My idea was to buy a fat notebook and record the whole thing as it happened, then send in the notebook for publication--without editing. That way, I felt the eye and mind of the journalist would be functioning as a camera. The writing would be selective and necessarily interpretive--but once the image was written, the words would be final; in the same way that a Cartier-Bresson photograph is always (he says) the full-frame negative. No alterations in the darkroom, no cutting or cropping, no spotting...no editing.
Hunter S. Thompson, The Curse of Lono
Brew edited his copy before he posted it at The Daily Bulletin, for
typos, spelling errors, pace, coherence.
Did it flow? Did it go with what
came before it? Did it suggest what would come next? Would what came next be a
complete surprise, out of left field?
Life provided the raw material, and
life was accidental, in the sense governed by chance.
He got an email
from his publisher saying he had lost his job and had to move.
He wasn't
sure his old computer would work with the new software he had been using.
Brew felt sorry for his publisher. He knew what the man was going through. How
frustrating it would be. He had been through it himself.
His publisher said
he was still going to publish Brew's book, and still planned to attend Zine Fest
in Philly.
* * *
This was a first for Brew.
He'd had a small press publisher who was
broke before, and he'd had a small press publisher who was out of work before, but
he'd never had a publisher who had had a comfortable day job and lost it just when
Brew's book was fixing to go to the printers.
That would give Brew something
to write about.
It would be like running a marathon with no shoes, or running
a marathon with walking pneumonia.
The man of hubris is punished by the gods.
Who told Brew's publisher to be a publisher? What was he--a smart-ass?
* * *
Who told Brew to be a writer? Apropos of smart-asses.
Who did he
think he was--The Lone Ranger?