For Levi Stahl

Wednesday, 22 August [1984]
John A. Howard, Secretary of the Ingersoll Foundation, rang at 4.30 pm to say that I am, after all, to receive the T.S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing, notwithstanding the fact of not being prepared to travel to Chicago to collect it. I seem to have acted like someone who declares: 'I would not go to Chicago for Ten Thousand Pounds' (in fact somewhat more owing to the exchange). In palmier days I should have liked to see Chicago, a city which always sounds rather beautiful by its lake. Also Chicagoans encountered often seem rather agreeable. The trouble of such jaunts is the horrors of airports, combined with being these days unable to drink except in extreme moderation at parties, of which no doubt there would have been a spate.

—Anthony Powell, Journals