SOME COMMENTS ON JACK SAUNDERS’ WORK
Thanks for Screed.
Nicely done. He rolls on. Charles Bukowski
Thanks for Evil Genius and Open Book; I enjoyed both of them, and asked my publisher to send you my new book, Sideswipe, when it comes out in Feb. In 1957, Theodore Pratt told me that Delray Beach was a better town than N. Y. for a writer. “If you stay in Florida,” he told me, “you’ll never run out of things to write about.” He was right, of course; I never have, and you won’t either. My most productive years were from age 50 to 55, and I’m sure that yours will be too. Charles Willeford
Some exciting writing. Nick Lyons
I have a hunch your stuff is wild and terrific and keeps going off the rails. I have no better explanation for why you don’t find publishers, since you certainly write well enough sentence for sentence and paragraph for paragraph. Norman Mailer
But? Jack Saunders
Sanders–don’t send me any more books. They’re all the same. Spend the money on your wife and kids. Ann Charters
Thanks for the copy of Screed. I liked it very much. In fact, I’ve been reading it aloud to my wife in bed at night. You write in a kind of natural, organic, free-flowing and perfectly lucid style that I much admire. Edward Abbey
Dear Jack: Thanks for Screed. It’s good diatribe. The reason I know is that diatribe makes me feel better. And I felt better reading it. Walker Percy
I am very pleased at the way you handled the tale of your life in EVIL GENIUS. It owes something to Henry Miller, but every writer owes a debt to those before them and those in turn were helped by their predecessors. No one is an absolute original, but you come close. William Eastlake
In Jack Saunders our generation is extremely lucky to have a powerful and determined writer, an honest writer. A Diogenes not merely of words, but of provocative thoughts. From his hideaway in Florida, like a super-energized lobster, Saunders lashes out at the sickening hypocrisy which is deadening our senses and rotting our souls. It is Saunders’ adamant, boneheaded, determined persistence that is his great strength, his great gift to a society staggering in its own materialistic greed. Saunders is America at its best. He wants to clean up the world. He is clean. He spells out what spirit is all about. And humanity. How do we live? When do we really come ALIVE? As we should? And deserve? America needs writers with such strength and ferocity and independence and integrity, not all those greedy little wordmongers contemplating their private parts on every supermarket shelf. Saunders is more than a literary volcano. He is a live, writhing, crackling wire. Spewing sparks in all directions. Creating and developing a brighter, newer world. Raymond Barrio
Thanks for sending OPEN BOOK, which has a great deal of power. Your writing continues to be energetic, important, and as always, honest. I could have done without some of the racism, but I can’t deny that you’re always being you. Richard Grayson
Jack Saunders is an American original and his life is an open book. His dedication and commitment are evident throughout, and his abundant energy enlivens every page. Lawrence Block
So it’s not really a novel. There hasn’t been a word invented yet for your work. Maybe once people invent a word to describe what you’re doing, then the appreciation of it will be a bit more broad. Pete Horobin
Keep me on your mailing list. Robert Gover
Take me off your mailing list. Philip Zuckerman
Nothing studied about this one. He just knows. And does. It hangs together, flows together, makes a lot of sense. Cooking like a Tasmanian Dervish. All I can do is tip my hat. Carl Weissner
I just finished EVIL GENIUS & found it touching, if I may use that word without sounding ridiculous. I am always moved by what I perceive as genuine autobiography. Also, so much less complaining this time. I realize you have raised complaining to the level of art, but still it gets tiresome. Darlene Fife
In my library the novels of Jack Saunders go right next to MOBY DICK, ISLANDIA, and THE RECOGNITIONS. His latest, EVIL GENIUS, is an astonishing feat–like watching a man lay eight hundred miles of track single-handed, without ever once stopping, or faltering, or resorting to adjectives. Dr. Al Ackerman
You are a force of nature, a dreadnaught, ploughing on through rough seas. Anything I say or write will not distract you, I know this. It will not divert you from the goal one day. This is good. But, I hate to see you tearing yourself apart. Jack Remick
