Novel

Tuesday, February 22

BOOK SIGNING Friday, April 25, 4-7 pm Tattered Pages Books & Espresso Bar 2807 Crawfordville Hwy., Crawfordville, FL

Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--Tattered Pages, Crawfordville's premier bookstore and espresso bar, perhaps Wakulla County's premier bookstore and espresso bar, ran an ad for a book signing of Jack Rudloe's Potluck in The Wakulla News, Wakulla County's premier newspaper, perhaps Wakulla County's only newspaper. The ad showed a picture of the cover of the book. The picture was cropped, so the marijuana leaf that covers the lower lefthand half of the book cover looks like the tip-end of the tentacles of the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, reaching out for a hapless shrimp boat. Perhaps the squid will wreck the boat, like Moby-Dick, the white whale in Herman Melville's eponymous novel, smashed the Pequod, a whaling ship, to smithereens.

Maybe it's the pinchers of the man-ant, or mant, in Matinee, reaching out to pinch Cathy Moriarty's ass.

Potluck doesn't claim to be Moby-Dick, but it's a good yarn of adventure on the high seas, dodging pirates, the Colombian Navy, the U. S. Coast Guard, and the Florida Marine Patrol. The guy who runs Posey's in St. Marks told Rudloe, "I know all the characters in this book-- including the ones you invented."

The back cover has blurbs by Randy Wayne White, Winston Groom, Bailey White, and Joe Hutto. I'd read anything any of those people recommend, even if I hadn't already read all six of Rudloe's nonfiction books, and liked them.

Those books are being reissued by Great Outdoors Publishing Company. Search for the Great Turtle Mother, Rudloe's last book (1995), will be available at the book signing. Or at Gulf Specimen Lab, in Panacea, where Rudloe has been fighting the good fight against the people who want to destroy Paradise for 35 years. Actually, since 1965.

Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--Brew was back from his trip to Panacea.

He had driven over from Panama City to interview Jack Rudloe, write a review of his latest book, from Out Your Backdoor Press, Potluck.

Disclosure: Out Your Backdoor Press has reprinted several of Brew's books and may publish one, one day. It could happen.

Brew planned to stop in at The Wakulla News, on his way back, introduce himself to the editor, Stacie Phillips, and see if she was interested in looking at his review of Potluck, then stop at Tattered Books, in Crawfordville, and introduce himself to the owner, Laura Gentry, interview her, about what it's like to run an independent bookstore in Crawfordville, Florida, the county seat of Wakulla County.

The Wakulla News, Wakulla County's only newspaper, makes it on the contract to print all the county legal notices. Plus of course the ad revenue, and subscriptions, and newsstand sales. But the legals keep the paper afloat.

Stacie Phillips said she'd look at anything Brew sent her. She said to keep it under 500 words. At first, she was suspicious, and asked Brew if Rudloe had put him up to it, but he said no, it was his own idea.

Disclosure: Art Brew is a nom de plume, or nom de guerre. My real, street-cred name is Jack Saunders. I don't always give it out because I don't want to be hassled by vigilantes who disagree with me, politically.

Brew was doing it out of a spirit of collegiality, fraternity, writers had to help each other, when they could. If Randy Wayne White, Winston Groom, Bailey White, and Joe Hutto could blurb Rudloe, so could Brew.

Brew bought a copy of The Wakulla News, to examine the content, see what kind of competition he was up against. What kind of hard-hitting investigative reporters were covering the County Commission meetings.

Laura Gentry said she was planning a book-signing for Rudloe, for Friday, and would have, in addition to Potluck, copies of Search for the Great Turtle Mother, which Great Outdoors Publishing Co. was reprinting.

Brew asked her how business was and she said she was holding on, but feared the coming of a proposed Wal Mart store would cut into her sales. Brew sympathized with the pressures independent bookstore owners were under, from chains, who could under-price them. The chains would not have a section of Florida books, which they would hand-sell, as she had, or arrange a book-signing for a local author, as she did. Barnes & Noble would not even stock Potluck, because they said it was not competitive with similar books in its category.

One of their acceptance criteria is the promotion plan, and budget, of the publisher, and a small publisher like Out Your Backdoor Press was eliminated by definition.

One of the assumptions underlying the theory of competitive markets is easy, and equal, access, to the market, but in reality, small press books, independently produced, are frozen out by large, corporate publishers, conglomerate booksellers, and book reviewers in the media of mass communication, working in cahoots with each other. At least, all singing to the same sheet of music. "Beasts of England" it was, in Animal Farm.

Although all of Rudloe's books had been reviewed, previously, and he had been on Today, and Good Morning, America, to talk about them, when he switched to Pineapple Press, a regional publisher with no advertising budget, to speak of, for his last book, the reviews dried up completely.

These are not things it is smart for a writer to complain about, and the general reader doesn't care, as long as she gets her beach book to read, to find out what to buy, so she can stay at the keen cutting edge of consumerism in our culture.

When Brew got home, and went to write his review, he saw an ad for the book-signing, in The Wakulla News, and the picture of the cover of the book had been cropped so that the tip-end of marijuana leaf that takes up the whole lower lefthand part of the cover looked like the pincher of the mant, or man-ant monster reaching out to pinch Cathy Moriarty's ass in Matinee, the B-movie thriller about the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the horror movie about B-movie thrillers, or the comedy about horror movie director John Goodman and his assistant Cathy Moriarty and a mant.

Brew fell out laughing.

Did they not know what pot-smuggling was in Wakulla County? Would the citizens of Wakulla County think Potluck was about a church supper if the paper didn't show a marijuana leaf?

What about the person who bought the book thinking it was about church suppers, only to find out it was about marijuana smuggling?

Brew wrote a piece called "You Can Tell a Lot About a Community by a Book's Cover," with the two illustrations, side by side, and posted it at his web site, roman-feuilleton.com.

No point in even sending a copy to The Wakulla News, Tattered Pages, Jack Rudloe, Out Your Backdoor Press, or Great Outdoors Publishing Co., except as a professional courtesy.

We who are about to die, salute you. We who are about to stab ourselves in the head, like a scorpion.

Apropos of mant, Brenda said Brew had the basic personality of a fire ant.

Reading his book, you could see him turn on himself, sabotage himself, perform hara-kiri on himself.

Ooh, that smarts.