In 1976, I published the chapbook Playing Hurt.

I have now published 239 pamphlets, chapbooks, fliers, and four-page sheets.

Since March 18, 2000 I have published 193 books on the worldwide web, and written six that were held-in-abeyance (HIA). The current book, WORKINGMAN'S BLUES NO. 2, will be 194. It's at The Daily Bulletin (www.thedailybulletin.com).

If I hadn't redacted myself, I would have published 200 books on the worldwide web.

I publish them online, daily, as I write them, and reply to reader comments, in the books.

I mail the pamphlets out to my coterie of steadfast readers, the Buzzard Cult, and give them away at crafts shows and street fairs, open-mike poetry readings and writers conferences like this one.

One pamphlet, Charles Bukowski, was published by Black Sparrow Press, to give away to friends of the press. I received ten copies, as payment, and gave them all away.

I think I kept one but I can't find it.

I have published ten books.

1. Screed, Vagabond Press, 1981
2. Common Sense, Mixed Breed, 1985
3. Full Plate, Mixed Breed, 1985
4. Blue Darter, Mixed Breed, 1985
5. Lost Writings, Mixed Breed, 1985
6. Evil Genius, Mixed Breed, 1986
7. Open Book, Mixed Breed, 1986
8. Forty, Popular Reality, 1987
9. Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family, LitVision Press, 2005
10. Adventures in the Underground, Volume 3 of the Postcards From Pottersville series, Pottersville Press, 2007

I have some Bukowski Never Did This left but I sold, or gave away, all my copies of Adventures in the Underground.

One time I had a booth at Oktoberfest. I had ten self-published pamphlets, on display. A co-worker, a nurse, looked at my pamphlets, looked at me, and said, "Are you our custodian? Do you have a secret life?"

My cover was blown. I quit my job.

It wasn't that I said anything bad about my co-workers, or my managers, but now that my secret was out, I couldn't write at work. My co-workers, and managers, would think I was writing about them.

Also, they would get curious, and look me up on the worldwide web, and find out I was writing about them.

They would find out what I thought about the company. Working conditions. The work.

If your co-workers and managers find out what you think about work it makes it uncomfortable for you. They make it uncomfortable for you. Who do you think you are?

A writer? A truth-teller? Someone who speaks truth to power?

No wonder you're a janitor.

Frank Zappa said in every town there's someone who knows what's going on, but people think he's a creep. And he's the only one who knows.

I was the town creep. The village creep.

Crispin Glover playing Bartleby the Scrivener.

I think publishers feel that if you write that way about your co-workers and managers, at work, if they publish you, you'll write that way about them.

I think they fear that.

Fish tremble at the sound of my name.

One time I was on a work detail at Keesler AFB, supervising a latrine-cleaning detail, and the two airmen I was supervising were throwing a wet toilet brush back and forth, and the lieutenant, who was supervising me, came around the corner and the toilet brush hit him in the head.

He was mad.
He said, "God damn it, airman, what if I had been the major."

He was worried about what his supervisor would think.

That's the corporate way. Everybody is worried about the person above him in the pecking order and ragging on the person below him in the pecking order.

The writer has to please the agent, the agent has to please the editor, the editor has to please the publisher.

The publisher has to achieve double-digit growth every quarter. The publisher has to maximize profits. The publisher has to answer to the stockholders.

The publisher is worried about the bottom line.

Sometimes I call the Buzzard Cult Benthos, or Bottom Feeders.

It's no insuperable burden to pay the reader to read your work, Henry Miller said.

The motto of the Jack Saunders School of Fiction Writing is, "Will write for food, will write for free, will pay to write."

If you're not willing to pay to write you're in the wrong field.

Because what you give up when you take money for your work is control of the work.

You exchange control for money.

Control of the content, control of the schedule, control of the way it's publicized, control of the cover art.

Control of the title.

They changed the title of Charles Willeford's The Director to The Woman Chaser.

I don't get paid to write, but I got paid to write, once. And might again.

The better you do as a small press writer the more you stigmatize yourself in New York's eyes.

You can't use a small press book to launch yourself with New York. They don't translate. You can't get there from here.

The novel is about conflict. The conflict between ambition and opportunity. What you want to accomplish and what it's possible for you to do, with what you have. Jakeleg and for-the-nonce. Half-assed and piecemeal. Homemade.

I'm going to write such a novel next, when I finish writing WORKINGMAN'S BLUES NO. 2. I'm going to call it WORK.

That's the theme. Vocation and career in conflict.

Blessed is the man who's found his work, Carlyle said.

Purity of heart is to will one thing, Kierkegaard said.

We are responsible to eternity.

You have to make your work your vocation. Be happy in your work.

Who said that? The Jap in The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Be happy in your work.

I'm happy

Why wouldn't I be happy?

I have found my work.