Jonathan Lyons
Lyons Literary LLC
116 W. 23rd Street, Suite 500
New York, NY 10011

Dear Jonathan Lyons:

On September 1, 1971, I rolled a sheet of bond paper, a sheet of carbon paper, and a yellow second sheet into my Olympia portable typewriter and began writing.

I showed what I was writing to Larry Schlueter, a friend my wife Brenda and I had been graduate students in anthropology at Tulane with. He and his wife Hazel were readers, graduates of St. Johns, in Annapolis, the "great books" school.

I was to send them a copy of the manuscript of every book I wrote.

Last year, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I stopped sending them the manuscripts, because postal services had been disrupted.

I was now 17 manuscripts behind.

I decided to drive to New Orleans and deliver the hard copies of the manuscripts to Larry and Hazel.

I also hoped to visit the Bywater Studio of New Orleans folk artist Dr. Bob, Be Nice or Leave, visit Shadows-on-the-Teche, where I excavated the slave quarters for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, when I was just starting out as a writer (Henry Miller had visited Weeks Hall at The Shadows in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare), and stop by the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the way home.

Also, Brenda's brother and his wife had stayed with us in Panama City for four months after Hurricane Katrina, evacuees from Slidell, Louisiana. We thought we'd go by and see them in the FEMA trailer next to their ruined home.

Brenda came along as my cameraperson to shoot film of the archive of manuscripts Larry and Hazel kept in the outbuilding behind their house, for a documentary an underground filmmaker is making about me as "America's greatest living unpublished, or underpublished writer, perhaps the greatest unpublished, or underpublished American writer ever," which I usually shorten to "America's greatest writer."

This film is in post-production. The filmmaker and his assistant are financing the project by working at day jobs, just as I finance my writing by working at a day job.

My last job was custodian.

I am presently at the house, finishing a book about our trip.

SQUIBS: TEAM WUPPIE DRIVE TO NEW ORLEANS.

Wuppie stands for willfully underemployed professional. Brenda works as a clerk/typist.

Custodian and clerk/typist are the best jobs we can get, in the Bush, Jr. economy. Jobs like Barbara Ehrenreich writes about in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Because we wouldn't do what corporate America demanded of us to get ahead. And have successfully refused to do for 35 years now.

The book is an account of a successful marriage, a commentary on what has happened to America since we were young, a collection of satirical newspaper columns (squibs), written for YU News Service, a parody news and disinformation syndicate, and published in the L. A. (Lower Alabama) Free Press and at my web site, The Daily Bulletin: A Newsletter on the State of the Culture, or, How To Write World Literature from Parker, Florida.

At the end of the book I attend an art show called Text, for which I have written two pamphlets, Text and Plagiarism, and I sell the pamphlets at booksALIVE 2007!, a book fair held at Gulf Coast Community College, in Panama City, and sponsored by the Bay County Regional Library, at which I have a book-signing booth, and also sell my last published book (LitVision Press, 2005), Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family.

I enclose a copy of my cv, and the pamphlets Text and Plagiarism, to show you how I write.

May I show you the manuscript of SQUIBS?

Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 10501
Panama City, FL 32404