Apropos of Erasure
Apropos of erasure, Jeff Potter mailed me the cover of a book he had an artist do a mock-up for. A POSTCARD FROM SEASIDE. It had my fiddler crab, Uca rapax, on the cover.
I thought he was planning to publish A POSTCARD FROM SEASIDE. I emailed him and
asked him what was up, and he said he should have called it cover-to-be. It was something
we might do later on, or down the road. Not right away.
Whew.
For now I want to concentrate on Pat's book. Bukowski Never Did This.
Pat would have thought that was crowding his act. Competing with him.
* * *
But between the time I got the mock-up and the time Jeff Potter clarified
that it was just an example of the template he might use, I had changed the title
of POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT to BILLETS-DOUX FROM POINT AND SHOOT, and taken
my fiddler crab, Uca rapax, off the cover.
After hearing from Jeff
Potter I put the title, and the cover, of POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT, back like
it was.
But somewhere on my hard drive is a palimpsest of the changes, a
revision record, as it were.
Also, I'm not sure, after reading Priceless
Florida: Natural Ecosystems and Native Species, that Uca rapax is not,
in fact, U. pugilator.
Mining the Vault
Q: That's like how, after Charlie Parker died, Savoy put out an lp with
a master and alternate takes of several songs on it.
It's just theme and
variations. A movie with the outtakes left in, where you shot them.
The picture
and the pink eraser squiggles on it, showing that something has been erased.
A: Or a DVD, a Director's Cut, with Deleted Scenes on it, and Director's Commentary.
Q: Doyle's CD has a song called "Saving Grace" on it, with the line, "her past has been erased." About a couple where the woman has Alzheimer's.
A: In an interview with Lucius Shepard in Rain Taxi, Jeff VanderMeer asks Shepard what he most fears, and Shepard replies,
Actually, I had a recent bout with depression during which I was unable to work, so I guess I fear losing the ability to work most of all.
Q: Maybe that's why Hunter S. Thompson killed himself.
You
ought to be ashamed for writing "Fuck Hunter S. Thompson."
A: I am.
No-Oprah Logo
Q: What's a no-Oprah logo?
A: Naomi Klein wrote a book called No Logo.
There's an international
movement of acts of organized and disorganized resistance to brand hegemony and corporate
power to shove their marketing decisions down our throats, by not offering alternatives,
and stifling competition from those who would offer ethical choices.
No-Oprah
is a logo for a particular product, books, in a particular industry, entertainment.
It's tasteful. Discreet. It goes in the lower righthand corner of a book's
cover. To show the buyer it isn't supporting the restriction of the book's content,
and style, by the sponsors of commercial advertisements and political propaganda
in slick magazines, mass circulation newspapers, radio and television networks and
cable syndicates, including noncommercial radio and television networks, which out-Herod
Herod, when it comes to being commercial.
Sometimes I call the he or she
reader it.
Q: Wouldn't that keep your book out of chain bookstores? Keep it from being published by a reputable publisher?
A: It's already being kept out of chain bookstores. Already not being published
by reputable publishers.
It doesn't get reviewed, either.
The no-Oprah
logo is a badge of honor a writer must earn. By abjuring a career as a mainstream
writer.
People can buy the book over the Internet, directly from the author,
or publisher, and at independent bookstores, who don't take their marching orders
from New York. From Wall Street and Madison Avenue.
Q: And your publisher goes along with this?
A: Oh, no. This is for one I publish myself.
When I hit the Irish
Sweepstakes.
When I'm rich as Oprah.
Q: Oh, I see. You're saying the artist is no match for the War Heads.
It's a battle he can't win.
A: If the no-Oprah logo meant a book was so forthright it could not be published by New York, people would clamor for it.
Q: But it probably means the book was just not good enough.
A: Probably. Probably just more sore-loser whining.
Q: All 250 of them.
A: 257. This one's 258.