Q: Why do you feel immobilized?
A: Well, I'm broke.
My car might or might not start.
I
can't afford to rent a car.
If I stay around here I feel like I am earning
my keep, by cooking supper, shopping for groceries, washing the dishes, and cleaning
the house once a week. Running errands Brenda doesn't have time to run.
Plus, I'm looking for a job, and if one comes up, I'm here to take it. If I'm away,
I won't hear about it.
Plus, I'm old.
I don't want to leave the house.
In fact, I don't want to leave my room.
I want to sit in front of my computer
and write, or read a library book, or watch a rented DVD on TV. Rented from Netflix,
so I don't have to go out to the video store.
I go to the library and the
post office. That's it.
I go to the Winn-Dixie every day.
I don't
go to bluegrass festivals, we don't go to The Red Bar, we don't go out to eat, or
to the movies. We don't go to church.
We go to funerals.
I don't
go to football games, band concerts, parades, I don't hunt, I don't fish, I sit on
my porch, I spit and whittle. I live in my head, mostly.
I think about the
book I am writing.
Q: Last book you went to a writers conference. You went to Office Max to run off several pamphlets.
A: Yes. I don't expect to do as much of that anymore.
I went to
work five days a week.
If I don't do that, if I just stay at home and write,
I won't get my hair cut, I won't comb my hair, I won't bathe, I won't brush my teeth.
I don't change my sheets often enough.
I can't clip my own toenails anymore.
I don't always wipe my ass carefully enough.
I dribble pee on myself.
I'm disgusting.
I'm like an old man in a Samuel Beckett play.
Is
that immobilized enough for you?
The hero in modern fiction is immobilized
by modern times, by modernity, by the pace of traffic, life, getting a living, suffering
fools gladly, being a team player, work is very wearing, wearying, corporate life,
having to listen to the same bullshit, over and over, these new managers have no
shame, no humanity, they don't learn it in Sunday School, they don't learn it in
school, they don't learn it in the military, they don't learn it in the MBA program,
they don't even learn to fake it, they don't even try to fake it, anymore, you are
expendable, disposable, so are they, but they don't know it, until it happens to
them, and some of them are taken unawares, they are traumatized, they are in shock,
they never recover, at least I was immunized, inoculated, by life.
I can't
be allowed to spread my virus, it's a poison, it infects the workforce.
I
think the Mall Builder culture needs a good scour, myself.
It needs an enema.
Enema vérité.
It needs a harsh dose of truth.
The Mall Builder culture
can't handle the truth.
It has been raised on lies and bullshit, pipedreams
and fantasy, wishbooks. College catalogs.
Do you get a good liberal arts
education at a state university anymore?
If you wanted one?
Would
you find professors who made waves, who challenged the conventional wisdom, would
you find students who questioned their professors?
Or would you find conformity,
passivity, obedience.
I don't know. I haven't set foot on a college campus
in 40 years.
Well, 38 years.
I've been in my room, writing.
I've been reading, too. When I wasn't working.
But I can't say I know what
the intellectual life is like on campus.
I left academia one step ahead of
a shoeshine. Two steps ahead of the county line.
As Jaye P. Morgan says.
Q: You're lucky you didn't get an MBA and a job teaching writing in college.
A: I have often thought that.
Every time the public radio station
has a fund drive, I think, man, am I glad I don't have to get on the air and say
that for my job.
Every job is that way.
If I made a living writing,
writing would be my job. It would be a job. I'd have to watch what I said, so I
wouldn't lose my job.
I don't have to sing the company fight song.