As exasperating and slippery a “read” as they come. This work is totally unpretentious (and thus honest) and yet its theme is the total unrelenting pretension of a life. That life is excruciating and unavoidable, unedited and ambiguous, squalling and scrawling, elegant and vulgar, ordinary and completely out of the ordinary. Read it; you’ll never forget it. John M. Bennett
Received Evil Genius in the mail. Thank you I am really enjoying it. You get better & better it’s terrific. Hazel the Delta Rambler or Larry Schlueter
I can’t know if anything is going to come of this work in re the indifferent world of publishers any more than the others, but I feel it has more substance, weight and variety than anything I’ve read of yours so far & that alone makes it kind of a breakthrough for me. I like the fact that you castigate yourself in an often very engaging way about self-pity, too–wittily, which is a big change from former whines that didn’t seem to be leavened by your much better developed self-deprecating humor, to which all we strugglers after some notoriety can, believe me, relate. Laurel Speer
All this, however, is a mere quibble. Why? Because Saunders is genuinely doing his best to figure out what he is all about and get it onto paper. Moreover, he truly casts his harangue every which way against the evils the undiscovered artist has to contend with: the financial success of tenth-raters, the cheap shots of unsympathetic fellow unknowns, the government’s and big business’s sanctimonious pseudo-support of the arts (or should I say genuine support of pseudo-art, and obsolete art?) and all the rest of it. I applaud this because I feel, as an unrecognized universal genius myself, that what he’s saying ought to be said; and I’m glad he’s saying it so energetically that I don’t have to. Bob Grumman
PR words for Evil Genius? I took nearly a year out of my own writing time to work on SCREED, on its production, what more need to be said for how I feel about your worth? You’re a diamond in the rough, Jack. You’ve got an intrinsic worth worth more than the realized worth of about 99% of the writers in this country lumped together. I’m not going to get caught up in the debate about whether what you’re doing is in itself of any worth or is it the best you can do, etc. etc. That’s your business, to look into your heart of hearts. If you feel in your heart of hearts that what you’re doing is what you must do, then that’s settled. Settled with nothing further implied. I’d say your chances of being treated with any sort of kindness, your chances of being recognized for your intrinsic worth, are worse than mine, and mine are Virginia slim. John Bennett
EVIL GENIUS, SO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH THAT IT ALMOST APPEARS TO BE FICTION, IS THE UNCOMPROMISED BOOK WHOSE PAIN AND PLEASURE ARE IN EXACT BALANCE. YOU’RE DAMNED LUCKY JUST TO GET YOUR HANDS ON IT.**** GENIUS TURNS EVIL WHEN TRUTH HAS TURNED TO LIES. IN A SOCIETY BUILT ON DECEPTION, COMMON SENSE IS ICONOCLASTIC. SAUNDERS, IN HOME WIT, STALKS THE SEWERS OF LITERARY CORRUPTION AND EMERGES HOLDING THE RAT BY ITS TAIL. CHEW, THEN SWALLOW, THIS BOOK.**** David Cole
All fine hard hitting work. The works of Jack Saunders give us hope. Hope that our lives won’t be horrible wasted foolishness. Even when it seems that hope is all we have left, if you feel you can live a fuller life and spend your days in a more profitable way for yourself AND MANKIND you should read Jack Saunders for a ray of hope and a great deal of enjoyment and amusement. OK it rings so true that you’ll forget you’re reading & think you’re talking to yourself. Larry Schlueter or Hazel the Delta Rambler
Please don’t stop. I loved how it’s so really true to life…so relaxed…yet crisscrossed with real fears and frustrations…and real tenderness…and true love. Now that I’m thinking about it, that seems to be the true appeal of most of your work for me…that it’s TRUE, so true, so different from reading the “news” or watching T.V., where I’m constantly asking myself, “Do they really suppose we’re buying all this shit?” About your “whining” about not being able to find a publisher to print your work–I think it’s probably worth whining about. In fact I sort of admire your efforts. It takes a lot of energy to keep that whining up, and frankly I wore out years ago. It’s hard to be the only dog barking up the tree. Omahaha (Dazar)
