Q: Would you compare ON ASSIGNMENT to Moby-Dick?

A: Yes.

It's what Melville would have written if he lived today.

It's where he would have been driven. By the War Heads in publishing, the media, foundations and arts agencies, and university English departments and Creative Writing programs.

I'm just lucky it was there for me. When I needed it.

Q: You say your book is about the human condition.

A: Yes. How do you do the best work you are capable of in a world that doesn't want your best. Is hostile or indifferent to it.

My theme, stated in five words or less, is vocation and career in conflict.

Anybody who works, works for a corporation, and the corporation's goals are not your goals. You are a hireling.

Q: An apparatchik.

A: Yes. An apparatchik.

If you don't go along you are disciplined. You are taught a lesson.

My crayon privileges were taken away in the first grade because I fidgeted during nap.

Some teacher hung a troublemaker jacket on me in the first grade.

I have been fighting it ever since.

Q: Culminating in ON ASSIGNMENT.

A: Yes.

The last book before ON ASSIGNMENT was THE LAST BEATNIK: A LIFE OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM.

A wonderful book.

Why couldn't I sell that?

Why couldn't I get an editor or an agent to read it?

I wrote it on unemployment.

I went to Potterfest. I went to see my dying brother in Vermont.

The two last side-trips of an immobilized hero.

Now, I'm not going anywhere.

I'm stuck in Point and Shoot.

A senior fellow at the prestigious left-wing think-tank the Point and Shoot Institute (PSI).

Writing white papers.

Q: I know what a white paper is.

A: They're actually black papers because my circumstances are so dark.

Black night is falling.

Q: It's always the darkest just before the pitch black.

What would you like to write before you die?

A: I'd like to drive from Key West to the Yucatan, along the Gulf Coast, and write about it.

Q: Make it up.

Look at maps.

Remember. Imagine.

Use your imagination.

You're a novelist. Imagine it.

A: The Coen brothers said Fargo was based on a true story.

Q: It wasn't. They made it up.

A: Mare Nostrum. Our Sea. What was that? The Mediterranean?

Q: Yes. You were thinking of the Gulf of Mexico. Your sea is the Gulf of Mexico.

A: The Gulf States. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas.

Q: Frederick Turner wrote A Border of Blue: Along the Gulf of Mexico from the Keys to the Yucatan.

A: Yes. That's what I'd like to do.

Drive from Key West to the Yucatan and write a book about it.

My recipe for Robalo Abodabo is from Gulf Coast Cooking.

From the Yucatan, actually.

Q: That's a good cookbook. It might be my favorite cookbook.

A: It's subtitle is Seafood From the Florida Keys to the Yucatan Peninsula.

Q: What are you going to call this book?

A: WORKING TITLE: GULF COAST STORIES.

Q: Is it going to be poems?

A: Mostly.

Q: May I make a few suggestions?

A: Please do.

Q: You started ON ASSIGNMENT asking (1) why can't I sell THE LAST BEATNIK, and (2) how can I write ON ASSIGNMENT if I don't sell THE LAST BEATNIK.

A: Probably.

Q: Do you have enough money to live on while you write WORKING TITLE: GULF COAST STORIES, or will you be able to find a contract writing job and write WORKING TITLE: GULF COAST STORIES before and after work?

A: Probably.

Q: My suggestion is, don't write (1) why can't I sell ON ASSIGNMENT, and (2) how can I write WORKING TITLE: GULF COAST STORIES if I don't sell ON ASSIGNMENT.

A: Okay.

Q: Just write it.

Or, better, write about how (3) I am a writer, and I write as I please, in any genre that suits me, including a new genre I invented myself, daily typewriting, and (2) if you don't like my book, don't read it. It's for people who like to read stuff like I write. Members of the Buzzard Cult, or Bottom Feeders. Benthos. Dustpan dredges, picking up dead trees, refrigerators, sunken ships, a giant squid with a scary beak, gnashing, gnashing, like the snapping pussy of doom, or a winking asshole, winking out and in, out and in. He wrapped his tentacles around the dredge mouth and then couldn't extricate them. It sucked him in and spit out minced squid. Shredded squid. Squid strips in their own ink.

A: Okay.

Q: And whenever you get feeling a little down, think of Walter Anderson, of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, who called himself Fortune's Favorite Child.

A: Okay.

Q: That's it.

Three rules.

Don't complain, don't compare yourself to other writers, and don't gloat. Although it is okay to be happy in your work. You chose it--why not be happy in your work.

A: Don't worry, be happy.

Q: Think you can do that?

A: I'll try.
Barbara Ehrenreich's new book is called Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

She is saying, "Wake up. It's worse than you think."

Q: You can say that.

A: She's saying my thinking wrong thoughts did not cause my unemployment, or cause me not to get a good job at age 70.

Q: They didn't even cause you to get fired for blogging in 2004, when you got fired for blogging for thinking about BloggerCon when you were supposed to be thinking about your day job.

A: Well, they might have had something to do with that.

Q: You don't know that.

It could have been something else entirely, they just wanted you to think it was your fault, so you wouldn't blame them.

A: Do you think?