85.  Resume and List of Publications

 

SAUNDERS, Jack L(ee) Jr. 1939-

 

PERSONAL:  Born August 31, 1939, in West Palm Beach, FL; son of Jack and Edna Lee (a housewife:  maiden name, Nordhem) Saunders; married Brenda Brown August 29, 1968; sons Owen, a fiddle player in a bluegrass band, and Balder, a mandolin player, sideman, and bandleader.  Education:  Florida State University, B.S., anthropology, 1968.  Graduate work (four years) in anthropology at FSU and Tulane University.  Politics:  None.  Religion:  None.  Hobbies:  None—like Henry Chinaski, in Barfly.

 

ADDRESSES:  Home:  Garage Band Books, P. O. Box 10501, Panama City, FL 32404.  Email: jacksaunders@bellsouth.net

 

CAREER:  Usual assortment of dreary jobs as laborer and clerk.  Technical writer for last 25 years.  Currently retired.

 

MEMBER:  Phi Beta Kappa, Society for Technical Communication, Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers, Jazz Journalists Association, Underground Literary Alliance, Roots Music Association.

 

AWARDS AND HONORS:  Good Conduct Medal, one Oak Leaf Cluster, USAF.  B.S., magna cum laude, FSU, 1968.  Outstanding Senior.  University Fellow, FSU, 1969.  NDEA Fellow, Tulane University, 1970-72. 

 

PROFESSIONAL MILESTONES:

 

·       Commercial risk publishers rejected by:  most of the larger ones.

·       Regional, fine arts, or university presses rejected by:  most in the Southeastern United States.

·       Literary agencies declined representation by:  all I have inquired of.

·       Arts colonies, writing seminars, and retreats for writers application to denied:  all I know about.

·       Grants and fellowships turned down for:  State of Florida, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund.

·       Contests entered and lost:  Faulkner, Hemingway, Nelson Algren Awards.

·       Directories not included in, or entry expunged from database of, after having been included:  Directory of American Poets & Fiction Writers, Florida’s Artist Residency Directory, Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Contemporary Authors, The Book Lover's Guide to Florida.

·       Honorable Mention, Hemingway Days Short Story Contest, 2000

·       Headliner at Underground Literary Alliance’s Legends of the Underground reading, Amato Opera Theater, 2001

·       Winner, Noir Novel Writing Contest, Pottersville Press, 2007

 

WRITINGS (ENEMA VÉRITÉ, OR CRANK-LETTRES):

 

·       Screed, Vagabond Press, 1981

·       Three pieces in Black Messiah, Vagabond Press, 1982

·       Bylined column, Delray Beach News-Journal, 1983

·       Common Sense, Mixed Breed, 1985

·       Full Plate, Mixed Breed, 1985

·       Blue Darter, Mixed Breed, 1985

·       Lost Writings, Mixed Breed, 1985

·       “Writing the Great American Novel on the IBM PC,” in Bukowski number of Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1985

·       Evil Genius, Mixed Breed, 1986

·       Open Book, Mixed Breed, 1986

·       Column "Saunders' Florida," The Native Sun, 1987

·       Forty, Popular Reality, 1987

·       "Henry Miller," in Henry Miller:  A Book of Tributes, 1931-1994, Standish Books, 1994

·       Questions About Henry Miller That No One Ever Asked Me--With Answers, Roger Jackson, 1995

·       "Anna-ees," in Anaïs Nin:  A Book of Mirrors, Sky Blue Press, 1996

·       Sexual Dreams of an Everyday Househusband, Roger Jackson, 1995

·       Crossfire, Roger Jackson, 1997 (with Bern Porter)

·       "They Lost Nearly All," in MORE!, 1994-1996, Standish Books, 1997

·       The Plight of the Creative Artist in America, Roger Jackson, 1997

·       The Husband of the Writer's Wife, Runaway Spoon Press, 1997

·       “In Preparation for What Is To Come,” an introduction to My Date With Henry Miller, by Crowbar Nestle (writing as Blaster Al Ackerman), Roger Jackson, 1998

·       Beat Poet 1, Garage Band Books, 1998.

·       Report on Submission Dated 5-11-99.  Roger Jackson, 1999.

·       Seven excerpts from BRENDA'S BIRTHDAY, Garage Band Books, 1999.

·       Three poems in Ragged Lion, a tribute to Jack Micheline.  Vagabond Press, 1999.

·       I Only Read It for the Ads, Roger Jackson, 1999.

·       Charles Bukowski, small, gratis booklet for customers and friends, Black Sparrow Press, 2000.

·       “7-Level Thinking,” profile of Charles Willeford in Lummox Journal, 2000.

·       Write a book a month, online, daily, at The Daily Bulletin (www.thedailybulletin.com).

·       Bukowski Never Did This:  A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family.  LitVision Press, 2005.

·       Free Speech, three pamphlets written for the Howl protest at Columbia, April 17, 2006.

·       Adventures in the Underground, Volume 3 of the Postcards From Pottersville anthology series.  Pottersville Press (March 2007)

·       Cracker Jack:  A Catalog.  8½ x 11” artist’s book.  50 pp with 31 color pictures.  Published by self.

 

SIDELIGHTS:  Jack Saunders has been writing for 40+ years, without selling a word to New York or Hollywood, winning a grant, a writer-in-residence position, or a literary prize.  He is working on a continuation of a 40-year roman-feuilleton, or saga-novel, that is too large for small presses to publish and too outspoken, freewheeling, and vulgar for the mainstream commercial houses.  A vernacular writer, he calls himself.  In the sense self-taught.  But also in the sense ambassador-in-bonds.  He shoots his leaflets into the void and presses on to Boulogne, like Tristram Shandy.  His stack now stands at 439 volumes, 440 roaring in his veins like a camphor injection.  The stopped-up toilet of American letters, fixing to erupt, like the Wakulla Volcano, or an explosion in a charnel house.  He calls his coterie of steadfast readers the Buzzard Cult, after the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, a revitalization movement that swept the Lower Mississippi Valley just before and after European contact, and calls himself the salvage archeologist of the Mall Builder culture.  America’s greatest living unpublished, or underpublished writer, perhaps the greatest unpublished, or underpublished American writer ever.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: 

 

·       “Anglo-Saxon Rhythms in Screed.”  Jack Remick.  Seattle:  1981.  Unpublished.  (Available at www.GLPBOOKS.COM/oyb/jackremick.html.)

·       "Jack Saunders Revisited."  Al "Doc" Ackerman.  Afterword to Forty.  Popular Reality:  1987

·       "Reasons for Art & Jack."  Jeff Potter.  Out Your Backdoor.  1999.  (Available at www.GLPBOOKS.COM/oyb/jackreasons.html.)

·       "Great Poets Do Not Do Great Things."  John Bennett.  Small Press Review.  1999

·       "The Samizdat Mentality."  Arnold Skemer.  Zyx 19.  1999

·       “The Last Beatnik,” Steve Glassman, address to Florida College English Association (FCEA), Florida Southern College, 2006

·       Cracker Jack, 2011.  A film by Tom Mott.

 

 

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