Title: Bukowski, by Jack Saunders
[$5, postpaid in US. HUGE SALE!]
Here’s a $5 ZINEBOOK! Zines are cheap…so are ZINEBOOKS! Check it out! Pulp is back! The new pulp is here!
Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family
The breakout novel from Jack Saunders!
Book Description
Charles Bukowski is the ultimate underground writer success story. Publisher John Martin gave him an allowance to quit his job at the post office and write a novel, Post Office, which became a huge success in Europe. Bukowski toured Europe with a personal paparazzo to document his journey, and wrote a book called Shakespeare Never Did This.
He was still largely unknown in the United States, where he is better known for the movie he wrote about himself, Barfly, than for his many novels and books of poetry.
One of the things Bukowski wrote about was going ten rounds with Hemingway. In Bukowski Never Did This, underground legend Jack Saunders writes about going ten rounds with Bukowski.
Writing over 250 books while working full-time jobs, taking on the literary establishment, and raising a family aren’t easy things to do. Jack Saunders has done them. Bukowski Never Did This is a partial record of his journey, sans paparazzo.
Author with Tray of Portugaises…
This photo is from the back cover of the book. Saunders is perhaps celebrating the completion of a novel. Fresh oysters are served in a cafe just down the street from where he lives on the Gulf Coast. Hemingway would’ve enjoyed them…Buk, too.
About the Author
Jack Saunders has been writing for 34 years, without selling a word to New York or Hollywood, winning a grant, a writer-in-residence position, or a literary prize.
He is working on a 40-year roman-feuilleton, or saga-novel, that is too large for small presses to publish and too outspoken and freewheeling for the mainstream commercial houses. A vernacular writer, he calls himself. In the sense self-taught. But also in the sense ambassador-in-bonds.
He shoots his leaflets into the void and presses on to Boulogne, like Tristram Shandy. His stack now stands at 267 volumes, 268 roaring in his veins like a camphor injection. The stopped-up toilet of American letters, fixing to erupt, like the Wakulla Volcano, or an explosion in a charnel house.
He calls his coterie of steadfast readers the Buzzard Cult, after the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, a revitalization movement that swept the Lower Mississippi Valley just before and after European contact, and calls himself the salvage archeologist of the Mall Builder culture.
America’s greatest living unpublished, or underpublished writer, perhaps the greatest unpublished, or underpublished American writer ever.
JP’s Review at Amazon…
Buk made music from the everyday life of a single guy hooked into an urban neighborhood, a bluecollar worklife, and a world of culture.
With this breakout book, Jack Saunders takes his turn. His music comes from what it means to be from a rural folk culture and to work in the whitecollar world and raise a family and stay married in today’s climate. The result is of course the blues. But classical, jazz and wilder things are in there, too. Jack works deeper into the notch Buk opened. And his mining pays off. Big themes! Social relevance! Tension! Will he be able to press on with his art AND feed the kids?
If you’re feeling a disconnect between your life and what you read in today’s mainstream fiction…if you wonder what planet the characters come from…if you feel privilege being rubbed in your face by an oblivious writer…you need this book.
This book is set up in an interesting way: it flips between a Novel and a Diary. Near the end we get a unique twist that alone is worth the price of admission.
I’ve been a fan of Saunders for years. I’ve published, reprinted and promoted his work in the alternative scene. But none of his HUNDREDS of books have been widely available until this one. Thousands of copies of his books and pamphlets circulate thru the underground. He has a cult following for the genre he invented (uh, “enema verite”) but has never been reviewed at the level he deserves. This is ready to change.
I found that learning to love his work was like learning anything truly new. I resisted at first. It’s shocking. It breaks molds. Yet it’s familiar, accomplished. It’s an acquired taste. The music of his style kept coming back to me until I gave in.
So, hurray to LitVision Press for breaking out Saunders! It’s the start of a new literary powerhouse.
Saunders, LitVision and myself are all members of the only literary activist group, the ULA (Underground Literary Alliance) a loose group of independent readers, writers, and publishers which works to open up and revive literature. The adventure has only begun.
Non-US Postage
On receipt of your order, I’ll let you know how much extra to send for non-US postage. It’s between $3-8 extra depending on distance. You still get the same super OYB shipping subsidy that US customers get. (My apologies for the hassle and for not having auto-calculating pro Shopping Cart software installed yet.)
