Thursday, January 12 (cont'd)

Q: Why do you think you've been ignored by the industry?

A: I think it's because what I say about them is true, and they don't have an answer for it.

If I really am a nutcase, an embittered crank, a loony tune, they have nothing to fear from my questions, or observations; but I am airing dirty linen, exposing insider secrets to the open light of day. They have something to hide. Something shameful. I tear the doors loose from the doorjambs.

Q: Despite your criticisms and being ignored, your work also contains letters that you write to publishers that ask them to consider your books for print. Why? Why not just keep publishing your stuff yourself?

A: To get good at the craft, you have to work at it full-time. To stretch. I want to develop as a writer. To grow.

Success corrupts but failure limits, or narrows. You become preoccupied with your conditions of production.

Any writer needs a certain amount of help, even a bad writer. When you don't get it and writers you consider inferior do, it's frustrating. It can even affect your grip on reality. "Why her, and not me?" "If that's what they want, I am doomed."

If you can't earn a living writing you have to work full-time and write before and after work and at work. This is not the ideal way to plan, execute, and see a project through to fruition.

As an artist you would like to earn your way. I only want to make a technical writer's wages, writing. But I want to make it writing, not working as a technical writer and interrupting my work to attend meetings, meet deadlines, suffer fools gladly.

I want to reach as many readers as I can. I can't do that publishing my stuff myself. You need a publisher, to do that.

I think my stuff will sell. I don't think it's noncommercial, I think it's anticommercial, and whenever that sneaks past the gatekeeper it creates a succès fou. It sells like hotcakes.

I believe I will find and editor or an agent who sees that.

But I could die before it happens.

And it's not easy because editors and agents with any sense are being frozen out, by corporate formulae, and the good ones have as much work as they can do without taking on new, untested clients. Needy clients. Clients past the prime age to start out.

Q: You've mentioned that, if you make it to the 40 year mark without selling a book that you'll stop writing. Is that an empty threat--especially when you say that you "wake up with the writing roaring in your head"?

A: It's an arbitrary date.

A person has to quit sometime.

I will have said all I need to say by then.

If the writing keeps coming I'll try to ignore it. I'll learn other ways to deal with it. I'll wander the streets, muttering in my beard, and sleeping in the bushes.

I see my powers failing by degrees. My energy, my stamina, my memory.

I'm wearing out, by attrition. It's a natural process.

One ages. One cuts back. One accepts.

Q: You've written that writers should tackle "subjects that matter in plain English" (Okay, I'm paraphrasing...). What subjects matter to you and what do you consider "plain English" given that your work contains slang, acronyms, and rich metaphors (e.g., Bush's War on Totoism)?

A: George Orwell said a writer should write "honestly and openly, about subjects that matter, in plain speech."

He was criticizing disingenuous writing, clever writing, writing intended to manipulate or deceive. He said the hallmark of political writing (and advertising) was "insincerity." The conscious intention to bamboozle, or hoodwink. That's dishonest, and has to be practiced in secret, has to rely on tricks.

I think subjects that matter are philosophical. "What is good and what is not good, Phaedrus? need we anyone to tell us?"

How do we know what's good and not good? On whom do we rely to tell us? Do they have an axe to grind?

How do we lead a principled life in a corrupt world? A life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust? In a world of hypocrisy, shortcuts, quid pro quo, and double-dealing?

I try to use whatever language suits my purpose. Plain is better than fancy, but you have to mix them up. Contrast calls attention to the text, makes people wake up and pay attention, like a turd in the punchbowl, or Edward Sapir's statement that, "All grammars leak."

Q: You often mention your "stack"--the more than 250 books you've authored. Yet, from what I've read of it, many of the same themes appear in several of your books. So, even though you've written more than 250 books, couldn't it also be said that you've been working on one book--the Jack Saunders story--with more than 250 chapters?

A: Fairly early on I saw that I was writing a Collected Works, or oeuvre complète, which I called, after Thoreau, the great long continuous book of my life.

I divide the books into series, metaseries, meta-metaseries, and 40-Year Run, my stack.

Series of books should be published as a boxed set.

At my web page, The Daily Bulletin, you can see how individual books in a series are related to other books in the series.

You could say that the books of my stack are like the chapters of a book.

Balzac's Comédie humaine was only 90 novels or novellas. My stack is already three times that long.

As Dizzy Dean said, "It isn't bragging if you do it."

When all is said and did and done (as Muhammad Ali said), I did it.

I divide the stack into series and the series into books, because you can't publish a stack, or even a series A book is a nice length. A book stands by itself.

Now, it will be related to the book before it and the book after it.

There will be repetition.

I even repeat some titles, not realizing I have used the title before.

In the alphabetical list of the titles of the books of my stack STAGE FOUR, STUDENT, and TRANSITION were used twice and VERNACULAR WRITER was used four times, once alone and three times with subtitles.

Malcolm Lowry saw his work as of a piece-the novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction.

He called it all The Voyage That Never Ends.

He said its structure was trochal, or circular. Start at the beginning, read until the end, then, not stop, but go back to the beginning and start over. Go through it all again.

Q: At the recent Philly zinefest, you gave a talk on (DIY) publishing to an audience of younger folks. What goes through your mind when you're sharing your years of experience with younger people who are likely to face the same obstacles that you have?

A: I try to give younger writes a realistic sense of what they will face, and an example. If I did it, you can. If they learn anything from my mistakes, good.

I write the kind of books I like to read. I seek them out. People who like to read the kind of books I write find me. They seek me out.

Writers like me always have an audience and it's always small. Over the course of a writing life.

You aren't going to get rich. You might not even ever make a living doing it. But it's a life worth pursuing, and what else are you going to do? Join the masons?

If you can do that, you should.

If you can't, welcome to the club. It's a small club, with unwritten rules. You have to find them out the hard way, by breaking them. Or testing them. Trying them out. Seeing what works and what doesn't. Keeping the good, discarding the bad.

Q: Finally, as I've already noted, you've been an underground writer for nearly 40 years and made some significant sacrifices for your art. What keeps you motivated?

A: What keeps me motivated is (1) the joy of doing it, (2) the progress I see myself making, in the work, (3) the feedback I get from my coterie of steadfast readers, the Buzzard Cult, and (4) my sense of belonging to a tradition, that of other outsider artists, who were shunned and vilified in their day. That and a contrary streak which yearns for the cachet of being treated harshly. No man's punishment is greater than nature intended. But if you can shoulder a larger burden than the next person, you should. Noblesse oblige. To be a writer you need largesse. And, it's a way of attaining it, by practice. You grow through ordeals, like a hero in myth.

I just want to be a mythical hero.

Like Bukowski, say. Or Jack Kerouac. Or Hunter S. Thompson.