Em

I knew Em from him sending me a copy of a songbook called The Blue Sun

and me writing him back, and sending him my stuff, or vice versa. Anyhow,

we corresponded, and exchanged work. Then we visited each other. He lived

in an Army surplus Quonset hut from Camp Gordon Johnston in Carrabelle

next to Jack Rudloe’s Gulf Specimen Laboratory in Panacea. Later, he sent us

a Blue Sun tape. He plays a 12-string Dobro with nine strings. He wrote a book

called Panacea Fatasía about Rudloe and him being like Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck.

I’d say I’m like Joseph Campbell who visited them in Salinas and went on a collecting

trip with Ricketts to the Northwest Coast, where he saw the art work and mythology of

the Kwakiutl and the Tlingit Indians and thought they were related to Indo-European

myth and art work. I refer you to Dead Man, based on The Drop Edge of Yonder.

This reference will be meaningless to many readers. When Em had a fire I sent him $40.

He appreciated it. At Grant Peeples’ Wakulla Wing Ding Em gave everybody a bootleg

copy of Tom Russell’s Hotwalker: Charles Bukowski & a Ballad for Gone America.

That’s what CRITICAL FUDGE is going to be. Cacoëthes Scribendi Remembers.