PULP NOVEL: THE BEAT POET TOUR. May 8 - May 22. 18,000 words. Old Hick drives to Potterfest, in Sneads, for the weekend, sees Grant Peeples, plus all the picker friends of Potter Brown. Hick is writing a pulp novel in the genre Hick Lit, a play on Chick Lit. He calls Chick Lit Chick Lite. Hick Lit is Sex, Drugs, and Flatt & Scruggs. Then he drives to Jacksonville and meets up with his sister Susan and her son, Rob. He leaves his car in long-term parking near the airport. He will fly to Jacksonville, then drive home to Panama City. They drive to Vermont in Sue's van to see their brother and Rob's uncle Bill, who is in a hospice recovering from chemotherapy treatments for lung cancer, which kicked his ass. The bleeding has stopped, but the doctors said now is the time for the family to come. Hick stays in chain motels, eats in restaurants like Applebee's and TGIFriday's, and watches television, on the way up. He reads the complimentary USA Today in the motel free-breakfast rooms. He listens to Sue and Rob talk. Watches them interact. He has sons Rob's age. He thinks about life, death, and the American dream. Career and family. He has an attitude. From shitty attitude. His high school coaches used to say he had an attitude, because he wasn't gung ho. Gung ho, he was awkward. He would trip, running out for a pass. Now, he was grown. He grew into his coordination shoveling dirt on an archeological dig, heaving a machete like a cutlass in a Suwannee limestone swamp, with snakes and alligators and alligator snapping turtles that could bite through a hoe handle. Poison snakes, as Ernest says. Not a bad book for two weeks' work, but he was glad it was over. It was very wearing. He didn't like to be away from his writing room. Emily Dickinson seldom left her room. What did she need to go out for--she had everything she needed. I have everything I need. I am grateful for it. I am a shut-in. A recluse. What do I need to go out for--I can watch the teevee. I can write books. Being a writer is like having your own home entertainment center. You can just disappear into your mind. Like reading a good book. There's nothing like a good book. In Daddy and Them, John Prine said, "I read to escape." Bukowski called death the treasure of his escape. PULP NOVEL is about death. Like Pulp, Bukowski's last novel. I cock a snook at death. How could it be worse than life its ownself? I give death the Bronx cheer. I ain't dead yet. Although I have phlebitis from sitting in a car, on an airplane, in coach, and sitting in my leather executive typing chair, trying to catch up on my typing, and worry that a blood clot will give me a pulmonary embolism. As PULP NOVEL: THE BEAT POET TOUR was only 18,000 words, and SEVENTY: STORIES, POEMS, AND A SCREENPLAY OF THREE-BOOK DEAL, A SERIES OF RELATED BOOKS was only 38,000 words, I add PULP NOVEL to the end of SEVENTY, and shorten the title to SEVENTY.
THE MECHANICS OF IT. May 23 - June 6. 30,000 words. I see that THE MECHANICS OF IT is a continuation of PULP NOVEL: THE BEAT POET TOUR. Together, they form Visions of Florida: On the Road and At the House with Jack Saunders, Florida Writer. Who is the Florida writer? What is the Florida novel? He’s the one left out of the year-end round-ups, not invited to the seminar in Key West. The Florida novel is a book about what that feels like. An answer. What’s the question? The Florida writer is answering a question no one asks. The Florida novel is a stink bomb. The destruction of paradise. The hollowing out of the American dream. As if by termites. I see Florida being hollowed out by termites. Eaten from within, by television, the school system, the climate of opinion. Refined sugar, white flour, saturated fats. Kiddie cartoons on Sesame Street. JonBenét Ramsey beauty pageants. Young urban professionals, with their MBA president. Compassionate conservatism. Market-based solutions. Just say no to a hard-on. We’re No. 1! I’m glad you’re gone, you rascal you. I change the name of Visions of Florida to The Neon Ooze. Poetry is news that stays news.
"Are you a painter?"
"No, I’m a writer."
"I meant a housepainter."
"I meant a technical writer."
BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO’S FOUND HIS WORK. June 7 - June 11. 5,000 words. I start a new book, but see that it goes on the end of THE NEON OOZE: ON THE ROAD AND AT THE HOUSE WITH JACK SAUNDERS, FLORIDA WRITER. I have found my work. I have a platform. We watch Rowan for the weekend. Take him back to The Red Bar Sunday, hear Dread Clampitt play. Owen is coming down June 19 to play at Ben and Naisy’s barbecue joint on Thomas Drive, with the Steenos. We’ll go to that. I’ll take my digital point-and-shoot camera. He called Bill, to see how he is doing.
ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH. June 13 - June 15. 4,000 words. I don't get a contract technical writing job I applied for. Bill dies. Househusband is my day job. I go on a diet, try to save money. Write editors and agents about THE NEON OOZE. I see that ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH goes on the end of THE NEON OOZE, like an alternate ending, or additional ending. The only way to end it is to stop. Take the horn out of your mouth, as Miles Davis told John Coltrane.