Novel

Wednesday, February 16

BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS was about combining writing, work, and family.

Brew got a job as a technical writer, for a defense contractor, in Panama City, lost it for blogging at work, got a job as a grantwriter, at a community behavioral health care center, in DeFuniak Springs, and made it through six months probation. But he must have blogged at work as a grantwriter, too, because, in a year, he wrote 18 books.

Not to harp on the number of books Brew writes.

But now, several months later, Brew is worn out.

It's a 90-minute drive to work each way. Brew's car is an Oldsmobile sedan with 175,000 miles on it. Gas is $2 a gallon.

At first, he could work from home a couple of days a week, but now, he had to come in, to show himself, and coordinate what he was doing with other people, people he was writing grants for.

The front office got the idea Brew was a slacker.

This made the front office mad.

This is not a happy time to be a community behavioral health care center, funding-wise. With faith-based colored preachers who have votes to deliver out there competing with you for money. The Republicans are your friend, Reverend Pastor.

Or faith-based peckerwood preachers.

Anyhow, Brew woke up one morning and realized he couldn't do it anymore. He was wore slap out. He needed a break.

At the same time, he had a book coming out.

He was an author. A published author.

He remembered seeing his old dentist, Doc Moore, at the post office, when Screed came out.

Doc Moore asked him why he wasn't at work. At the bank.

"I left the bank," Brew said. "I have a new book coming out. I'm going to be a writer."

"You'll find something," Doc Moore said.

"I'm not looking for anything," Brew said. "I'm going to be a writer. I have a new book out."

"You'll find something," Doc Moore said.

Brew did find something.

He spent 2½ years at the house and then got a job with IBM. A good job.

He would find something this time, too. After he had spent six months promoting his new book and writing a book about being a published author.

Being a published author is pretty special.

It was really special after you had fallen into some bad habits of complaining about how hard it was to get published, how special you were, what craven little chickenshits your rival writers were. Who wants to read that?

Brew was lucky to have a publisher, a supporting wife, who believed in him, a handful of steadfast readers, the Buzzard Cult.

Brew went to a book fair Saturday and nobody asked him what the Buzzard Cult was.

Brew calls the he or she reader it.

Brew was giving away a Buzzard Cult membership certificate on parchment signed "Art `Home' Brew, CW." For cult writer.

He was also giving away a Blaster Al drawing of Jack the Raver, with the stub of a pencil for a nose and slobber running down his chin. Suitable for framing.

The whole time Brew was sitting at his booth, he thought, This is the life.

This is what I should be doing.

Then do it. What's stopping you?

Travis McGee, salvage consultant, took his retirement in stages.

He would build up a nest egg, then take some time off, only going back to work retrieving valuables for clients when his money ran low.

That's what Brew did.

He had spent a year at the house at Tulane, 2½ years at the house when Screed came out, 2½ years at the house after he quit IBM because the job was too big a waste of his time, when he published Evil Genius and Open Book and wrote Forty, 2½ years at the house during the Reagan-Bush recession, when he went tango uniform, and lost the house on Martin Lake. Tits-up. And a year at the house when Suent Scientific laid him off, before he went to work as a technical writer and wrote BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS.

In that last year, his sabbatical year, Brew wrote 24 books. A personal best.

The scroll Jack Kerouac typed On the Road on is on tour, at Iowa, in a 120'-long case, a little wider than a sheet of paper.

In Sideswipe, when Hoke Moseley has his nervous breakdown, his ex-partner, Bill Henderson, attributes it to combat fatigue.

Henderson has Hoke's partner, Ellita Sanchez, who is on maternity leave, drive Hoke up to Singer Island, across Blue Heron Bridge from Riviera Beach, to stay with his father, who owns a motel, El Pelicano Arms, he lets Hoke manage. Hoke is going to resign from the Miami police force, where he is a homicide detective, simplify his life, and never leave the island again.

He is burned out on investigating cold cases and reading supplemental reports.

In the year Art Brew has worked since he went back to work, following his last sabbatical, he has written 18 books, worked at a full-time job for five months, as a technical writer, been fired for blogging, found another job, as a grant writer, and worked at that for six months.

He is burned out.

He is no longer a sharp tool for the company.

He has lost his keen cutting edge.

He needs a rest, a change, a nervous breakdown. He has post-traumatic stress disorder.

What was stressful about writing grants?

The deadlines, his lack of firsthand knowledge of the subject, the dependence on others, who hated to write, and did not come through, with what he needed from them, the backroom politics of grant evaluation, the office politics at work, the way his agency worked on the cheap, and, finally, the way management talked to him.

He just didn't like the way they talked to him.

At the same time, Brew's own writing, came, whether he wanted it to or not, unbidden and unstanchable. He couldn't shut it off. It rode him like a hag, and made him neglect what he was being paid to do in favor of what nobody seemed to value but him, personally, himself.

He needed the income, didn't he? The term life insurance policy, the health insurance? To pay the mortgage on the house, and in case something happened to him?

If he ever decided he didn't need the income, the insurance, or if anything ever came of his writing, you wouldn't want to be stationed between Brew and the exit. You might get trampled.

Then Brew sold a book.

Then Brew realized he could cash in the annuity he got when Suent Scientific laid him off, take one full year of his retirement now, and get another job a year from now, before his money ran out, could spend a year promoting the book he was publishing and write a book about doing that.

The wreck of his life hadn't totaled him, he had only been sideswiped.

It was a close call, but burning out showed him he needed to take ownership of his life, as President Bush recommended, liquefy his assets, while they were still there, and act as though the hour were here.

Now is the time.