Diary

Sunday, February 27 (cont'd)

From: Jack Saunders
To: Carissa Neff, Florida Literary Arts Coalition
Subj: Other Words Conference

Dear Carissa Neff:

I just looked up Richard Mathews in Google and got a hit on the Florida Literary Arts Coalition Conference of Little Magazines, Independent Publishers, and Writers, Other Words.

Is the conference held at the Williams Building, on campus, or at the Marriott Courtyard, on Apalachee Parkway?

Should I mail you a check, to register, or can I pay when I get there?

If I had known sooner, I would have proposed a panel on internet publishing, or offered to serve on one. I don't think I want book fair space because I want to mingle, and attend panels; besides, my in-press book is not available yet, and the old ones are shopworn.

I just attended booksALIVE 2005! at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City and only took an order for one forthcoming book. Although I gave several copies of the pamphlet 32 Short Reviews of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS, about that book, away.

I'll bring the pamphlet along, plus the pamphlet Writing the Great American Novel on the Worldwide Web.

I have been publishing my own work (with the help of friends) since 1976. I have published over 60 books on the web, although only 20 or so are up there now. I had loyalty oath and security clearance issues when I worked as a defense contractor.

Maybe I would have proposed a panel called Fired for Blogging.

Or Quitting Your Day Job.

My current book is called DRAGGING UP: ART BREW GIVES HIMSELF AN LDA GRANT (LAST DITCH ATTEMPT).

At The Daily Bulletin.

Q: You're not only feuding with NPR affiliates. You're feuding with the "10,000 sneering college writing instructors" who killed Jack Kerouac.

A: Roland Kirk called an album Reeds and Deeds. I could call a book FEUDS AND DUDES.

University writing programs are dude ranches.

Brenda raises funguses in her garden.

Rather, they volunteer. We just admire them.

Q: What's the white stuff?

A: Shredded paper from her office. Medical records. Mulch.

They ought to shred my manuscripts and shoot them out of a cannon.

Q: Why are you going to a book fair in Tallahassee?

A: To see all my friends. To meet new people. To get strange pussy.

To tell people about my book. Ask how to join their network, so I'll hear about events before they happen.

To lodge myself under their toenail, like a fungus.

A pinworm in the brain of the monster.

Q: The brain of the monster is an asshole.

A: Exactly. I'll write a story about the brain of the monster.

To write a story.

Q: Everybody there will be writing a story.

A: Good. We'll compare my story to theirs.

Patrick Simonelli decided to use a painting called "Calliope," by Stone Riley, on the front cover of Bukowski Never Did This.

I rewrote the back cover.

Deep within the hypnotic electronic hum of modern industrial efficiency is a claptrap mechanism poised to cold-cock the unwary. Thoreau set a trap, for example, and caught his own leg in it. What demon possessed me, that I behaved so well, he asked, rhetorically.

Art Brew thought he'd work just long enough to pay for his house, and then retire to write the great American novel, but the book had other ideas. It took the bit in its mouth and bolted.

Meanwhile, Brew was growing dependent on life insurance, health insurance, a regular paycheck. A security clearance, credit cards. The muse of poetry had turned into a steam-driven organ in an amusement park, loud and shrill, vibrating. Fast food and antacid tablets.

I decided to use Bryan Hand's painting for the front cover of DRAGGING UP.

I wrote something to go on the back cover.

When Art Brew quit his job, cashed in an annuity he rolled his retirement over into when Suent Scientific laid him off, and took a year off to be the houseperson in the home and write a book about promoting and selling the book he had coming out, Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and his Family, and writing and trying to sell DRAGGING UP: ART BREW GIVES HIMSELF AN LDA GRANT (LAST DITCH ATTEMPT), he was not rescuing Miss Weekiwachee from The Creature From the Black Lagoon, he was rescuing himself from negativity, gloom, and a job that was grinding his guts to glass. His palette lightened. He could wear a gimme cap with an anatomically correct boar hog on the front. Every day was casual Friday. Slacker Friday. GDCV. Grace à Dieu, c'est Vendredi. You know what they call a Big Mac in France? Le Big Mac. No more fast food and antacid tablets for Art Brew. He was the chef.