Diary

Sunday, March 6 (cont'd)

Dear Ella Blue:

This is the fountain in the center of the green at FSU.

Sometimes the fraternity boys put laundry detergent in it, so it bubbles over.

Grandpa went to a book fair there, and told people about his new book.

They were impressed.

Grandpa and Granny graduated from FSU in 1968 and got married the same year.

How many years have they been married?

Granny and Grandpa

Dear John:

I went to a small press conference in Tallahassee yesterday.

I saw Rick Peabody. He's been publishing Gargoyle for 29 years now. We had never met, but knew you in common.

I also saw Richard Grayson. We caught up on news of South Florida. He has been living in Fort Lauderdale.

Eric Lorberer of Rain Taxi was a featured speaker, after dark, but I didn't stay to hear him. I wanted to get back to my computer and type up my impressions of the morning's events, and my night vision isn't any good.

I told Peabody I asked you to write a foreword for Bukowski Never Did This, and you wrote back (I paraphrased it),

If I were to do an intro I'd talk about your honesty and style and your huge warehouse of knowledge and information, but I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving out other negative aspects of the picture that are chronic and in aggregate (I think) are a tragic albatross around your neck. To wit: Your obsession with the number of books you've written, your obsession with NY and Hollywood, your continually comparing yourself with other writers, your taking a stance as the ultimate outsider while a good portion of what you write is a clambering to be acknowledged as an insider.

He said, "That's John."

Dear Carissa Neff:]

POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT starts out with me with me attending the FLAC conference at FSU.

Rick Campbell said you are taking your qualifying exams in the next few weeks, so you might not be interested in reading another person's take on something you were at. On the other hand, you might.

Brenda and I went from FSU to Tulane, where they had an accelerated PhD program in anthropology. We had each done a year's graduate work at FSU and were considered standouts. The reason we left was that FSU only offered a masters degree in anthropology at that time.

When we got to Tulane, however, Nixon had gotten in and turned Lyndon Johnson's Great Society into what I called The Niggardly Society. He shut the money to higher education off and left us stranded in the pipeline. We were terminal throughput.

Tulane kept asking us to take our exams over and show improvement, but they couldn't tell us how much improvement, in what areas, because, "you can't quantify the PhD mystique."

Does niggardly mean stingy, or mean?

No, it means pertaining to African-Americans.

It was part of Nixon's Southern Strategy. Cut the money to poor white people off, keep giving it to poor (and middle-class) black people, and whisper welfare queen, quotas, double-standard, and reverse discrimination in the poor white person's ear.

But that's a story for another book.

I saw the handwriting on the wall, signed up for Thesis, to draw the last year of my NDEA Fellow stipend, stayed at home, and wrote.

I gave myself a DIY Fellow year to teach myself to write.

In that year I wrote 2½ books--what else did I have to do?- -and found my seat. At the end of it, I was a writer, with his sea legs under him, to mix a metaphor.

That was September 1, 1971. When I made the leap of faith.

I am writing a great long continuous book I call 40-Year Run. It will end August 31, 2011.

So far, I have written 257 books.

POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT will be 258.

I knew I was going to be a writer when I went to graduate school. I thought college teacher would be my day job. But getting the PhD can't be a secondary interest. Then getting tenure. Etc. You have to go at it hammer and tongs. Heart and soul. And I didn't.

By the time Tulane asked me to retake my exams a couple of times I didn't want to be an academic anymore. Because of the way they treated us. Welshed on their end of the deal. And made us feel like it was our fault.

It was traumatic.

I felt like a failure.

A sore loser who couldn't hack it.

I resented the people who had made it through.

I still have a love-hate relationship with academia.

I hope this isn't like telling a pregnant woman about birth defects.

I just wanted to explain why I have an attitude. Towards writers in academia.

I think I am outgrowing it.

I have a new book coming out, Bukowski Never Did This. The book I just finished writing, DRAGGING UP: ART BREW GIVES HIMSELF AN LDA GRANT (LAST DITCH ATTEMPT), seemed humorous, to me, and POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT continues in that vein.

I don't envy anybody, I don't hold grudges, I am grateful for what I went through, and the future looks merry and bright.

"Always merry and bright," as Henry Miller says.

Jack Saunders