Wake Up: Christmas in Parker
IT ALL COUNTS
TOWARDS 40. December 2 –
December 17. 35,000 words. In IT ALL COUNTS TOWARDS 40, I go from an
Olympia portable typewriter, a sheet of carbon paper, and a yellow second-sheet
to writing series of related books and posting them on the worldwide web,
daily, as I write them, and responding to reader comments, in the book. When the book starts, I am a newlywed. At the end, I am on social security, retired,
but looking for work. I am the
houseperson in the home. My wife
works. We keep the grandchildren, on
holidays. I was a headliner at the
Underground Literary Alliance (ULA) Legends of the Underground readings,
off-off-Broadway, in 2001, and John Bennett called me, “Prolific, and probably the most overlooked writer in America
today.” Brenda and I watch Julie & Julia, on DVD, then buy the
book, Julie & Julia, and read
it. I had read My Life in France, but not Julie
& Julia. We cook. Brenda keeps backyard chickens and has a
hay-bale garden. In Parker, Florida. At her old home place, where we live. We’re across the street from Parker Bayou,
from where her uncles used to seine-fish, and shrimp, in the Gulf of
Mexico. Her brothers worked
on fishing boats. Our sons fished. Now they are bluegrass musicians. The occupations are related. Bluegrass musician,
commercial fisherman, writer. It’s a
feast or a famine. Always
scuffling. It all counts towards 40.
THE AMERICAN DREAM. December 18 – December 24. 14,000 words.
Mike Palacek sends me a copy of Speak
English, in which the hero goes on tour promoting Wake the Eff Up From the American Dream. I see that IT ALL COUNTS TOWARDS 40 and THE
AMERICAN DREAM form a series of two books called Wake Up! Or a book in two
parts. What is the American dream? Well, it’s a pipedream. It’s Jack Kerouac waking up with Gilbert
Millstein’s review of On the Road in
the New York Times. It’s John Martin giving Charles Bukowski an
allowance to quit his job at the post office, stay at home, and write Post Office. It’s Julie Powell writing a blog about
cooking all the recipes in Mastering the
Art of French Cooking in one year and having Amy Adams play her in the
movie with Meryl Streep. Wake up! You live in Parker, Florida. You are unemployed. Your money is running out. On the other hand, you are at the house,
writing. You are living the dream. This is it, the old pulp-ghetto ideal Blaster
Al wrote about, “…to do a lot of fundamentally rapid work and use a lot of
different pseudonyms and not make a dime.”
Thoreau says to put the foundation under the dream. You have had the dream. Now put the foundation under it. Brick by brick. Would you hit a woman with a baby, no, I’d
hit her with a brick. e. e. cummings
said. It’s supposed to be hard for a poet.
Poetry—are you nuts? You chose
it. You God Damn complainer. You dirty phony saint and martyr. The American dream is Hemingway winning the
Nobel Prize for The Old Man and the Sea
and not being able to finish A Moveable
Feast. Not being about to write a
beginning, an end, or a title. All he
could come up with is, “This book is fiction.”
This book is fiction. This book
is literary criticism. It’s literary
theory. Why did this book take the form
it took? Instead of some other form. It’s a novel.
A novel is hard work. One
soldiers on. It isn’t finished. It keeps going. That’s the thing about a novel. It keeps going. Looking
for Bigfoot turns into The
Progrrressive Avenger turns into Speak
English. IT ALL COUNTS TOWARD 40
turns into THE AMERICAN DREAM turns into WAKE UP: CHRISTMAS IN PARKER. We celebrate Christmas with the children and
grandchildren at the Pinkston Lodge in Grayton
Beach. Jennifer’s mother and sisters are there,
Gerald and Del.
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