Friday, January 21

Q: What the ULA needed was a title to rally around.

They were long on manifestos and prescriptions but short on concrete examples of what they meant.

Do you think support from that quarter will coalesce around BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS?

A: It could.

I wasn't sure LitVision Press would actually publish it, until Patrick Simonelli agreed to.

I didn't want to get my hopes up.

So this is all new to me. Realizing I have a book coming out, and thinking about how to marshal support.

Q: But you are now thinking of the ULA as a possible supporter?

A: The ULA is a collection of fractious individuals, not all of whom agree on anything.

And any time you put yourself forward as an example, you engender envy and resentment in the wanna-bes. Resistance. Sabotage.

On the other hand, the ULA's beefs about the New York literary establishment are true, it's time for a change, movements like the audiences that supported Richard Brautigan and Charles Bukowski when they were establishing their reputation--not to mention the Beat Generation, or grunge bands--spring up.

It has happened before. Genuine outsider movements. It can happen again.

The underground is the main stream and the mainstream is sterile tributaries, offshoots, and dead lakes.

Q: Bukowski came into American from Europe. He was more popular as an American outlaw, in Europe, than he was in America.

A: Whoa. LitVision Press is talking about an initial print run-1A-of 150 copies. Let's not talk about translation yet.

Although I did submit "12 Short Reviews of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS" to Andrew Stevens, 3AM magazine, London, who said he no longer works there, and gave me the address of Andrew Gallix, in France.

Q: So you think of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS as an international book? World literature?

A: My book tour for Screed was bicoastal. Winter Park, Florida, and Ellensburg, Washington.

I could say BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS was international if I sold, or gave away a copy in England or France.

If you don't have a house, all stories are real estate stories. If you have a house, and a job to pay for it, they're transportation stories. How will I get to work? How will I get my kid to soccer practice?

If you're an underground writer, it's a time story. How can I dedicate my life to doing the best work I am capable of in a world that doesn't want it. Not having a paid-for house or a dependable car are just time-sinks. If the book you write is published, at all, that's not a happy ending so much as a grace note along the route: nothing has changed.

It won't make you self-supporting.

Q: Are you getting excited about having BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS accepted for publication?

A: The important thing is not to get excited. Yes, I am. The last book I appeared in was Ragged Lion, John Bennett's Festschrift for Jack Micheline.

Q: Will BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS do as well as Ragged Lion?

A: It might not. But it will do better than SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL, which is still unpublished.

Q: Do you know what happens when a garage band signs with a major label to get a better distro deal?

A: That's several books down the line, and may never happen, in my lifetime.

I figure the only distribution I can count on is people who see me and ask me about the book, people who order the book through The Daily Bulletin, people who read a review and order it from LitVision Press, direct, and people who buy it between sets at Dread Clampitt gigs. Also spot sales at book-signings, readings, conferences, writing clinics, and the like.

Q: You'll do those?

A: I have. I will. I am a total professional.

Q: How far will you go?

A: Garza Brothers Bait Company, Medart, Florida.

Louis XVI's hobby was locksmithing,
which, given the difficulty he
and Marie Antoinette had impregnating
the queen, gave rise to ribald jokes
among the peasantry about the key,
that is, the king, not being able
to find the keyhole. BUKOWSKI NEVER
DID THIS is a roman-à-clef, avec
son clef. Like Elgar's Enigma Variations.
Brew called it "Variations on Enema Vérité."

Watching the preparations for President Bush's inauguration,
I think of the Court of Louis Seize, partying at Versailles,
while the peasants do not have enough bread to eat.
They gather twigs. Yeats says, " Some burn damp faggots,
others may consume/The entire combustible world in one small room."
Does the man of hubris never realize that spiking the ball in the end zone
fucks up your karma? Are they always surprised to hear
the rattle of the guillotine?

Dear John:

LitVision Press has asked to publish BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF AN UNDERGROUND WRITER AND HIS FAMILY.

I wonder if you'd write an introduction to the book for me.

The last book-length book I had published was Forty, 17 years ago.

That's longer than Jack Kerouac went between The Town and the City and On the Road, and then Kerouac had to make the changes Viking Press wanted to get On the Road published.

Maybe that's what took me longer. I wouldn't make the changes Viking Press wanted.

My strategy was, "Let them sweat," or, "Let the mountain come to Mahomet."

Gerald Locklin said Bukowski had "the most freedom of any published writer in American literary history." I have more freedom than Bukowski, by remaining unpublished, or underpublished.

That is, exercising my freedom has kept me unpublished, or underpublished.

It's not just you I take for granted when I call myself unpublished, or underpublished, John. I take for granted Crowbar, Roger Jackson, Jeff Potter, a score of little magazine editors, including Partick Kelly, the first.

What have you done for me lately? A writer is a suckhole of need.

My grandparents, my mother, Brenda and the boys, Larry and Hazel Schlueter.

Anyhow, I am excited about this book.

The ULA needs a prodeck to rally around, instead of manifestos and prescriptions, and implying that I beat Bukowski in a fair fight will enrage the small press writers who think that they are the rightful heir. Guy Lit should piss a few feminists off, too.

I can't wait for it to hit those bastions of free expression and openness to ideas the University Town.

I only myself alone am escaped to tell.

All best,

Jack

Bryan: A small press in California is going to publish a book of mine, and I wondered if you'd like to do the cover.

The publisher--actually, the Marketing department--has the final say, and sometimes they have their own ideas, but if you want to do something I'll show it to him.

I'll bring a copy of the MS to The Red Bar Sunday so you can read it and see what you think.

He says "color, not too cartoony."

If it doesn't work out, at least you got to read the book before it was published. (Duke read it on the Internet.)


Jack Saunders