Hey it broke me up–I imagined someone calling here and asking what I was crying about. I was not crying, kid. I was laughing at Jack Saunders’ new movie. David Zack
dazar, you mention “great literature”. jack talks a lot about that, and what he says is spot on. it was spot on the first time he said it and the second time and the third…i’ve already told him that i thought the first chapter of EVIL GENIUS is brilliant, maybe “great”, it’s a sign that if jack DID get published, if he saw another dimension to his purpose, if he could make a living by what he wants to do, then there might be talent there of the stature of steinbeck or hemingway, or kerouac or thoreau, or whoever he rates as GREAT. but when jack whines (your word), even though what he says is honest and true, do you ever feel that you are reading “great literature” as you lament with jack its passing? i don’t think i do. in the middle of it all is something special, a perception, a descriptive talent, a genius for dialogue. it hasn’t quite synthesized, not yet anyway. not as “great literature” anyway. it’s bloody marvelous SOMETHING ELSE though. in your letter too i notice that you finish your piece to jack and start on franny mae, but jack creeps back in there. that happens to me too. i can’t get jack and the possibilities of jack out of my head sometimes. i told him too, that what he did was somehow some universal analogy, applicable in any situation, especially those that deal with frustration, hope…the sheer volume of it has a lot to do with it. DJ at FOMT, c/o Dark Hopes
Thank you for sending me EVIL GENIUS, which I read last night. I didn’t really want to stay up so late, but the book moved forward with a momentum that was overpowering and almost tragic. Your fiction can also be very annoying–which is a virtue, I think. Richard Grayson
I liked it. I think it’s one of your best. You sent me two books by mistake so here’s one of them back. Also $5. Keep at it. Gettin’ better all the time. Richard Ettelson
So I gave him your book to read, because the same things you write about are on his mind–on every artist’s mind–it’s universal to all artists of all disciplines. That’s why I really believe that your books will eventually take off–not so much with practicing artists, who can gain psychological reinforcement from reading you, but among the college set, if you can ever get by the instructors. I think that’s where your market is–telling the young starry-eyed kiddies what they can expect from the world after they get their art degrees. Lon Spiegelman
As you can see I’ve enclosed a $10 check. I feel kind of dumb because it reminds me of some guy giving a kid a quarter and patting him on the head. What you could use is $18,000, but I don’t have that to give. So consider this either payment for Evil Genius and all that went before, or a step towards publishing your next book. State of Being.
I’m far along in Evil Genius and have to say it’s the best so far. Actually, that’s not quite correct–it does a great job of tying together that which came before it. Reid Wood (State of Being)
I finished EVIL GENIUS a few days ago. Whew. I need stuff like that to keep me going. Know there’s others out there. Crowbar
Read your book last night – found much of you, the Florida we grew up with, and some of me in your writing – I’ll read it again this weekend. William Cole
Enclosed is my check for Evil Genius, which I read pretty much in one sitting the day it came in the mail. I didn’t really mean to do that but got absorbed while thumbing through it to see if it wasn’t pretty much the same old shit about the plight of the creative artist. I think I can now understand why you bitch so much, and I don’t mean because you had such a hard life. I mean because it is a genuinely good book and deserves to be read by more people and you deserve to be paid what it is worth, which is more than considerable. Maybe part of my liking and admiration for EG is because I know so many of the people and places. But you can discount that. It is the way you told a good story, not the who and the where that did it for me. Anyway, I thought it was a fine piece of work. Keep them coming. Jack Marwitt
Jack: Got your book, Screed, this morning in the mail and just finished it tonight at 11:45. Just before I read Screed, I’d been re-reading Somerset Maugham’s Summing Up –you and Screed and “our times” hold your own with The Master and his in the 1930s. Jim Drought.
