Q: Kurt Vonnegut described mysteries as a ghetto, and wondered why Charles Willeford would work in such a form.

A: By choice.

Frederic Brown told Blaster Al to always work in a despised medium.

I'd developed this pulp-ghetto ideal where, by turning out reams of pulp under various pseudonyms for very low pay, you could live a precarious but romantic existence. That was the idea. But by the time I was actually old enough to begin my hand at it, 1953-54, most of the pulp mags had folded, the whole pulp market collapsed, leaving me and my dream bereft. Along with this I had been having some correspondence with Fredric Brown, the late-great sifi and mystery writer. And one of the things he told me, by way of helpful advice, was, "Always try to be lucky enough to work in a despised medium." I wasn't quite sure I knew what he meant but I filed it away, at least subconsciously, for future reference.

So -- time passed and I drifted into quite a lot of writing for the confession magazines and then did some TV work, had a nightclub & TV act, did some theatre, wrote plays, etc. None of it very satisfactory from my pulp-dream standpoint. Finally, in 1972, I happened to pick up a copy of Rolling Stone, the issue with the Thos. Albright article "Correspondence Art." I read that and all the names and addresses of these people mailing things, I thought that sounded like it might be right up my alley. I had like this very positive 100% yes-response. To me, the whole mail art thing seemed like an ideal way to realize my long-cherished pulp dream, that is, to do a lot of fundamentally rapid work and use a lot of different pseudonyms and not make a dime.