A: All Old Folks wanted to make
was a tech writer's income writing enema vérité. But he wanted to make it writing
enema vérité, not working as a technical writer and getting fired for writing enema
vérité on company time.
Bukowski didn't write Post Office at the post
office.
Q: If Bukowski had waited for New York to publish him he'd still be waiting.
You could argue that Bukowski made Black Sparrow Press.
But Black Sparrow
Press made Bukowski, too. They made each other.
A: Also the times played a part. When Bukowski was hot, the outlet was
there.
Bukowski made it because Black Sparrow Press sold his books.
But Black Sparrow Press sold his books because an audience was there.
Readers
were there.
Every city had an underground newspaper. Alternative comic strips.
R. Crumb would have trouble making it now.
Q: R. Crumb and Bukowski would make it in any age.
A: Computers don't mean that people will read books written on computers.
It means they will play video games instead of reading.
Q: I don't think computers mean that there are fewer readers out there.
Serious readers. There's about the same amount there's always been. Maybe more.
You'll find a way to reach them.
A: You think so? I've about given up hope.
Q: Don't give up hope.
Something may come of Bukowski Never
Did This.
Something may come of UNDERGROUND WRITER. A book about a writing
career, or non-career, that ends with the publication of Bukowski Never Did This.
Pat Simonelli read Bukowski Never Did This on the worldwide web, don't forget.
That's where he found it.
Daily typewriting is working.
A publisher
found a book you'd published at The Daily Bulletin and asked to reprint it.
You know what William S. Burroughs advised Jesse Bernstein.
A: Keep it in the family. Stick with your friends.
Q: Maybe you should publish UNDERGROUND WRITER and JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR at The Daily Bulletin simultaneously. As you write them.
A: If I did that, I might as well combine them.
Q: No, you could split them out. Like Kurt Vonnegut separating Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions.
A: What would this do?
Q: It would show that (1) you knew the difference between a memoir and a journal of a memoir, and that (2) you could separate them, but that (3) you had been combining, and would continue, after these two books, to combine them in the same book, for sound artistic reasons. Dividing the one book into two books would be an affirmation of daily typewriting, which you would go back to, after publishing UNDERGROUND WRITER and JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR separately.
A: So TWO ZINE FESTS isn't a swan song for daily typewriting, it's a reaffirmation, an affirmation of it.
Q: Yes.
A: And who will publish UNDERGROUND WRITER and JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR? New York? Or an underground press? Or nobody. Me. At The Daily Bulletin.
Q: Your job is to write them. And publish them. At The Daily Bulletin.
You can write a proposal to write, and publish, at The Daily Bulletin, the
pair of them together, can pitch the project to New York, and ask for a book contract
and an advance against royalties, or you can just go on writing and publishing at
The Daily Bulletin and wait for an underground press to come to you, as LitVision
Press did for Bukowski Never Did This.
Or you can do both.
A: Hmmm. Let me give that some thought.
Q: You can also write a proposal for TWO ZINE FESTS, and pitch TWO ZINE
FESTS to New York.
TWO ZINE FESTS is about a turning point, when you flirt
with the idea of shutting down The Daily Bulletin and giving up on daily typewriting,
then decide, instead, to bear down harder.
A: Just what I told myself not to do, because it wasn't working.
Q: Yes. It's working. There's just a lag between accomplishment and recognition.
Your faith is being tested.
A: My faith is being tested.
Q: Did you know that David Davis and the Warrior River Boys are playing at the Everett Brothers Music Barn in Suwanee, Georgia, July 30?
A: I could rent a car Friday afternoon, drive up on Saturday and check
into a motel, go hear Owen play at Everett's Barn Saturday night, do the Zine-a-Polooza
show on Sunday, drive partway home after the show, and come home Monday.
I could call my book TWO ZINE FESTS AND A HOOTENANNY: AN AFFIRMATION OF DAILY TYPEWRITING.
I like it.