20 Jim paying back a loan.
21 Thomas Merton (1915–1968; Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance — that is, Trappist).
22 Father Caedmon (later Father Thomas Wahl), a Benedictine at St. John’s.
23 Dick Keefe.
24 Consumers Union.
25 Frank G. Clement, governor of Tennessee, gave the keynote speech.
26 “The Green Banana,” The New Yorker, November 10, 1956.
18. The Man Downstairs is entertaining tonight. Pansy and Dwight are quiet
1 Warner G. Rice, chairman of the English department.
2 A. L. Bader, head of the Hopwood Fellowship program.
3 Katherine Anne Porter.
4 Victor Gollancz.
5 Freda Bruce Lockhart.
6 As described in his novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.
7 Suez Crisis.
8 Emergency session of the UN General Assembly on the Suez Crisis.
9 “The Green Banana,” The New Yorker, November 10, 1956.
10 X. J. “Joe” Kennedy and Robert E. Whelan Jr., both teaching fellows in the English department at the time.
11 University of Michigan football team.
12 Gordon Zahn.
13 Legion of Decency pledge administered on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception: “I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures…” and so on.
14 Spellman.
15 X. J. Kennedy, “Epitaph for a Postal Clerk,” The New Yorker, December 8, 1956.
16 Arthur Wormhoudt, The Demon Lover: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Literature.
17 The fictional town near St. Clement’s Hill, the retreat house to which Father Urban was exiled.
18 Sore throat, earache.
19 “Some Footnotes on the Fiction of ’56,” Reporter, December 13, 1956.
20 Published in Reporter, January 10, 1957.
21 Gollancz.
22 Bellow’s Seize the Day.
23 Harvey Webster.
24 Jim was incensed by people who, thinking that “Farl” was a typo, changed his middle name to “Earl.”
25 Clyde Craine, head of the English department, University of Detroit.
26 Lanny Ross (1906–1988), American singer, actor, and songwriter.
19. This room is like a dirty bottle, but inside is vintage solitude
1 Elizabeth Hardwick, “The Classless Society,” The New Yorker, January 19, 1957.
2 LeBerthon.
3 Egan was assigned to St. Peter’s Church, Mendota.
4 Del Flanagan lost to Gil Turner at Midway Stadium, St. Paul, July 25, 1957.
20. Scabrous Georgian, noble views of the sea, turf in the fireplaces
1 Christian Family Movement.
2 Drawing of members of the Movement.
3 “Look How the Fish Live,” Reporter, October 1957.
4 Eugene and Abigail McCarthy.
5 Roethke had had a bout of madness but recovered quickly.
6 Edmund Wilson.
7 Cheap paperbacks designed to promote literature and rational thinking, especially in working people.
8 William Bedell Stanford (1910–1984), professor of classics, Trinity College.
9 Ó Faoláins.
10 “A Couple of Nights Before Christmas,” The New Yorker, December 21, 1957.
21. The office is in Dublin, on Westland Row
1 John Charles McQuaid.
2 See Jim to Egan, February 26, 1958.
3 Father Edward Ramacher (1917–2007), a tireless booster and promoter who mounted any number of celebrations and shows in partnership with the business community in the Diocese of St. Cloud.
22. About Don, I haven’t been the same since I read your letter
1 Buckminster Fuller.
2 Father Patrick Peyton (1909–1992), who led the Family Rosary Crusade: “The family that prays together, stays together.” (It later emerged that the crusade in Latin America was funded by the CIA.)
3 The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montogomery by Viscount Montogomery of Alamein (1958).
4 Father Egan.
5 The main character in Erskine Caldwell’s Tabacco Road.
6 McCarthy beat the incumbent Edward Thye for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
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.