Q: TWO ZINE FESTS: A SWAN SONG FOR DAILY TYPEWRITING is like Nixon's last press conference. You're saying, "You won't have Old Folks to kick around anymore."
A: No, it's more an apotheosis, a ne plus ultra of what I've learned,
to date.
It's the end of one stage and the beginning of another.
It's a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
Q: You're not mad at the underground for not supporting you more?
A: That's like a jazz musician being mad at Michael Jackson.
Q: Jazz musicians are mad at Michael Jackson.
Quincy Jones described
his work on Jackson's music videos as "polishing shit."
A: I have a love-hate relationship with the underground.
Take the
ULA.
On the one hand, I don't want to belong to any club that will have me
for a member. I take ungrateful potshots at them for "horning in" on Philly
Zine Fest.
On the other hand, I am grateful for their support, and identify
with their goals, and their tactics for bringing about change.
I'm proud
to have their logo on the cover of Bukowski Never Did This.
Q: Actually, you've got the best of both possible worlds here.
UNDERGROUND WRITER will be a proper book.
And TWO ZINE FESTS is an elegy
for an experiment that failed.
No commercial publisher is going to publish
12 books a year. They couldn't sell them.
You can't make any money doing
it yourself, on the Internet. You can't sell them on the Internet, where they are
free.
A: No publisher is going to publish a book written in a month, straight
into the Linotype machine. They have a legal department. They have a fiduciary responsibility
to their stockholders. They must show due diligence.
What if what you write
is racist, sexist, libelous, or obscene?
Q: So this is an elegy to daily typewriting.
A: Yes. I feel sad it didn't work out.
Q: But you're upbeat about UNDERGROUND WRITER.
Yes. I subtitled
it and outlined the sections.