on family-life novel?
Jim and Betty went to Minneapolis to hear Robert Lowell read at the Walker Art Gallery (Walker Art Center) and spent an evening with him, Elizabeth Hardwick, John Berryman, Allen Tate, James Wright, and others.
ROBERT LOWELL
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
April 21, 1962
Dear Cal,
Very good of you to write and to say such nice things about my work: it is not as good as you say, of course, but as you or Ted1 (I don’t remember which one) once said, after a long discussion of Faulkner and K. A. Porter, What the hell — it’s only prose. […]
Betty and I both thought you read very well — I love that somewhat wheedling tone you use when taking the voice of the people as in “Skunk Hour”—and your comments were quite printable: I wonder, though, as I tried to tell you, how many can savor that sort of thing, not that you can do anything about it and many people, to bring them together, I mean. I wonder if you know how you sound and look in such a gathering as the one at the Walker Gallery, very foreign, I imagine: Betty remarked how alike the people and the pictures were. I can’t get used to seeing people wearing blue jeans, and in shirtsleeves, and I think it’s going out, thank God. I see one of those bastards, with a beard, and tricked out like that, and give thanks I’m not teaching creative writing. That is what I’ll have to do, though, if the book doesn’t do well. I have even thought of going out on tour, playing the Catholic college circuit, exhibiting myself as Tom Thumb, or the Biggest Horse in the World, lecturing on Evelyn Waugh, the Prairie Years, Graham Greene, A Crash Program for God, and Luke Hart, Friend of Prelates. That is all I’ve been able to work out in my mind, so far (and Luke, by the way, is Supreme Navigator, or something of the sort, of the Knights of Columbus).
Everything depends on the success of the book — our getting out of here, the kids getting an education, and so on, everything — but I wonder. I had hoped that with a novel I could have a different feeling about Doubleday, for instance. I get ecstatic notes every month or so, but no replies to my questions concerning typography, revisions, and money, and then more ecstatic notes. I would like to ask, again, if the changes I made on the galleys will be carried out (a ridiculous question, you might think), but I can’t; I break down and sit staring into space. I am on a desert island, and I am down to my last bottle: I don’t know whether to send my last message today, tomorrow, or maybe next month. Oh, well, but that is my state of mind. […]
About a blurb, Cal, nice of you, or mighty white of you, as Father Urban says in the book. (I have Fr U. get into a small car accident and have his car repaired at Cal’s Body Shop, which I thought might appeal to you: I don’t know why.) But you haven’t read the book, and you might not like it all together, and if you wrote a blurb and I sent it to Doubleday, they would lose it or use it on somebody else’s novel, and so I’ll send you a copy of the book when it’s ready, and if you feel moved, and not just from kindness, at that time, we’ll see.