Q: Any second thoughts on Bukowski Never Did This, now that you have seen it, and imagined strangers reading it?
A: There are some things I might try to do different next time.
Q: What are they?
A: 1. Less whining.
As Brenda says, everybody has to work. Why
complain about it?
Everybody who has a call has to deal with frustration,
interruption, and guilt, about using loved ones, making them do with less so you
can have more for yourself. It's why so few people have a call.
2. Fewer
excuses.
If you see you're doing something wrong, stop doing it. Don't do
it and then explain why you had to. That's a cop-out.
3. Don't make invidious
comparisons. It makes you look small. And it pisses them, and their followers, off.
4. Don't brag. You can tell the reader how many books White Folks has written but
you don't need to harp on it.
Q: These are pretty old charges.
You have been accused of doing
them before.
Why do you keep doing it?
A: What can I say?
1. Old habits are hard to change, especially
if you edit yourself.
2. I feel like I should be true to my situation. My
circumstances. My conditions of production.
I am in a different situation
than I was when I wrote Bukowski Never Did This.
That book was true
to those circumstances.
Q: What were they?
A: I was working at a job I wasn't suited for, worried about losing it,
for doing something I couldn't stop myself from doing, namely writing on the job,
I was apprehensive about whether anyone would publish one of my books, ever again--at
the end of Bukowski Never Did This I still hadn't heard from Pat Simonelli
about SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL.
I hadn't heard yet that he wanted to publish Bukowski
Never Did This.
So I was in limbo.
Now, my circumstances are
different.
I have a new book out, I have money to live on while I write the
next book. That's positive, compared to what I had.
If it doesn't sell, it
doesn't sell. But I am hearing good things about it from people I respect.
Pat Simonelli, Jeff Potter, and the ULA are behind me.
Readers like Dick
Vajs and Jim Garrett and Duke Bardwell are behind me.
Dread Clampitt and
the waitstaff at The Red Bar and Eileen West at Eileen West Gallery are behind me.
Q: Any other reasons?
A: 3. What some readers consider a weakness, other readers consider a strength.
Not everybody likes the same thing.
That's why there's more than one color.
4. I must respect the data. What comes out of me stays in, even if it's ugly.
I don't want to just give one side, I want to give a rounded picture, the whole picture,
warts and all.
You don't dredge it all up, then pick and choose what suits
you, and ignore what doesn't.
Q: How many books did Kilgore Trout write?
A: 208. He died with 209 unfinished.
Q: How many books have you written?
A: This one is 265. I'll finish it next week.
Q: You just violated two rules.
Don't brag and don't compare yourself
to other writers.
A: I'm comparing White Folks to Kilgore Trout. Not myself to Kurt Vonnegut.
And it isn't bragging if you do it. It's reporting.
Q: Three. That's making excuses.
A: I'm not complaining.
Q: You implicitly complain about me accusing you.
A: Kiss my natural white ass, Kimo Sabe. I bought a boat, I'm going out to sea.
Q: Now you're bitter.
A: Whatever you say.
* * *
Q: Who-ee, praise God, amen.
A: What's that?
Q: Isn't this what you always wanted to do? Have adventures and then write about them?
A: Yes.
It's all a repetition or a rotation. But one looks for
a pattern.
This is what I always wanted to do.
I'm including Brenda.
We're a team. On the road (otr) again.
She can't sleep in a motel and the
teevee keeps me up.
I keep saying, "Who died?," like Grandma Cason.
I'm deaf and she can't find her glasses.
Q: I thought otr was off the record.
A: It is. I get at the story behind the story.
The story beneath
the story.
The true gen.
Q: That's a nice shot of him on the bed reading the paper with Black
Dog by his side.
A: Compare the shot of me in Delray Beach.
I told you.
It's a repetition or a rotation.
