I call myself America’s greatest writer, short for America’s greatest living unpublished, or underpublished writer, perhaps the greatest unpublished, or underpublished American writer ever.
I call what I write my stack. A stack is an unpublished, or underpublished shelf.
Sometimes I call my stack a heap. Heap big heap writer.
I also call my stack 40-Year Run.
40-Year Run now stands at 375 books. If I write 20 more, 40-Year Run will end up being 395 books.
Fewer than 400, but still, nothing to be sneezed at. I did the best I could with what I had.
The question is, (1) will I seize up and die before I finish writing 40-Year Run, (2) will I live, but finish the series without ever being published by New York, or (3) will I find a New York publisher, get the help I need, and be recognized for my achievement, while I am alive, and could use the help.
Double-Sawbuck (XX): Twenty Months of Daily Typewriting is a running chronicle of the ongoing story.
Carlos Baker subtitles his biography of Ernest Hemingway A Life Story.
I called three recent books FISHING STORIES, WRITING STORIES, and CHRISTMAS STORIES.
Sometimes I call 40-Year Run The Human Soap Opera, by analogy with Balzac’s Comédie humaine, because it’s so melodramatic. Operatic. Overwrought.
It isn’t overwrought if it’s your tit in the wringer.
I put the reader
in the writer’s seat. The catbird
seat. Red Barber used to live in
James Joyce said he was recreating life out of life.
I am recreating art out of art.
It’s only stories.
Don’t get your bowels in an uproar.
It’s all one story. 40 years long.
If I make it.
That’s the drama of it.