Q: You ended HOUSEHUSBAND: A CORRESPONDENCE NOVEL with a pamphlet called Fishing Stories, or, Beer-Can Island.

A: Yes.

Looking for a picture of Balder and a grouper he caught, I saw a picture of me and Balder eating oysters.

That's his vehicle in the lefthand corner of the picture, an International Harvester Scout.

He is holding a Russell S-137 oyster knife.

I look up S137 oyster knife in Google Images and get a hit on the picture of me and Balder, above.

I made the bumper sticker at the factory where I worked, before I got laid off and moved back to Parker.

Fathers and sons.
Fathers and brothers.
Ella was the first grandchild.
Now there are others.

I checked out a book at the library by Alex Carr. They didn't have any more of her books. She also writes under the name Jenny Siler.

I went to Books-A-Million to see if they had any books by Jenny Siler or Alex Carr. They didn't.

But there was a new book of Bukowski poems out. The Continual Condition.

I bought it.

I like books about what people are reading.

What they are watching on TV.

What they are reading on the Internet.

Brenda reads Democratic Underground. DU.

We saw Chris Hedges on BookTV, talking about Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

The library doesn't have it.

I asked them to order it.

They said they didn't have any money in their budget to buy books.

So I decided to buy it from Amazon.com and donate it to the library.

If I lived in a town with a bookstore, I'd buy it from the bookstore, but I live in a town where my choices are Books-A-Million and Amazon.com.

At the Gulf Coast Writers Conference, Glynn Alam said Books-A-Million is not writer-friendly.

They're not reader-friendly, either.

HOUSEHUSBAND: A CORRESPONDENCE NOVEL is about attending Gulf Coast Writers Conference.

I don't know how the book holds together, as a book.

It's in five parts.

They hold together for me.

What do I write next?

Well, since nobody wants what I write anyway, I might as well write what I please.

Write about combining writing, work, and family.

It's Wednesday morning.

I have been off work for a week.

I finished writing HOUSEHUSBAND.

I started writing HALLOWEEN.

I go in to work today, for one or two days. Then my temporary assignment is over.

I just had three months work writing training programs for the unemployed.

Now I am unemployed. Or expect to be. Reverted to my permanent rank: yardbird.

Ron Suskind asked Chris Hedges what the reality is going to be, that punctures the illusion, and he said people are going to be thrown out of their houses.

Because they're going to be unemployed.

They're not going to be able to pay the bills, by working.

Especially if they bought things on credit, expecting their income to last.

Q: That's going to blindside a lot of people.

They're going to wonder what happened.

A: Yes.

They're going to want to read books that talk about it.

Q: You're like Eric Hoffer. A working stiff. What could you know?

A: What could Eric Hoffer know?

What could Bukowski know.

A poet.

What does a poet know.

What do Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Chalmers Johnson know.

I've been thrown out of houses. Because I lost my job. In a recession.

It concentrates your attention.