Diary

Friday, March 4 (cont'd)

Q: Oh, I see. You're writing a day ahead, so you'll have something to post while you're out of town, at the convention.

A: Yes. And if I don't post tomorrow, I stayed over for an extra day.

Bleeto didn't have no tail, he had a very short tail.

There has to be some lag for production.

Q: One of the things your books are about is Bleeto's tail. How did it come to be so short.

A: Or so long, open-ended, and continuous. Reiterative.

Q: Like the Eddas.

A: Is that the Elder, or the Younger Eddas?

It's both. You see.

Poetry and prose. And letters.

Q: I notice you don't have any query letters in DRAGGING UP. To publishers or agents.

A: No, I have a publisher.

We'll see how Bukowski Never Did This does.

Then we'll figure out what to do next.

Q: But Bukowski Never Did This is the first book of a three-book series.

A: Yes. History Repeats Itself, the First Time as Comedy, the Second Time as Farce.

They are about combining writing, work, and family; quitting my job to write full-time, and be the houseperson in the home, with Brenda's ungrudging support; and whatever happens next.

The book sinks, the book floats, the book leaps out of the water like a mullet, or rallies, like skipjack caught in the pocket, storms the opening, and makes its skidoo.

I worked with a Korean sergeant once who had a Korean-English slang phrasebook with expressions in it like, "Let's make our skidoo."

He would blend things like "Watch your step" and "Stay on your toes" and come up with "Watch your toes." Like confusing tactical and strategic, or imply and infer.

Dr. Phelps used to combine "Far and away" and "By and large" and say "By far and large."

But he wasn't a Korean sergeant. He was a PhD.

Q: That must have impressed the class.

A: Impressin' the girls. Hot licks. All that jazz.

Q: Norman Mailer says writers go into writing to get lots of strange pussy. Are you worried about the book conference this weekend? Immobilized hero novel groupies throwing themselves at you?

A: No, I am clad in the breastplate of righteousness.

I will stand, and in the evil day, withstand.

Norman Mailer writes shopping and fucking novels.

Q: And shitting novels. Don't forget Ancient Evenings.

A: And shitting novels. I bet a good psychologist could tell you how he was potty-trained.

No enema for you, you naughty boy.

Although I might get in trouble for throwing rubbers filled with water out of hotel windows.

Women would proposition Walker Percy.

He turned them down.

Graciously.

A book tour isn't about getting strange pussy. It isn't even about selling books. It's about having something to write about. Having an experience to write about. Mobilizing yourself.

I am agile, hostile, and mobile, as Jake Gaither says.

Apes can brachiate faster than forests can recede.

Q: You can certainly write faster than a publisher can publish.

A: I'm my own publisher to slow myself down.

When I lived in Fort Walton Beach,
and got a job in Tallahassee,
before I found a house to rent, a hovel
on the edge of historic colored town,
I stayed with friends, during the work week,
driving home on Friday afternoon and coming back
on Sunday morning. I would stop at a package store
in Freeport--Walton County had no blue laws--and get
two tall six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Red necks,
white socks. I would arrive in Tallahassee drunk.
Somewhere between Hosford and Bristol, on Highway 20,
I would pick up the jazz show on the college radio station.
I remember hearing Cecil Taylor once, and thinking,
Man, this is really living, ain't it? This was before I got sacked
and filed a grievance, blacklisting myself in a company town.
Shrewd move, Ex-Lax. Like writing a "novel" comprised of
letters, poems, and prose vignettes. Postcards. From Nowhere, Florida.
jpg files and ordered headings. Dated entries, like some kind of Internet writer.
Advice to the lovelorn, the vocationally disenchanted. You are not alone.
We all want to be a rock star. Many good lookings are waiting for you.

Gordon Anderson
Paragon House
1925 Oakcrest Avenue, Suite 7
St. Paul, MN 55113

Dear Gordon Anderson:

Enclosed find the first chapter and table of contents of SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL: A CELEBRATION, OR, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ACADEMY.

The book is complete. It ran 333 pages in manuscript, double-spaced, and contains 37 pictures, as jpg files in MS Word.

I also enclose a description of the book, my current CV, some comments on my work, and a discussion of two similar books, Angela's Ashes and Are You Somebody?

SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL: A CELEBRATION is subtitled OR, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ACADEMY because my intention was to cross over from the underground to the mainstream, and the academy, in the guise of supporting artists in their careers, opposed me at every turn, because they didn't like what I had to say, about the academy.

This is not unheard of in science, or in belles-lettres either. Although it's rare.

Many people run out of steam before they write 250 books. They get disappointed and quit.

Would you like to see the manuscript?

Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 10501
Panama City, FL 32404

Angela's Ashes. Frank McCourt is an old fart from a large family who struggled to make it in America, and did. Make it as a writer. There's a lot of humor in his book, and not a trace of self-pity. He illustrates what A. J. Liebling called the myth of the natural, or man who does something at tournament-class level without learning how. I have excelled in my field, underground writing, but I had to teach myself, and endure years of hardship and disappointment. SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL is my 250th book, without selling a word to New York or Hollywood. And yet, I'm not bitter either. The very next book I wrote, I sold. To an underground press.

Are You Somebody? Nuala O'Faolain wrote a book about how the patronage is handed out. It was honest and self-deprecating, and rang a chord with readers internationally: Yes, it's that way in my tribe, too. It's as hard for a woman to balance home life and career as it is for a man, and we all have parents who come to be a burden, even if we don't all have children. I had children. They ate me alive for 25 years, but are now grown, and Brenda and I can go to hear them play bluegrass music, professionally. Brenda and I can have an old age together. In fact, we're having one.