40-Year Run (cont’d)(19)
BOTCHED
BOOK: DAMNED BY DOLLARS. THREE WEEKS IN THE LIFE OF AN UNDERGROUND
WRITER. Book I.
Book
II. In My Room: An Online Journal (OLJ). June 1 - June 7. 12,000 words.
I confront my fears. I ended
“Gulf Coast Blues” saying the crash boat isn’t aimed at me. It’s a nightmare. Not reality.
I was saying, “Why do I have to work for a living?” when I was not
working, I was in my room, writing. I
apply for a job as a custodian where Brenda works. The job pays $15,000 a year. At my last two jobs, I made $30,000 a
year. At the job before that, I made
$60,000 a year. I am going out
backwards. What’s next? A job that pays $7,500 a year? I lost the job paying $60,000 a year. For blogging at work. I lost the two jobs paying $30,000 a year. For blogging at work. Maybe I can hold a job that pays $15,000 a
year. If I don’t have a computer. At work.
Maybe I can hold a job and write an OLJ both. Keep my pie hole shut online about my
job. Be a sharp tool for the
company. Am I, in Claudio Arrau’s words,
“escaping into failure”? Or am I facing
facts, like Thoreau did, when, after writing Walden, he moved back in with his parents and went to work in the
family pencil factory? GULF COAST BLUES
and IN MY ROOM: AN ONLINE JOURNAL (OLJ)
are like Walden and Thoreau’s Journal. Or like Barfly
and
FIGHTING ROOSTERS: A HARD-BOILED APPRECIATION OF CHARLES WILLEFORD. June 9 - July 9. 45,000 words. I begin to reread most, not all, of Charles Willeford’s books, more or less in order. They’re good, and you can see him develop, as a writer. I see similarities between him and me. Our approach to writing, our careers. I start my new job as a custodian. It’s an adjustment, from sitting in front of a computer all day, typing. I mop floors, vacuum carpets, empty trash, keep the bathrooms clean. I read on break and at lunchtime and write before and after work. In Willeford’s short story, “An Actor Prepares,” the actor was working as a dishwasher. A writer prepares. As a custodian. What is conduct unbecoming a custodian? We’ll recognize it when we see it. You can’t quantify the custodian mystique.
IMMOBILIZED
IN PARKER: THE RETIREMENT YEAR. July 10 - July 31. 37,000 words.
Jack Saunders didn’t plan to retire.
He hadn’t set anything aside.
Social security was withheld from his wages, so at 62, he had that. $1,000 monthly, less Medicare. And, once, he had a corporate job that paid
retirement. When they laid him off, and
paid him what was in his account, he rolled it over into an annuity. Then, last year, he cashed it in and lived
off of it for a year, or slightly longer.
Now, he was working again. As a
custodian. He was getting back into
shape. Gradually. He needed a job that required him to move
around. To lift and stoop and walk a lot
and use his upper-body muscles.
Otherwise, he’d sit in front of a computer and type all day long. Saunders would be 67 on
ENOUGH ABOUT ME—HOW DID YOU LIKE MY BOOK: 139 TESTIMONIALS IN HONOR OF JACK SAUNDERS ON HIS 35TH ANNIVERSARY AS A WRITER. August 1 - August 23. 64,000 words. Saunders comments on the sheets of blurbs he has assembled, from famous writers, to unknown writers and readers, to bitter alt-zine flame-war nerds on the worldwide web. He writes a pamphlet called 32 Short Reviews of UNDERGROUND WRITER LOOKS BACK: HERE STANDS THE BOOK, to hand out at his presentation on “The Correspondence Novel” at the Gulf Coast Writers Conference, at Gulf Coast Community College, where his anthology for the Postcards From Pottersville series from Pottersville Press, Adventures in the Underground, will be on sale. He will also sell his last published book, Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family, at the conference. He writes a pamphlet called The Correspondence Novel to hand out. The what? Well, it’s a subgenre he perfected.