Saturday, January 22

Q: ART BREW'S DAILY could almost be two books.

In the first half, you founder about, trying for find a sponsor for your Schwitters columns, and in the second, you are getting your head around having a book accepted.

The Schwitters columns are almost an afterthought.

A: Yes.

If you're writing a diary, and something happens, in your life, it tends to grab your attention.

But there are continuities to the diary.

The diary will go on after the book comes and goes.

Other books will come and go.

This one is split.

Before and after.

Q: Before and after what?

A: The big door prize.

Q: Does Bush have the votes? To push his domestic agenda through? And fight a war in Iraq and Iran both? With a worn-out Army?

A: I believe he thinks he does.

He thinks so because that's all he's told. He doesn't hear otherwise.

He's going to be shocked, shocked, to find out there's opposition to his policies.

Principled opposition. Not just the usual suspects. Not just the haints and dragons he's made up. John Kerry bayonetting Vietnam babies. Because he's a Communist.

Q: He's going to find out how much shit there is in his package.

A: Nobody slides.

Q: Robert Birnbaum interviewed Russell Banks at indentitytheory.com.

A: I read that.

Q: They talked about why people become writers.

A: Yes. Banks said that some people become writers because they want to be celebrities.

If they don't make it, they do something else. Something easier.

He said some people who don't make it stick with it because doing it makes you smarter. In a way few other professions do.

You examine your motives, and test your insights out on other people.

You keep learning. You grow, spiritually. Like a monk, or a healer.

Eventually, you may make it. You may not. But by then you're hooked, and some writers reach a point where making it is no longer the goal, doing it is.

Getting better at it. Simpler, cleaner, purer.

You are leading an authentic life.

Whereas all but a few of those who made it have turned into hucksters. They are shills for their careers.

You can't fake what you're feeling, and this honesty makes you special. Many people, the higher they rise the less honest they can be, not the more honest. Whereas a writer is judged by it. You judge yourself by it. What would be the point of cheating yourself?

Q: Aren't inauthentic people threatened by it?

A: They are. They do their best to stamp it out, because it shames them.

Q: Some people are phonies, surrounded by yes-men and asskissers. An authentic person makes them uncomfortable.

A: I've noticed that.

Q: How are you doing at work?

A: I got behind.

I'm trying to catch up.

Meet deadlines.

It's a chronic problem, for a writer. Or for me.

Last job, I got fired.

But every job I've had, I've gotten behind.

I just got up. It's 4:30 a.m. I'm trying to get an hour's work in before I drive to work.

I booted up. I checked my mail. I went to my home page.

There are two pictures at my home page, one from when I worked at Lucent Technologies, and wrote on the side, and one from when I worked at IBM, and wrote on the side.

I was behind then, too. Agonizing over how I'd catch up.

Q: You did catch up. You always do.

A: I was younger then. It's easier to do at 40, or at 60.

I've lost a step.

Q: Just go out and do what you can.

A: I will, thank you.

Wish me luck.

Q: Good luck.

A: I'm scared. I'm like the grasshopper who fiddled while the ants stored up food.

Now winter is coming.

My life passes before my eyes every morning, like Jack Neff.

Q: Just think of the postal authorities calling Bukowski in and busting his chops.

It all turned out okay for Bukowski.

A: He's Bukowski. I'm Jack Saunders.

He lived in a tenement. I'm trying to buy a house.

All he had to buy was beer and cigarettes. I have expenses. Bills. A monthly nut to make.

Q: You can do it.