In April, I got laid off, and went on
unemployment. I decided to use the time to write about how I had combined writing,
work, and family, for 37 years; what form a work that reflected that reality would
take; and where to send it, when I finished writing it, where it would be published,
I would be paid for it, and I would be recognized for my work.
The old kunstlerroman
cliché, the breakout novel, or big break. The lucky break.
In the meantime,
I serialized it--it turned out to be a series of three books--at my web site, daily,
as I wrote it, and replied to reader comments, in the book. That is, in real time.
I compared it to Melville, quarreling with fiction. Or to William Faulkner's Snopes
trilogy, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion.
Then a fourth
book added itself on. It became a redneck quartet. Imagine an unpublished, or underpublished
Faulkner, what he would write about.
Then a fourth book added itself on.
It became a redneck quartet. Imagine an unpublished, or underpublished Faulkner,
what he would write about.
When will my big break come, my lucky break? My
Wales, my sow.
37-YEAR RUN: CONFESSIONS OF A WRITER NOT RIGHT FOR NEW YORK OR HOLLYWOOD'S
LIST. April 26 - July 16. 175,000 words. A collection of newspaper columns reprinted
in the Wewahitchka Bi-Weekly News (Gulf County Breeze). Covers all
the jobs I held, from laborer in a feldspar mine to senior information development
specialist in a fiber-optic cable factory. In three parts: Apprentice, Journeyman,
Master. The most straightforward book of the three. Tells how I went from an Olympia
portable typewriter to a web site on the Internet. The small press movement, mail
art, zines, ezines, blogs. Fired for blogging.
TWO SHORT BOOKS. July 16 - September 30. 127,000 words. The first book is called THE POST-MASTERPIECE NOVEL. Was 37-YEAR RUN a memoir or a novel? Or a collection of newspaper columns or a book serialized daily on the worldwide web? What kind of a book? Did the web, and the possibilities of the web, affect the form the book took? The second book is called I READ BANNED BOOKS. AND SOMETIMES I WRITE THEM. It's a writers guide for writers who don't want to integrate themselves into the money society, and become corrupted. It contains the pamphlets Writers Guides and Work Habits: The Seven Keys to Becoming a Highly Prolific Writer and Restoring Magic to the World. Also Jack Saunders, Artist, Jack Saunders, Vernacular Writer, My Platform, Three Contes, What Genre is AT THE HOUSE?, My Philosophy of Editing, One-Man Band, and The Summer of the Mutiny.
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS: AN IMMOBILIZED-HERO NOVEL, OR WHITE LEVIATHAN OF DAILY TYPEWRITING. October 1 - January 13. 140,000 words. This begins with me reporting on the 2008 presidential election campaign. I screen Zombie Strippers at the house. I see that Zombies Ate the Neocons, my book about the Bush-Enron administration, is based on the old Eugene Ionesco Theater-of-the-Absurd play, Rhinoceros, in which everybody turns into a rhinoceros except the town drunk, Bérenger. He’s lost as a haint. He has no idea what happened. I start printing up and mailing out four-page sheets. I am a sheet writer. Shee-it! I write and print up the pamphlet A Mail Art Christmas. Send it out to members of the Buzzard Cult. I am eligible for a second-tier extension on my unemployment benefits. I start a new book. JANUARY 2009. Then I change the name of JANUARY 2009 to TALES OF THE REDNECK RIVIERA. Write and send out pamphlet Dread Neck Coozie (DNC): Songs From the Redneck Riviera. If you do drink and drive, write a song about it. Or a pamphlet. Become a Professor of Cracker Studies, without portfolio. I add appendices to the end of TALES OF THE REDNECK RIVIERA, like Annie Leibovitz did at the end of At Work. "Equipment," "A Room of One’s Own," "Most-Asked Questions," and "Chronology." Just because I don’t get paid for it doesn’t mean it isn’t work. Then I add a section at the end called "Black Papers: The Self-Taught Artist" and change the name of the series to Discouraged Worker: The Self-Taught Artist in America. I add "Tales of the Redneck Riviera" to HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. Back to three books, not four.