10 T. S. Eliot, The Rock.
11 St. Anthony Village, Oakmont, an orphanage under the direction of Father Louis Farina where famous retreats were given, especially those led by Father John Hugo.
12 Lollipop.
13 Jack Howe.
14 Jim’s short story published in New Mexico Quarterly Review (Spring 1944).
15 Jim’s brother, who was running wild at the time.
16 St. Joseph’s Hospital, St. Paul, Minnesota.
17 Postmortem room.
18 Walter J. Domrese, warden’s assistant at Sandstone Federal Penitentiary.
19 A conceit of E. B. White’s in “Dusk in Fierce Pajamas,” The New Yorker, January 27, 1934.
20 Jim had written some edifying pieces for The Catholic Worker.
21 Harold Weinstein, fellow inmate at Sandstone.
22 Postmortems.
23 See Introduction.
24 Michael Baius (1513–1589), Belgian theologian.
25 Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719), French Jansenist theologian.
26 St. Paul Saints, American Association baseball team. Farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers at this time.
27 Harry Truman.
28 Henry Volkening.
2. With you it will be like being ten years old again
1 Joke.
2 Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471), author of The Imitation of Christ. He was revered by Detachers: a contemplative in contrast to the highly active Hyneses.
3 This would have been based on Jim’s stint in prison, his pacifism, and, above all, his not having what the Wahls considered a job.
4 Church of the Sacred Heart, Robbinsdale, where Garrelts was assistant.
5 First published in Cross Section, 1947.
6 Jim’s mother converted to Catholicism ten years after her marriage.
3. Should a giraffe have to dig dandelions?
1 Bertha “Birdie” Seberger Strobel.
2 John Haskins.
3 By Robert Gibbings (1945).
4 George Barnett (joke).
5 Garrelts and Jim were going to write a play together.
6 Published in Accent (Winter 1946).
7 Egan.
8 Sister Eugene Marie Earley (1901–1993), surgical nurse; involved with the Catholic Worker movement; worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital; good friend of Father Egan’s.
4. It would seem you have the well-known business sense
1 St. Cloud department store that included a bookshop.
2 Alcuin Deutsch, abbot of St. John’s Abbey from 1921 to 1950.
3 A possible future dwelling for Jim and Betty — to be purchased with the assistance of others.
4 Dick Keefe.
5. I am like Daniel Boone cutting my way through that bourgeois wilderness
1 Father Burner is the main character in “Prince of Darkness.” The story was condemned by many members of the Catholic clergy.
2 They were going to begin their married life living in Betty’s parents’ summer cottage on a lake.
6. Something seems to be missing, and you say it’s me
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.