INSIDE UNDERGROUND WRITING: TWO ZINE FESTS,
A HOOTENANNY, AND A SIDE-TRIP TO PARADISE GARDEN is Old Folks's 265th book. The book
combines the novel, the memoir, the journal of a novel/memoir, literary theory, and
roving-correspondent reporting for the L. A. (Lower Alabama) Free Press, rolled
into one. Old Folks is serializing the book, as he writes it, at his web site, The
Daily Bulletin.
He begins the book July 1 and gives himself a month to
write it. That's his usual pace. His rhythm, long-established.
He is scheduled
to appear at Philly Zine Fest 2005, where he will participate in the Underground
Literary Alliance's ULA Philadelphia
Invasion!, Saturday, July 16, at the Medusa Lounge, capping a reading by fellow
ULA writers to rival the beatnik reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955
when Allen Ginsberg first read "Howl."
The event is also a book
release party for Old Folks's Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an
Underground Writer and His Family, published by LitVision Press, a ULA member.
Then, on Sunday, Old Folks will give a workshop on do-it-yourself (DIY) publishing
at the zine fest, and give away, or sell copies of his self-published pamphlet Underground
Writer Makes Good, written for the occasion.
An occasional writer. As
William Faulkner said, "I write when the impulse strikes me, and it strikes
me every day." That's where daily typewriting comes from.
* * *
Then Old Folks schedules himself to appear at Zine-A-Polooza 2005, in Atlanta,
July 31, by signing up for an exhibitor's booth. Two tables pushed together in the
Venture Mall, in Duluth.
His son Balder plays in the Americana music band
Dread Clampitt. A reggae-bluegrass fusion band. Dread Clampitt are booked at the
Red Light Café, in Atlanta, July 14. Old Folks gives Balder fliers for Zine-A-Polooza
to hand out at the Red Light Café.
* * *
Then Old Folks finds out the traditional bluegrass music band his son Owen
plays fiddle in, David Davis and the Warrior River Boys, is playing at the Everett
Brothers Music Barn in Suwanee, just up the interstate from Atlanta, Saturday night,
July 30.
So his tour-date card for July is complete. Two zine fests and a
hootenanny.
* * *
In the middle of the book, Old Folks has a crisis of confidence, about what
he's going to write in August, but finally sees that he will write a memoir called
UNDERGROUND WRITER: A LIFE OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM and JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR, about
writing UNDERGROUND WRITER, and post them at The Daily Bulletin, simultaneously,
as he writes them. They will be about selling Bukowski Never Did This around
Northwest Florida, and about how Old Folks came to produce a body of work, his stack,
and invent a form to present it in, daily typewriting.
A stack is an unpublished,
or underpublished shelf.
It could be the ULA reading at the Medusa Lounge
is historic, and Old Folks's book is an insider's account of the historic reading.
All Kerouac wanted to do was go out and get wine, but Old Folks has agreed to read.
We are all a Bushed Generation. Man, I'm bushed. Bukowski Never Did This makes
fun of Bush's War on Totemism, which Bush calls the War on Totoism.
We know
what he means. Run, Toto, run.
Folk artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth painted his
dog, Toto, in paint, mud, and dogshit. When it got hot, the dogshit would begin to
smell. As one fiddle player says when another fiddle player tries to steal one of
his licks, "There ain't no shit like dogshit."
* * *
Then Old Folks realizes he can make a side trip to Howard Finster's Paradise
Garden on the way home, and calls his book TWO ZINE FESTS, A HOOTENANNY, AND A SIDE-TRIP
TO PARADISE GARDEN.
The book had gone through the titles PHILLY ZINE FEST
2005, TWO ZINE FESTS, TWO ZINE FESTS AND A HOOTENANNY: AN AFFIRMATION OF DAILY TYPEWRITING,
and now ends up TWO ZINE FESTS, A HOOTENANNY, AND A SIDE-TRIP TO PARADISE GARDEN.
In the book we see this happen, as a writer grapples with his material, and its salability
in the marketplace.
Can he cross over from the underground to the mainstream?
Will this be the book that breaks him out?
Old Folks is having a case of
nerves, about reading at Philly Zine Fest, you see.
* * *
In TWO ZINE FESTS, A HOOTENANNY, AND A SIDE-TRIP TO PARADISE GARDEN Old Folks
discusses the relation between, or among, roots music, folk art, and vernacular writing,
which he is a master of. He affirms his loyalty to daily typewriting, which he had
begun to doubt, early in the book.
Write the book that you are in. Then write
the next book.
Keep it in the family. Stick with your friends.
This
is what Old Folks has learned, writing 265 books.
Don't try to run with the
ball before you catch it.
First, catch the ball. Then run.
Keep your
eye on the ball.
* * *
Then Brenda asks to come along on the Atlanta trip. Team Wuppie. Willfully
underemployed professional. A rock star taking his wife to a convention, out
of town.
Then Old Folks sees that TWO ZINE FESTS, A HOOTENANNY, AND A SIDE-TRIP
TO PARADISE GARDEN is called INSIDE UNDERGROUND WRITING, an inside look at a writer
with a case of nerves about Bukowski Never Did This coming out and about capping
the historic readings at Philly Zine Fest 2005. Will he do it well?