[joe-frank-list] Joe in Iowa

russellbell at gmail.com russellbell at gmail.com
Sat Aug 28 05:58:22 PDT 2021


	In 'The 80-yard run' Joe says Iowa's football team was rated
#1.  The last year that happened was 1960, when Joe was 22.  Joe says
that Forest Evashevski was the coach; 1960 was his last year as coach.
(He went on to become the athletic director until 1970.)  He describes
himself as not having had contact with a woman for a long time when a
woman presses up against him during the showing of old silent movies
homecoming night.
	In 'Cocktails before dinner' Joe says he bought a pistol as a
young married student in Iowa, during the Cuban missile crisis of
October 1962, to protect himself and his wife from the aftermath of a
nuclear war.
	Iowa's Program in Creative Writing has no record of his
attendance, which means he didn't graduate.  In interviews he claimed
he stayed there 2 years.  In his interview with 'The believer' he
said, 'When I went to the University of Iowa in order to be a writer,
I thought, This is the worst way to learn how to write. To sit in a
room with a bunch of would-be writers, who want to write the Great
American Novel, every one of them, and you read their stories and they
read yours, and you're not living a life. I don't like that.'
http://www.believermag.com/issues/201303/?read=interview_frank
	If he was there for the 1960 football season then his 2 years
would have been 1960/1961 and 1961/1962, ending with the end of the
school year around June 1962, before October 1962.  Did he take a gap
year between?
	Did he get married between the story he told in 'The 80-yard
run' and the one he told in 'Cocktails before dinner'?  Or was his
relationship troubled?  Or did he make some of this up?  
	I lived in Iowa City during homecoming once.  Even though the
football team was weak everyone was excited.
	
russell bell
	


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