The greatest living American writer, perhaps the greatest American writer ever. Harvey Griffin
The most neurotic, self-absorbed, anal-compulsive whiner on the small press scene. Merritt Clifton
Your writing is very, very good and deserves wide readership and critical acceptance to boot. You write too well, as you know too well; your stuff’s too immediate and embarrassing for most people in publishing to handle. Fashion now is supposed to be slick, easy to snort, quick literary high. Who the hell wants to wade through 10,000 more pages of words? I do, if you’ll send them. Judith Conaway
Jack Saunders writes about his life. That’s all. It’s not any more or less interesting a life than yours, or mine, really. But it’s his. In everything he writes he tells the same old story, in infinite variety, like an earfull of blues based on the same three chords. He rings his changes, brushes off the dust, and reveals in his writing the mirror underneath; you see your own face staring back at you. The glimmer of universal recognition and revelation in the journey of the individual. We’re all the same, after all. Just shuffle the cards and deal again. Dana Buck
You know David, when I was in NY and walked into some book-shops one afternoon I really thought they were branches of Delicatessen, incredible what a poverty, not one single book of serious literature, colorful covers covering nothing or fake literature (if you’re lucky). If I would search for this rare unknown American author, where would I find him first? In NY, in LA, in SF or maybe in London, in Amsterdam in…well of course NY is big enough and maybe as a naive European I probably missed the right book-shop, somebody will sell it in NY I know just get a good directory. The point is Jack Saunders is probably too European for an American and too American for a European. That means his books could sell very well in Iceland, not America not Europe, but just in between. Arthur Berkhoff
Being a painter myself, your stuff is helpful and healthy to read. In the center of the whine is the ring of truth. These books should be available to young people who study art in schools. In fact I have sent two out urging that they be made available to students. John Dempsey
There is something very unusual in your work–what’s most unusual, however, is not what it is but where it is–in a book. The works seem extremely hermetic in self-consciousness. Totally self-involved. And that is how, in my estimation, all of life is lived, at every turn. The trick is to recognize the activities in which the admission of such solipsism is not welcome–art, certainly, politics another, even “love,” where heaven help those after their own solitary and exclusive ends. I think your work is being lived every day by countless people, and I think these people are of two camps –1) either despairing of not finding corroboration of their own self-involvement in works of art, or 2) convinced that such self-involvement is a sin of huge proportions, and that objectivity is the path of liberation, or at least, truth. Your work could open a lot of eyes, and could please a lot of hearts. Not for attribution
Just finished reading EVIL GENIUS last night. So I want to write while I have it fresh in mind. Think it is by far the best work of yours that I have read. There is a real universality with regard to the plight of the artist, which you capture just by writing the way you do. Have been to a few parties of late, I find that when I listen to so many artists that I am hearing you. These are for the most part visual artists, and also some other writers. John Evans
As I was reading OPEN BOOK, and getting toward the end of it, I thought to myself – well, he’s really done it now, he’s totally over the edge, he’s cracking up. It was a very uncomfortable feeling – like being at a party or in public with someone who’s coming on so strong and you can’t get away. At any rate I read OFF-SHORE with a sense of relief; you seem to have regained some equilibrium. Often great art comes from the pain and suffering of the artist, but still as human beings we have to wish that the artist achieve some sense of relief from that pain and suffering. I do want to comment on your IBM observations. They seem to be right on. The ad campaigns are ludicrous, especially the one currently which shows Leonardo da Vinci using an IBM PC. I never imagined Leonardo as the cuddly and slightly befuddled figure who’s shown on TV, and the kind of crap being produced as visual images on the machine would make Leonardo turn over in his grave. State of Being
Many thanks for your OPEN BOOK. I continue to be buoyed up by what you are doing–you are getting it down and out. Enclosed is $6 for the latest book. The book even looks good, & the talent & energy flows through it. Nothing else like it. Hope to see more. Al Berlinski
Well, I dropped everything I could again to read OPEN BOOK. I don’t think it was as powerful as EVIL GENIUS, but I think that would be a tough act to follow. I’d still rather read OPEN BOOK than anything else in my reading pile right now. The last 60 pages or so, OFFSHORE and FILTHY PICTURES, really grabbed me. Had me going. I dunno that I’d try to keep a family together and write some of the world’s great literature at the same time. I’d blow off the family if I had to. You’re a better man than me. I reckon. Crowbar
I think you ARE one of the greatest writers of our time. Don’t let anyone try to tell you different. I particularly admire the way you’re trying to do all this without fuckin’ over your family. This adds immeasurably to the value of your work. Celeste Oatmeal
