The publication of a book by a writer
who has been writing for 34 years without selling a word to New York is an event,
like catching a coelacanth, and should be promoted as such.
I am available
to participate in such a project. On the income from an advance against royalties,
my savings, and the kindness of strangers.
I don't need to bring, or send
home a full wage-slave's income; if I am supporting myself, that's enough.
I am a pretty low-maintenance person, who can sleep on a stranger's couch or pallet
on the floor, or sleeping bag in a tent, in warm weather.
I am personable,
and quick on my feet, at interviews, lectures, press conferences, and so forth.
Trials. I have a sense of humor, and am not easily flustered.
I am a good
spokesman for my work. Indefatigable. You have to be. I am not sulled up, despite
my history of persecution, injustice, and the suppression of my oeuvre by midgets
and drawfs.
Which is important, not for the sale of this series of books,
although that part of it may matter to you, but for my outlook in writing the next
series of books. The last five years of 40-Year Run.
The series of
books I just finished writing changed me. I liberated myself, and came to see that
I have it made, and have nothing to carry a chip on my shoulder about, the old Cow
Chip of Doom I have been lugging around like a weight. Like excess baggage. I'm
going to let go of excess baggage and take off like a striped-ass ape.
So
THE EMPTY NEST is a how-to manual on personal self-realization, a WPA Guide
to scuffling, making do, getting by on grits and grunts, and grinning through the
Apocalypse like God's own fool, twisting the tails of the righteous, the sanctimonious,
the punctilious.
Épatez les bourgeoises! My escape is bitter as gall
to the Enron administration, suits, television evangelists, corporate lackeys, lady
realtors, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, The Beltway, right-wing think-tanks, pundits,
tenured professors of creative writing, put it in the Cracker Studies bin, there
is no Cracker Studies bin, then create a Cracker Studies bin.
What I say
three times is true.