The Literary Novel as an Experimental Form (cont'd)

I was prolific.

Between Forty and Bukowski Never Did This I wrote 210 books.

That's fast.

How could I do that?

I had no committee telling me what to do. I was in charge of my own fate.

I was so fast that I was able to answer a reader's comments in the next book. Reflect on them and respond in the next book.

The books were interactive. I had a dialogue with the reader.

Does this sound familiar? It's the Internet. By the time the Internet came along I'd been doing it for years.

I read a book called Paul Bley and the Transformation of Jazz. He made his own recording studio, at home, so he could compose in real time. Record as he composed.

Once I got online I was writing in real time. I was publishing in real time. I was publishing books as I wrote them, like writing straight into the Linotype machine.

By this time I had produced a body of work, my stack, invented a form to present it in, daily typewriting, and discovered a medium to get it out to the reader through, the worldwide web.

William Faulkner said he learned that not only did each book have to have a design, but the whole output and sum of a writer's life had a design.

For me, that design was two steps forward and one step back.

I spent 11 out of my first 33 years at the house. Gains were illusory, impermanent. Then back to missed opportunities. Back to work.

By now, my accomplishment worked against me. Who'd believe it? If true, it was impractical. How could anyone publish my stack? An integral piece? An organic whole?

No matter. I had realized my Kerouac dream. Advanced the form, as he did.

Being forced to write shorter pieces, in a variety of forms, loosened me up. I came alive. I concatenated them in order of composition, organized thematically. The way I was forced to publish affected the shape the books took. Instead of a book of poems, a book of short stories, a book of nonfiction pieces, a memoir, a novel, or a collection of letters, I had a book-length book of all of those on a certain subject, coming at in now in this genre, now in that. Like I read. Or listen to music.

I jumped around.

Bukowski Never Did This has a plot and characters, a setting and a theme. I called alternate chapters "Novel" and "Diary." A roman -à-clef and the key, together.

Orwell's biographer, Crick, said you could see him working out the ideas that went into Nineteen Eighty-four in notebooks, letters to friends, book reviews in journals of opinion, and his "As I Please" column in the Tribune.

I wanted to make that available to the reader, so the reader would have the raw material a biographer sifts through. Could see the process of researching and writing a novel the way a writer sees it. I am just now writing what you read right here.

Well, I was just now writing as I wrote it.

My current book, IN ORDER OF COMPOSITION, WITH NOTHING LEFT OUT combines Memoir and Journal of a Memoir, like Steinbeck's East of Eden and Journal of a Novel, in one book. Not a memoir but a Kunstlerroman.

I have almost no chance of placing it, because if somebody did publish it, it probably wouldn't sell.

What do I do next?

Write another book. Like Beethoven alternating even and odd symphonies.

Follow an advance with a mopping up, a consolidation.

I have a new book out, I am attending conferences and workshops, I am writing about being on the road, barnstorming for poetry.

I have everything I need. Everything a successful writer has. Without the down side--the meetings, the compromises, the anxiety.

If I run out of money I will go back to work. If I have a stroke and can't write, I'll starve myself to death, like Jim Thompson did.

I am living the life I chose, as well as anyone has lived it, and leaving a record of it, a record that will endure.

With any luck, one of my books will be banned, and I'll start making money writing.

Thelonious Monk got a gig at the Five Spot and all the rest followed. The Time magazine cover, the major record label contract, the college campus concerts, the European tour.

He had spent a long time in the wilderness, sharing cigarettes.

Just keep writing and hope for the best.

It can't be faked and it will not be denied.