OK well I got OPEN BOOK and read it through in a sitting. This is your best yet, I think, because Jack you’re talking directly to and about more people than you have before. I have to laugh at the terror you express about your situation and what it’s like to be in the situations I’ve been…yet, hey, I imagine myself in situations like you’ve been in and I feel a bit scared, truly. David Zack
I got the “Open Book” yesterday just about two weeks after I finished reading “Evil Genius.” One of the reviewers said something about reading Evil in a day and I laughed at how I carried Evil around in my backpack for nearly a month reading segments at a time, underlining sections, a day at a time like the style which unfolds in each chap. you write. This is how I prefer reading Saunders. There are moments in that book that I particularly relish; like the time at Penn Station when I was waiting for Amtrack to arrive, late as always. While you bombasted New York’s publishing establishment…wondering why you couldn’t get a word of your books reviewed there, it seemed incredibly ironic that I should be reading and talking about your book in NYC. While your “Buzzard Cult” may not be the wealthy influentials who publish, it seems to me that their loyalty is what will eventually catapult you into the publishing arena. Cracker Jack Kid
Thanks for sending your latest–What? Chapbook? Booklet? Pamphlet? Expectoration? I am happy to hear from you. A story or a novel of yours is like a personal letter. Also I am happy to see that you remain untamed, unregenerate, hopeless, hapless. It’s the whole of your charm. Chauncey Mabe
Maybe there’s room for only one Bukowski at a time, room for only one power-woman producer who “won’t eat lunch in this town again.” But Jack ranges far and wide. He doesn’t only do hard times, misogyny, hookers, classic music, vomit and booze, like C.B. Or opportunism and backstabbing, like Julia Philips. Jack has a real family–he can’t take the glamorous “tortured artist” way out. If he hit Brenda, there wouldn’t be accommodation while his wonderfully painful vision got resettled–like you read in all the artiste bios–there’d be a fishing gaff in his back! Buy the books while he’s alive! He knows he’ll triumph after death! Beat the flacks to the hulk! Read jillions of movie and book reviews, novels and pamphlets from an amazing, entertaining, clear, acerbic point of view–full to the hilt of erudite background and leaps of creative connectivity, usually featuring jazz, archeology, fiddle music, rebuilt fishing rods, IBM and desperation. His catalog is a novel too. It develops, entertains and wends its way, title by title! (There must be 50 books now.) He’s the greatest unpublished, unpublishable writer alive! He’s every “-ist” in the books, not proud of it, but merely mortal–tainted goods. The world has to ignore him. You don’t! $20 will get you an introductory kit to a fresh literary world. Jeff Potter
While FEMMES could be said to have revealed the novel in progress, to provide views of the brushwork, Saunders goes beyond this type of self-reflexiveness. But it is not a self-reflexiveness of the brushwork but rather of the rear of the frame, the wire and the nail in the support, the plaster in the wall that holds the nail. Saunders’ obsession is not with cultural matters or the eternal verities but with the protean struggle of Jack Saunders to get published, receive literary prizes, secure recognition. Saunders is never transcendent but is totally fettered to the diurnal tempest of Jack Saunders, his humiliations, his frustrations, rude ambitions, impudence, bumptiousness. One follows his saga with fascination, admires the irrepressible spirit that propels him but in the end the intrinsic artistry of a work will sustain or betray it. His significance to us is of course his methodology. Saunders’ life is his novel but he publishes it in a continuing process, assaulting the public in installments, encapsulated essences of his being. The notion of perpetual self-appearance, conception and composition with this plan in mind is not one that should be dismissed out of hand. The utilization thereof would not be an unworthy strategem in the hands of a strong intellect or a capable artisan. Zyx
Saw your novel, Screed, at a bookstore in Cambridge. I didn’t buy it because I am a bum with no money, but loved the bits I was able to read in the store…. Is the job of 20th Century man to become one with the pop culture? The guy at the bookstore gave me this card so I could write to you. He’s a nice guy, trying to resurrect American literature. B. White
Great – Great – Great! It’s your spirit Jack that comes through in all your writing, in elegance and joy. Roger Jackson
Thanks for the books. I enjoy the letters to publishers. My girlfriend likes hearing about Brenda. … Your writing is a true picture of a writer condemned to write for life– Do you have any cassette recordings of you reading from your work? If so, I would love to broadcast them on my radio program (a college station where I have worked without pay for eight years) B. White
Thanks, I needed that. Keep in touch. If in area call or come by. Will write later. Robbie Rogers
That this last batch of sheets was so current–up til last week–adds a special flavor & excitement to them. Roger Jackson
Self-fulfilling prophecy on a biblical scale. Boston Globe.
