Delray Beach had an event, designed to keep tourists an extra weekend, The Delray Affair, where the mains street, Atlantic Avenue, was closed off and local vendors had booths selling hand-made crafts, or home-baked goods.

It was (1) local, and (2) home-made.

Well, all the media had a booth, to sell newspaper subscriptions and advertise their TV stations.

And Vinnie's Hot Soft Pretzels had crept in, from Broward County.

And there were people who lived in motorhomes who traveled from street fair to street fair, selling Made-in-Taiwan gewgaws.

But, hey, in a gimcrack culture, mass-produced is custom.

Made-in-Taiwan is local. If it has an alligator eating a flamingo on it. A golf ball on a coffee mug.

I was local. I was home-made.

I applied for a booth.

I sent a copy of Screed, in which I wrote that I was "the only sane man in Delray Beach."

I must have been balmy. Daft. They turned me down. For a booth.

I held a counterfair in my front yard, on the route from free parking, in front of the Community Center, and City Hall, to Atlantic Avenue, so that most of the visitors from out of town walked past my card table and my two billboards, one saying THE DREYFUS AFFAIR - BANNED BOOKS, and a smaller one saying FLORIDA'S SHAME.

Louisiana's shame was it refused to license chiropractors. There used to be a billboard at the state line.

Florida's shame was it licensed writers, but refused to license me.

Brenda came out of the house and saw me sitting there, under my billboards, and said, "Well, Jack, you came out of the closet, all right."

Banned books isn't news to the news media. That's how they make it work.

Your books aren't banned, we just don't review them, or interview you.

You are a racist, a sexist, and a homophobe. You're anti-business, anti-progress, anti-tourism development.

Suppressing your work isn't wrong, it's a responsible act. It's community service. Your work should be suppressed. We, the burghers, don't like it.

You are our sworn enemy.

You're out to make us look bad.

I did make them look bad.

Everyone who walked by saw what I was doing, and saw that none of the media considered what I was doing as newsworthy-a man making a spectacle of himself in his front yard out of principle, making himself a laughingstock out of principle. Selling a book called Screed. In which he called himself the only sane man in Delray Beach.

I was the only sane man in Delray Beach.

Just as Dreyfus was the only sane man in France.

Or Zola, who wrote J'accuse, was the only same man in the media, in France.

Zola, who wrote realistically about the demimonde, was refused admission to the Academy 19 times, on the grounds he was a pornographer.

I wrote realistically about the media. About the book business. The publishing industry.

Screed was about why do I have to publish my own book? And sell it at a card table? In my front yard?

Where it sinks like a stone. Because it's not reviewed. Or sold in bookstores.

Do you want a coffee cup with a golf ball on it made in Taiwan? Saying, "Old golfers never die, they just lose their balls."