Wednesday, December 8 (cont'd)

Q: That's what? Five books in six weeks?

A: I could look it up.

30,000 words isn't a long book.

It's barely a novella.

Q: Animal Farm was only 30,000 words.

A: I know.

I will often group three books of 30,000 words each into one 90,000-word book in three parts.

But I count them as a book in my list of titles of my stack.

Balzac's Comédie humaine was 90 novels or novellas.

Q: Do you compare your stack to Balzac's Comédie humaine?

A: Yes. Sometimes I call it The Human Soap Opera, because it's melodramatic.

Q: The book?

A: The life.

Orwell said the fear of the sack keeps modern, Western man in line.

Fear of the blacklist keeps modern, Western writers in line.

I am not afraid of the sack. I am not afraid of the blacklist.

That is, I am.

I write about what it's like to write, and work, with the sack, and the blacklist, hanging over you like the sword of Damocles.

Q: You published Art Brew: The Spent Effluent Collection, Let's Get W*t, and The Wardrobe Malfunction Program-Related Activities versus the Post-Rehearsal Decision to Have a Costume Reveal (compare The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster).

Who did you send those to?

A: The Buzzard Cult.

Q: And you sent Redacted Poems to a publisher who posted it at his web site, didn't you? Thunder Sandwich?

A: No, that was later.

I did. But I haven't yet.

Q: Well, five books in six weeks is impressive to me.

A: Thank you.

Q: Nobody at work had tumbled onto you yet?

A: Lucy Diamond looked me up at Amazon.com and ordered Screed and Forty.

But she was discreet.

Q: When is the review of your IETM?

A: Soon. It's coming up.