Q: Whew. I thought you had lost it there, at the end of SOCIAL SECURITY:
AN ASYNCHRONOUS MEMOIR.
To end a book saying, "I hate Christmas."
Plus, you had vertigo, your car was wore out, your printer died, your stove didn't
work, with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming, your roof is sagging on its eaves.
A: We're going to take care of Ella and Eb this weekend, and possibly Rowan,
so I have to clean house today, and we'll be driving, visiting, babysitting, this
weekend.
That usually puts me out of sorts.
The vertigo cleared up,
the car hasn't died, although it's acting like it might, the printer, I just redo
every fourth sheet, sometimes every third sheet, the oven, it will work, you just
can't adjust the temperature, I can't do anything about the roof, or the babysitting.
It's only three days.
Q: It must have been depressing, though. To finish a book and not have anywhere to send it.
A: One rallies. You start another book. CHRISTMAS STORIES came out of
the chute like Gangbusters.
Black Christmas is a good introduction
to my work.
It's just a matter of finding the right publisher, or agent,
and that's hit or miss.
Q: It's 2:30 a.m.
A: Yes. I woke up to pee. Wrote for an hour.
I'll go back to
bed and sleep some more.
Get up and fix breakfast.
A couple of weeks
ago I couldn't light the pilot light for the heater.
I paid a repairman to
come and help me do that.
Q: What happened to your job interview?
A: I didn't hear back.
Who knows what happened.
Q: So you just write and try to stay positive and fix things when they break, patch things up, scuffle and make do. Scrounge. Do without, or do with less.
A: An underground writer is a bricoleur. A knacker in an abattoir.
Q: How many books did you write last year?
A: I wrote two major series of books. Immobilized in Point and Shoot:
Elegy for Irascible "Razz" Heap and Notes From Underground.
I turned 70. My brother Bill died.
I went to Vermont with my sister and
her son to see Bill in the hospice.
I was on unemployment for part of the
year and I had a three-month job that paid well.
Q: No luck on selling Immobilized in Point and Shoot: Elegy for Irascible "Razz" Heap or Notes From Underground?
A: I wrote them.
I went to Gulf Coast Writers Conference and gave
two presentations.
I published 14 pamphlets:
1. A WPA Guide to Point and Shoot, Florida (Sample)
2. Walking Under Water at Wakulla Springs
3. Easy Come, Easy Go
4. Research
5. Regional Writer
6. Notes From Underground
7. Black Papers: Poems
8. Black Papers: The Presentation
9. The Madcap Titan of the Dustbin
10. This Is Not a Pamphlet
11. Writing the Black Novel After 9-11
12. They, or dem
13. Fishing Stories, or, Beer-Can Island
14. Black Christmas
Q: That's a productive year, I'd say.
A: Heap is a senior fellow at the prestigious, left-wing think-tank in
Point and Shoot, Florida, the Point and Shoot Institute (PSI).
He writes
white papers.
Q: Or black papers.
A: Yes. Black memoirs.
Immobilized in Point and Shoot: Elegy for
Irascible "Razz" Heap and Notes From Underground are black memoirs.
Q: Do you sum up what you have accomplished every year, at the end of the year?
A: Yes. That's why December is depressing.
I have usually done
a lot of good work and it has usually come to naught.
I didn't publish anything,
I didn't sell anything. I lived on credit, I went further into debt. I am betting
on a losing proposition, a failing enterprise.
Q: How do you stand it?
A: A hick is fatalistic.
I respect law enforcement officers and
career military personnel. They are dedicated, hard-working, and honorable people.
Some of them are to the right of me, politically, but there's room for more than
one philosophy. For all I know, they're right.
I just do my job. To the
best of my ability.
I do the best I can with what I have.
Charles
Willeford ends Something About a Soldier,
Well, what the hell, I thought, I had earned the new shirt and the gold stripes. It just went to prove that all a man had to do in the Army was to live right, work hard, and all the good things would eventually come his way.
It had certainly worked out that way for me.
Q: But it hasn't come out that way for you.
A: It isn't over.