Diary

Thursday, February 24 (cont'd)

The first thing people do after they challenge your YU Press badge--what's that, like...Talon News?-- is ask you the name of your book.

And these are readers, at a book show.

They haven't heard of Charles Bukowski, underground writer, or his book about touring Europe, Shakespeare Never Did This.

They might remember the movie Barfly, but they didn't know it was a comedy.

A book is something promoted on Oprah Winfrey. You know, like a makeover, or a miracle diet. A hot new action sitcom. A plastic surgeon, a fitness guru, or Dr. Phil.

I thought Oprah was a stupid name until I heard Condoleeza. Submarine sailors get used to the smell of diesel fuel and recycled farts. I don't know whether to call it odor fatigue, mission creep, or defined-down deviance (DDD), but discovering a writer like Bukowski is cause for celebration. It's like catching a coelacanth. The typology must be revised.

And if he writes about race, too....

From: Jack Saunders
To: Ann Fisher-Wirth
Subj: booksALIVE 2005!

Nice to see you at booksALIVE 2005!

I was a local writer with a forthcoming book. From a small press. I introduced myself and began speaking to you about Oxford, Mississippi, but we were interrupted, so I left to man my booth while you sold a book.

I wasn't thinking of the Oxford of Faulkner, but the Oxford of John Grisham, Larry Brown, and Tom Franklin.

Picture the red high-heeled pump heading for the 55 gal oil drum of rejection slips in Big Bad Love.

Anyhow, I mention Bob Graham at The Daily Bulletin.

I am writing an account of quitting my job to promote my book and write a book about doing that. DRAGGING UP: ART BREW GIVES HIMSELF AN LDA GRANT (LAST DITCH ATTEMPT).

Hunter S. Thompson just died.

I think it was Tom Waits who sings about the Last Ditch Attempt Saloon.

I cashed in my retirement to give myself a year to write.

An adventure story.

Q: Fuck Hunter S. Thompson. Nobody told him to spoil his talent with drugs and alcohol.

A: You live by the sword, you die by it. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

Q: Bukowski said, "I'm not in the kitchen, I'm in the oven."

A: Bukowski kept writing. He had a strong constitution.

Q: Did that really happen, with Governor Graham?

A: Yes. I put it in a screenplay I submitted to the Florida Screenwriter's Competition, but I didn't win.

I used to look down on politicians, but now I think there are good ones and bad ones, like everything else, and Bob Graham was a good one.

An old Miami High Stingaree.

I'm an old Seacrest Seahawk.

When you drove all the way down to Key West to play, those conchs would beat you to death, with a home town referee, under the backboards.

My brother Bill played high school basketball against George Mira.

Think of how Haydon Burns got rich off Walt Disney.

Bob Graham never did that.

Q: Someone said Hunter S. Thompson was a father of blogging.

A: Thompson was a journalist.

He never wrote a word, except for letters, he didn't get paid to write. Or never wrote anything he didn't sell, eventually. Even The Rum Diaries sold, eventually.

He learned his craft, by working at it.

Most of what he wrote was reportage. Topical, and under a deadline.

Some of it lapsed over into literature because he was a character in his own stories.

I prefer Huckleberry Finn to The Gilded Age, though.

I wish he had written more fiction.

But I would not consider Thompson an outsider, as most bloggers were, until the blog became fashionable.

The blog is reportage.

I use the Internet to write novels. To write series of related novels. Because I can't find a publisher for them anywhere else.

If I had had a publisher, like Bukowski had Black Sparrow Press, I would probably never have written so much online.

I wrote online because I had to. It was the only way to get my work out.

Or it was a faster, cheaper way than self-published pamphlets.

Q: Do you think Bukowski Never Did This will break you out?

A: No. I think DRAGGING UP will break me out.

Q: Why?

A: The cover. Black McGoon and Miss Weekiwachee and the creature, up there in the upper righthand corner, getting ready to peel off and dive-bomb down on us, like a P-47 Thunderbolt.

Call it Jug because it uses so much gas.

Me down there with my hands tied up by a split-tail, smiling at the camera.

It's just harder to do.

Write literature.

It's hard to create a body of work and invent a form to present it in. Over the course of a writing life. To hold body and soul together while you do that.

It may be the hardest thing a person can set himself to do. It's certainly among the hardest.

Q: Write literature?

A: Write literature.

Write world literature from Point and Shoot, Florida.

Instead of Florida Ramble, the best you can do is a side-trip to Wakulla Springs.

Q: You have a publisher, now.

A: Yes, and I'm grateful for it.

I'm going to do all I can to make my book a success.

The fact that it's published is a victory. Whatever happens to it.

I bought the cover art from Bryan Hand. I can use it however suits me.

Maybe I'll wait and use it for the next book. POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT.

Q: Is that the book with the working title 258?

A: Yes. The third book of the trilogy History Repeats Itself, the First Time as Tragedy, the Second Time as Farce.

Q: What's the third time?

A: Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.