I told Larry I wanted to buy Michael Connelly's
new book, The Closers, when it was released, May 16, so we stopped at Octavia
Books, on a trip by bicycle to Whole Foods Market at Arabella Station, on Magazine
Street.
Larry introduced me to the owner, Tom Lowenburg, and told him I had
a new book coming out, in June.
"What's it called?" he asked.
"Bukowski Never Did This," I said.
I could see that the
title meant something to him. Some people, it doesn't. They give you a blank look.
A shibboleth. You can either say the word or you can't.
"What's it about?"
he asked.
"Trying to live and work in Florida," I said. "Trying
to hold back progress. Stop development."
He said he had gone on vacation
to Apalachicola recently, and showed me a book, Vanishing Florida, by David
Warner.
He mentioned eating oysters at an oyster bar in Indian Pass.
Indian Pass Trading Post and Raw Bar.
There are pottery types named
after Indian Pass and Money Bayou, and Money Bayou is where black families traditionally
came to celebrate holidays like Memorial Day, or swim, in the summer.
Known
in Port St. Joe as Nigger Beach.
Black Tallahassee watercolor painter Eluster
Richardson has painted a Money Bayou scene.
You can buy a set of greeting cards with that picture on them, among others.
I bought a set.
Anyhow, today I went to Books-A-Million-I was short of cash,
in New Orleans-in Panama City, and bought a copy of Vanishing Florida, and
said to myself, "Boy, howdy--this is the sort of book that I would like to write."
So I will.
When Hazel asked Aaron Neville if he taught himself to yodel,
he said, "No, I just did it."
I don't suppose there's any place
to take lessons.
We all know how to write a book. Until school gets in the
way.
I guess that's the other thing Bukowski Never Did This was about.
Undoing the results of school.