They don’t like what you have to say, but keep it up–someone will. Jack Hunter
Your writing vigorous and entertaining. It tells me there is a man behind the words. Writing should be more than good or bad, it should suggest the writer, the individual who needs to write. Good writing can still be shitty writing. Does that make any sense? Jon Cone
Dear Contestant: Thank you for your help in making the Overrated and Underrated Contests a success, if they were. I even thank those of you who called me a creep and a cretin. Hey! Everybody makes mistakes. Write on, D. Kaul
Better than a jab in the eye with a sharp stick. Anonymous
“You didn’t fail. You passed, but we want you to take the exams again. We think you can show improvement.” “How much improvement, in what areas?” “We’ll know it when we see it.” The committee
For Jack Saunders, who has achieved closure. Bob Black
That’s true, but it also pretty much sums up what you write about (embittered at not being published), which is the main reason NY and Hollywood don’t want you. Write a story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Don’t whine, don’t pontificate, don’t rue the years you have not been published, don’t lament all those things you have been lamenting in 95% of the written material I have seen of yours. Tell a damn good story and send it out; if it comes back, send it somewhere else. Lots of fabulous novels have been rejected 20 or more times before being published (Gone With The Wind, The Hunt for Red October, and (not sure of the exact title) The Art of Zen Motorcycle Repairing are three that come to mind). Millar Guthrie
First let me say that I have had the great good fortune to correspond with Jack Saunders and to read two of his books. He made me laugh out loud. (Those of you who know me recognize that this is my highest praise.) As Jack pointed out, he’s not whining, he’s wailing like a banshee. So I take back my crack about whining. If anyone deserves to be famous and wealthy, he does. Buy his books. Susan Brousseau
Every so often we hear about some poor soul who has created a massive work laboring under the pathetic illusion that some kindly spirit would come along and “publish his novel.” He finds himself stuck with an unmarketable, unmanageable morass of a manuscript that he resolves, at last, to publish himself. As he educates himself about the process he slowly comes to the realization that he has constructed a practical monstrosity. … Wasting time and effort on the Manhattan based megahouses is truly an exercise in futility. If Melville sent in MOBY DICK they’d send him a form letter rejection. What chance does poor Jack Saunders have [paragraphs transposed]? Zyx
Your work rings, you know — drop it on a bridge and watch the bridge collapse. Toss it in the air and watch a page land smack dab in the middle of the brain of every single person who “knows”… Thank you for the books and thank you for writing them. Jeremy Turner
You are utterly lacking in certain forms of self-control. Restraint, order, planning, are also called for in writing. Without some self-imposed discipline, a writer will wind up with a great miasma of verbiage, a miasma that constitutes an unmanageable mess. You can’t live in a self-referential fantasy. You have to deal with practical considerations. You have to think about how something you write can be presented to the public without ruining yourself financially. If you don’t care about so minor a consideration, then why should anybody else? Arnold Skemer
This is some very clever writing…rings true to my own wars with the publishers–good luck! Theodore Roszak
You certainly seem to have a more distinguished rejection record than anyone I’ve ever heard of. Madison Smartt Bell
About six months ago we got a batch of old poetry journals and chapbooks and such in at the store. And in the course of skimming through these I dipped into one that appeared to be some sort of critical symposia on Bukowski. So I’m dipping in here and there, and reading around in it–and I hit this one piece that was clearly more cogent and interesting than the others. I settled down and was reading along in it. All at once, right before my very eyes, Jack, it sort of gave a twitch and dived off into this rant–which was familiar enough to me so that I sat up and exclaimed, “Ha! and By God! This thing has suddenly started sounding like Jack the Raver!” Well, turns out, it was. I had a good chuckle over that. Eel Leonard
Congratulations on your imminent big day. Your stamina is mythological. Crad Kilodney
5 [on a scale of 1 to 10]. Verse of angry would-be writer. Jean Trebbi
Thank you for the books & tape we’ll return it. Some good laughs in PULP & really shook the place laughing so hard to Blaster. Of course none comes close to Jack Saunders. Larry Hazel & Charley
Jack Saunders, who will soon have written “100 books without selling a word to New York or Hollywood,” has a simple mode of operation: every day he sits at his computer for 37 hours or more and, like his hero Jack Kerouac, writes whatever comes into his head–which is mostly a defense of writing whatever comes into his head. Much of this is repetitious, but mythically so, and vastly reassuring to his fans (I’m proud to be one) who, my guess is, are similarly “marginal” writers who won’t give up in spite of NY and Hollywood, and are grateful to find Jack’s leaky but still somehow seaworthy dingy bobbing along with them no matter how many time zones left of the closest shipping lane they find themselves in. Bob Grumman
