20. Reviews don't sell books. But they let people who are looking for what you do know where to find examples of your work. They may direct the presold to you. Walt Whitman reviewed Leaves of Grass. The Duke and the Dauphin reviewed themselves in Huckleberry Finn. Of course, they were hucksters. Walt Whitman wasn't.
21. Drouillard, the sign-talker with Lewis and Clark, whose Indian
name was Followed by Buzzards, called la gloire lugwah. Brew combined
two books, SALVAGE ARCHEOLOGIST and DECLARING VICTORY, his 248th and 249th books,
and called them LUGWAH: ALONE IN HIS PRIVATE GLORY. Then came his 250th book, SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.
Brew might have tried too hard, on that one. So that, after his signal event, his
milestone, Brew relaxed. The pressure was off. He was loose. Rather than up-tight.
Tight-assed. BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS just flowed out of him.
22. Brew thought about making up a pamphlet he called 32 Short
Reviews of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS, by analogy with 32 Short Films About Glenn
Gould, but then decided not to waste the money, he could post it at The Daily
Bulletin and link to it, when he emailed people about his book. Let them print
it out, if they wanted it. "Will write for food, will write for free, will
pay to write" will only take you so far. At some point you have to ask the
reader to pay its share. The workman is worthy of his hire.
Brew called
the he or she reader it.
23. Is BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS a novel, a diary, a collection of nonfiction
pieces about writing, and publishing, or a collection of poems? It's all of those
in one. Arranged in order of composition, by date. Brew calls the genre daily
typewriting. Also guy lit. Guy lit is what you write when New York wants
chick lit. Shopping and fucking novels. What's the fun of shopping and fucking?
Guy lit is something you can sink your teeth into. Something you'll remember.
Something that may change the way you see your options in the world, the choices
you have, as a principled person. Brew compares the book to Leaves of Grass,
Walden, Tropic of Cancer, On the Road. Naked Lunch. What you see on
the end of the fork when you really look. Sometimes to see what's on the
fork we have to eat with chopsticks.
24. One thing Brew and his publisher decided to do was leave out the
pictures in Bukowski Never Did This. They could have included them as half-tone
black-and-white pictures, but half-tone black-and-white pictures would lack the impact
of color pictures, the color pictures were available in the version of the book posted
at The Daily Bulletin, and a book, a novel, is text-rich anyway, so why try
to make it multimedia? It's all a tradeoff and a crapshoot. As bad as the worldwide
web is as a medium for publishing books, it will give you color pictures, and, in
some cases, audio files of the author reading, with music in the background, or even
video files, if the webmaster knows how to do that.
Out Your Backdoor magazine has MP3 files of Brew reading, or talking about what he is trying to do, in his work. You can tell from his tone of voice he is not twisted up by bitterness. He has a reflective, bemused tone. Like, "Can you believe this shit?"
25. Brew's book is available in two versions, an ink-and-paper book,
published by a bricks-and-mortar publisher, LitVision Press, and an online version,
available at The Daily Bulletin.
The advantage of the book is it is
portable, durable, small enough to put in a rucksack, easy to read, you can dog-ear
pages, underline passages, loan it to a friend, re-read it, photocopy sections, and
be seen carrying it, like a suede-o intellectual. It is cheap.
The
advantage of the online version is you can imagine yourself reading it as it was
being written, and published, in real time, it contains color pictures, and links
to audio files, it links to other books and websites you will want to read, and it,
too, is cheap.
26. Brew got a notice for booksALIVE 2005! He decided to make a pamphlet
of 32 Short Reviews of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS and distribute it at the conference.
Out at the junior college.
Last year, when he went, members of the audience
asked featured writers about publishing on the worldwide web, but none of them knew:
they all had brick-and-mortar publishers. Publishing on the web was the Kiss of
Death. Why would any writer want to do that? You stigmatized yourself. It was
not a career-enhancing move. It was an act of desperation. The smell of fear attracted
sharks. One gave off Feeding Frenzy Pheromones.
Brew wrote a pamphlet called
Writing the Great American Novel on the Worldwide Web, an update of the short
story he wrote called "Writing the Great American Novel on the IBM PC,"
which was published in the Bukowski Number of the Review of Contemporary Fiction,
in 1985 (volume 5, number 3, Fall 1985).
Could it be 20 years ago? How time
flies.
27. Brew asked the organizer of booksALIVE 2004! to invite him
to participate in booksALIVE 2005!, and host a discussion on the subject,
but a self-published pamphlet did not carry a lot of weight, and the subject wasn't
really relevant to a conference celebrating ink-and-paper books. Maybe when Brew
had some prodeck to sell. A book. Maybe booksALIVE 2006! When Bukowski
Never Did This was published.
28. The Bay County Public Library did accept Writing the Great American
Novel on the Worldwide Web, and include it in its collections, and put it in
the New Books section. They classified it 808.31. How to write short stories.
This was a stroke of genius. Not many people would have seen that a nonfiction book,
with a table of contents, was a short story. Just as 32 Short Reviews
of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS is a short story.
29. One time Robert Olen Butler, at Florida State University, wrote
a short story, on the worldwide web, at Inside Creative Writing, at his FSU
web site. I wrote him and told him about writing a series of related novels, a novel
a month, at Inside Vernacular Writing, at The Daily Bugle, my web site
at home, not at Atlanta Works, a fiber-optic cable factory, where I worked, as a
senior information development specialist. I thought Robert Olen Butler would write
me back, in a spirit of collegiality, but he didn't. I guess he looked at what I
was doing and decided it was beneath his notice. That often happens to me with academics.
I am beneath their notice. A tech writer with delusions of grandeur. And persecution
mania.
30. By the time booksALIVE 2006! comes around my book will be
old news. But literature is news that stays news. By then it might have found its
legs, and the initial print run, 1A, of 150 copies, sold out, and had to be reprinted.
That would be different. That would be news.
31. Tomorrow, I have to drive to Fort Walton Beach, for a workshop
on a grant I am applying for, to prevent violence (domestic and sexual) against women.
Writing it will keep me off the streets at night, for the next few weeks.
32. I guess I'll print up 32 Short Reviews of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID
THIS and send it to the out-of-town guests, the visiting writers, who are coming
in for booksALIVE 2005! Or either I will carry it out there February 12 and hand-deliver
copies, introducing myself. If they ask me to autograph my pamphlet, I will sign
it, "Fraternally yours...."
Note:
Jack Saunders was invited to participate in the book festival booksALIVE 2005! at Gulf Coast Community College February 12, where space was allotted for him to sign books in the conference center and meet his readers, fellow authors, and local bookworms. Peddle his wares. And he didn't even have to give a presentation on Writing the Great American Novel on the Worldwide Web. He could just sell the pamphlet.