Money & mail-art don't mix.
Lon Spiegelman
Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 10501
Panama City, FL 32404
Copyright © 2009 by Jack L. Saunders, Jr.
Q: Are you at the house?
A: Yes.
Q: Are you laid off?
A: I'm on furlough.
I go in Monday to finish up.
A day's
work. Maybe two days.
Q: What's after that?
A: I don't know. I'm in limbo.
Q: Dangling man.
A: Saul Bellow wrote a book called Dangling Man. Or was it Bernard Malamud?
Q: Did you see Starting Out in the Evening?
A: Yes. I identified with the hero, an aging writer whose time has come and gone.
Q: Did your time come and go?
A: No. It didn't come.
Q: Do you think it will now?
A: Probably not. It's too late. I missed the chance.
Q: What were you doing?
A: Writing books. Supporting a wife and family. Working at dead-end jobs.
The usual.
What everybody does.
Most people, their time doesn't come.
Q: If you were able to write books....
A: I wrote the wrong books.
I didn't write what New York wanted.
Q: New York is not the only game in town.
A: It is for a writer.
Q: What about the Internet?
A: The Internet is a vanity press.
The Internet is Amateur Night.
It's too easy.
Anybody can write on the Internet.
Didn't Joey Pants
have a web site in Second Best?
Q: An online newsletter, I think.
A: I have an online newsletter.
Q: Didn't you write a screenplay? NoMoPo?
A: In The Woman Chaser, the hero edits his movie down to a perfect
four reels.
A feature film is six reels.
Q: NoMoPo isn't even four reels.
A: No, but it shows how I conceived of WORK as a treatment for a screenplay,
instead of just as a novella. I saw WORK as a screenplay as I was experiencing it.
What kind of a person sees his life as a screenplay?
Q: It isn't a movie, it's a television miniseries. A soap opera.
A: I used to listen to Johnny Dollar: The Man with the Action-Packed Expense Account.
Q: Guy Noir.
A: I pronounce guy gee.
Q: Are you a Garrison Keeler fan?
A: Too middle-of-the-road (MOR) for me. I keep thinking, "Did Lenny
Bruce die in vain?"
Too public radio.
Q: America loves public radio. Middle America.
A: I love Samuel Beckett. Dream of Fair to Middling Women.
Speaking of Samuel Johnson, John Wain writes that scholars write for other scholars,
and find "fit audience" "though few."
Maybe a cult following
of high-one-, low-two-figures is all I'm meant to have.
Q: Kevin Kline playing Willy Loman in a dinner theater in Opa Locka. Florida.
A: "We can't hear you."
Q: You might as well make a virtue of necessity and just write your newsletter,
post it at The Daily Bulletin, and send Larry and Hazel a hard-copy when you
have a book's worth.
Send agents and editors query letters about it.
Write pamphlets and give them away at writers conferences.
A: That was my last writers conference. They're not going to have Large Pyle to kick around anymore.
Q: You told them to go shit in their hat.
A: I ain't gonna be treated thataway.
Q: You had one person come to hear you.
A: One is enough, if it's the right one.
Q: I thought it was funny when he stood up, and said, "Mein Fuhrer, I can walk."
A: Yes. And when he played the zoo-zoo with me, and hummed like a digiridoo.
Q: Why did you send HOUSEHUSBAND to Melville House Publishing without the screenplay on the end?
A: I didn't know how long it would take me to write it.
I didn't
know if I would finish it.
I thought I might die first.
Q: That's an irrational fear.
A: I wrote the screenplay in three days. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
Today's Tuesday.
Now I'm writing LARGE PYLE'S LAST WRITERS CONFERENCE.
That goes on the end of HOUSEHUSBAND too.