White Folks
White Folks talked to his brother and his sisters about growing up in Delray Beach
when segregation was in force. About the civil rights movement, when their father
represented the white power structure in the struggle for racial justice as a moderate,
and also poor white people, Christian white people, white people holding Christian
ideals of brotherhood and justice, as a man of peace, who could sit down and reason
with black leaders like Martin Luther King, or his local counterpart.
When
White Folks's father was in Seminary, at Emory University, in Atlanta, the glee club
sang with the choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr.'s father
was the pastor. And at his funeral, black leaders who had served on the City Council
with him, after integration, came to pay their respects to him, at the wake.
They were welcomed.
Don't have any truck with white people black people don't
like.
But if you exclude writers like White Folks from the conversation you're
not going to get the full picture.
What's the word?
Thunderbird.
What's the price?
Thirty twice.
Who drink the most?
Colored folks.
Who wish they could?
Peckerwoods.
White Folks could call himself White Privilege, or White Guilt, but he didn't
feel guilty, and any time you lined up people by race, gender, or sexual orientation
a straight white male is picked last.
Underground
Who would White Folks pitch Underground to?
Would he pitch it as a series
of three books
or a book in three parts? Was it even worth the effort?
Was
he wasting stamps? Going through the motions?
A character named White Folks?
A book title that claimed
Jack Saunders was America's greatest writer? How could
that be?
Terry Gross would have interviewed him, on Fresh Air,
from
Philadelphia. Air Freshener.
I don't use deodorant.
White Folks's Parker, Florida
The Wall Street Journal says, about Henning Mankell,
"[Mankell's]
Sweden--cold, isolated, and brimming with
disappointment--is as intriguing a landscape
as
Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles or Charles Willeford's
Miami." Until
Miami Blues came out, one reviewer said,
Willeford was "...destined
for oblivion, lacking even cult status."
A reversal of fortune of a large
order.
Quality of Life
In Sue's car, the radio is tuned
to NPR. Jazz music. Our college radio station
in
Panama City went over to an all-talk format.
It adversely affected my quality
of life.
Go to the chaplain and get
your t. s. card punched.
Tough shit.
Orts
Q: You ended Bukowski Never Did This by saying you are writing orts.
Not art for art's sake. Orts.
A: Yes. The tag end of literature.
Literature at the end of its
tether.
The kind of literature a person writes-and reads-in a heathen culture
where half the population thinks Bush is doing a good job. Thinks a hack is a great
writer and a great writer is a fool.
Q: Well, you're doing what you love to do. That counts for something.
A: It counts for everything.
If kids buy things advertised on teevee
to fill a hole in their soul I'm sorry for them.
I fill the hole with reading
and writing good books, challenging books, books that kick your ass.