Thank you very much for the Christmas story I really enjoyed it. I can picture it played every Christmas maybe opposite some national sporting event. In the place of Dickens’ story. I think your technique is brilliant like a Jap painting very stark and scary very effective. I hate to even say such things it strick so near the heart. Larry Schlueter
I found one interesting portrait in your book…. That was the character of Brenda. To me, she seems almost saintly, having worked so damned hard all her life to keep her family together. She’s what I would call a great woman. I do wonder, though, what dreams Brenda gave up along the way? What might she have become, were it not for her workload? Phil Bland
What can I say? You are still at it! My God. Gives me vertigo, what you are doing. Or claustrophobia. I suppose what you are, Jack, is astounding. I know this much–I’m glad I’m not you. John Bennett
Your life as you depict it in your work–and I’ve followed this for years as you’ve sent this and that along–seems to be one of great savagery to the feelings in having to confront one after another kick of indifference to the work that you must do. There’s no choice about that. As you live you must write and you must write in the way you do and only in that way because that’s the only way that will satisfy your need to say what you have to say just as my poetry and short prose pieces do for me. But amongst this bleak and savage confrontation with failure to get any part of the world to reward/move your way (other than individuals like me who have no importance or power to move you forward into some/any recognition of your work), there’s an essential sweetness and loveliness about your life. You can appreciate and taste the important and wonderful and enduring aspects of living on a daily basis: a loving, caring, loyal family, the pleasures of children and a wife who stands by you, walking on the beach, a good meal, a beautiful piece of music, the pleasures of friendships. So like Thoreau you travel much in Concord and you don’t miss the transient and heady sweetnesses of life. But you also taste its bitterness to the dregs. And it’s this combination and your capacity to express their permutations that makes you and your work very appealing to me. Laurel Speer
I’ve been reading in your stack. It is a stack. Not a string of novels. Why do you want to cheapen it by calling what you write novels? It doesn’t matter, I suppose. You could call it crates of bananas and it wouldn’t make an iota of difference. I’m glad you’re writing your stack, Jack. You very much stand your ground, even if your motives aren’t all lilly-white. Whose are? Who says they’re supposed to be? There’s something I value that is impossible to put into words, value it more than anything, and you’ve got that, down under all the barnacles on your rusty old hull. John Bennett
About your rant on Richard K. and related subjects, it was clear to me throughout that you were expressing (1) minor envy, (2) your awareness of your own pettiness and how it made you seem a comic figure, and not attacking Kostelanetz. As one constantly filled with petty envy and always sardonically aware of how dumb it probably is, I understand and sympathize. And this kind of self-portrayal is one of your strengths. Bob Grumman
Why are you attacking me? Richard Kostelanetz
In it [“The Small Time,” The Nation], Klawans makes his recommendation of Popular Reality, and discusses Jack Saundersà work as wellóperhaps positively, perhaps pejoratively. He has carefully chosen his words. Eric Sinclair
Jack — I sure enjoy your Fishing Tales. What I wouldn’t give…. Did charter a boat this summer one day & caught a nice mess o’ Lake Erie yellow perch! John M. Bennett
Dear Jack. Thank you for the latest you shure have hit your stride great stuff the poem about the for the criminally insane is as great as anything I’ve ever read in the English language. Congratulations. Larry Schlueter
Jack — This autobiography in verse you’re doing may be your best stuff yet–a book piling up, eh? Happy New Year! e .. (Johnee)
I like all these stories, past and present. I like recycling the old stories I’m already familiar with like your employment with IBM because with the years since you have your insights, differences in viewpoint, different takes than those you recorded in your current work at the time.
You’ve really got my number as one of your faithful readers: no TV, got the radio tuned to NPR/classical music, don’t need to go out and do things, be seen or heard. Much rather stay home and write and read. When you get well known and have to service your readers/customers (a state we’ll never have to confront), I really do believe it cuts into your writing time, your state of mind necessary to do your best writing. So it’s a crap shoot and trade-off no matter where you are in the creative food chain. Laurel Speer
