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What are you doing now, man—still pumping gas?
Janis Joplin to classmate at 10th Port Arthur, Texas high school class reunion
It's all true stories.
Jack Kerouac
You can't go home again.
Thomas Wolfe
This book is part of an archive Jack Saunders left behind to be published
after his death. It is his 274th book.
Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 10501
Panama City, FL 32404
Copyright
© 2006 by Jack L. Saunders, Jr.
In January 2006 I finished writing a long book that summed up everything I'd been
doing to that point.
BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK: WHY WON'T NOBODY HIRE ME TO BE
A WRITER?
A memoir. 125,000 words. In three parts, like a job interview.
"Employment History," "Education," "Honors and Awards."
I finished the book and started writing another book, as I do.
I called the
new book AFTER BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK: AN ONLINE JOURNAL (OLJ), an homage to May Sarton's
After the Stroke: A Journal.
I used to work with a black guy who called
Lemonhart 151° rum "I fit one."
He also called his wife, Evelyn,
"Typhoon Evelyn." "Typhoon Evelyn come."
His wife hadn't
joined him on an accompanied tour yet, and he was living in the barracks, partying
with the bargirls in the village until she arrived.
I felt like I had gotten
something out of my system with BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK. Unburdened myself. Like I had
reached a turning point. Like I was making a fresh start. After the hurricane.
(We had had relatives from Hurricane Katrina underfoot for four months. They had
just returned to Slidell, to live in a FEMA trailer. That was a relief.)
So. An online journal. Something brisk, and easy to write. Nothing weighty.
* * *
I had written, and published, over 100 books on the worldwide web, at The
Daily Bugle, roman-feuilleton.com, and The Daily Bulletin, so it wasn't
exactly a fresh start.
But I needed a new attitude.
I was
trying to will myself into a better attitude. To accept writing and publishing on
the worldwide web, or through small, independent presses, and not get down about
the failure of New York to publish my books. To see that as New York's failure, not
mine, and go about my business.
LitVision Press had recently published Bukowski
Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family, and
AFTER BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK: AN ONLINE JOURNAL (OLJ) would be about me making a side-trip
to Fairhope, Alabama, to read and sign books, at Page and Palette bookstore. About
barnstorming for poetry along the Redneck Riviera. In the family car, your father's
Oldsmobile. Out of the trunk of which I sold books. Like a bluegrass musician.
But what to write after that?
I liked to have one manuscript out there being
read by New York editors and agents (BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK), one book in progress (AFTER
BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK), and a projected book, the book I would write when I finished
the book that I was in.
2007 would be the 50th anniversary of my high school
class in Delray Beach. I was thinking about writing a book for the class reunion,
THE CLASS OF '57 HAD ITS DREAMS, after the Statler Brothers song.
I had a
dream. I was going to be a writer. Like the writers I was reading.
I would
write series of related books, books like Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn,
Black Spring. Castle to Castle, Rigadoon, North. Or, later, A Fan's Notes,
Pages From a Cold Island, Last Notes From Home.
Post Office, Women,
Factotum, Ham On Rye.
* * *
Then I got a Bluegrass Unlimited magazine in the mail and saw that
there was going to be an Everglades Bluegrass Festival, in Ojus, in February.
I decided to go down there for that and call it research. I could visit Delray Beach
while I was there.
That was it.
The bluegrass, underground writer
connection.
THE CLASS OF '57 HAD ITS DREAMS, BY JACK SAUNDERS, THE SWINETTE-PICKER
OF AMERICAN LETTERS.
Isn't there a jam band called Blueground Undergrass?
Of course there is. Rev. Jeff Mosier. He's played with Dread Clampitt.
* * *
For the last several books I have been writing about the relation between,
or among, roots music, folk art, vernacular writing, independent films, and repertory,
or community theater.
The do-it-yourself, no-logo ethic versus corporate publishers, record companies,
movie studios, Broadway, commercial broadcasting, slick magazines, galleries and
dealers, museums. Critics. Grants and prizes.
Well, you'll see.
Read
on. Enjoy. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
Picture Mel Brooks singing "Dancing in the Dark" an octave too high. Fred
Astaire trying for a comeback, in The Band Wagon. Get on the band wagon.
What else are you going to do? Quit?
What--and leave show business? No, it's
press on to Boulogne, brave boy.
As Tristram Shandy said.
I would
write a book like Tristram Shandy.
* * *
Before I started it, AFTER BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK: AN ONLINE JORNAL (OLJ) changed
its name to I DRIVE TO FAIRHOPE, ALABAMA and THE CLASS OF '57 HAD ITS DREAMS, BY
JACK SAUNDERS, THE SWINETTE-PICKER OF AMERICAN LETTERS changed its name to READFEST
2006.
And now, here I am, writing it.
