It’s Jack Saunders’ birthday today. He’s 70-something.
He’s been writing books for 40 years, pitching them to NYC agents and presses high and low the whole time. Entering them for grants and contests. All rejected!
Yet he’s stayed hopeful and dynamic the whole time.
Amazing!
What’s more the book total count is … drum-roll … 424!
He’s one of a kind!
He has perfected the art of daily typewriting that Kerouac started. He’s pushed it farther than far. Beyond the avant garde into something plain folks can relate to.
He seems to write cycles, looking at similar themes this way and that, like a jazz player working variations. Some people say that it’s writing about writing, or writing about himself. …What a limited way to look at it. He writes about life, and he’s seen a lot. He’s in the thick of it, amid a wide scope of it.
For instance, his latest book profiles the many artists who are working in the Panhandle area of Florida — some struggling, some makin’ it. He gives the inside scoop. He knows the area and its people. His family is from small-town commercial fishing. His sons are both pro roots/bluegrass musicians. He starts from there and writes outward, about work, music, food, cooking, movies, books, politics, theory.
He’s written other guidebooks to the area, as well. If you ever go down there, you should use one of them. Of course they never made it into print, but they might be at his website, downloadable in chunks. What’s more his regional guidebooks are all more than that. They spread out, and out, to become literature.
See for yourself.
https://thedailybulletin.com/family/day.htm
