A lot of people ask me... and by "people," I mean hypothetical beings from an alternate universe... "Jack," their disembodied voices plead, "how do you decide what to read?" The answer is simple: the obituaries, of course! All of my ideas about everything come from obituaries. A New York Times obituary is how I came across an anthology called TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED. On the first page of the actual text (a distinction I make because of the three - three! - prefaces) there is an owl. My instincts in this matter having been honed to the finest of points, I feel confident in saying there will be several more owls before I am done. In fact, screech-owls, as distinct from regular everyday owls, make an appearance on the same page, in the same poem from the Cahto people of northern California. It is, if I am reading it correctly, which I am not, a list of things that were not there before the beginning of time. "Owls were not they say." Turns out a lot of animals and things weren't around back then. "Then clouds were not they say. Fog was not they say. It didn't appear they say. Stars were not they say. It was very dark." The last line has an echo in the last line of a story in my second book, which (the coincidence) gave me a good feeling, though you might justiably object, if you existed, which you don't, "It was very dark? I bet a lot of people have written that sentence." Well, it works at the end of the story, or is intended to, in the same way that it provides a satisfying resting place for the poem. The sentence in my story goes, if I recall it correctly, "Pretty soon it was dark, and between the lit cities it was very dark." I remember it chiefly because I got a rejection from some very high-toned magazine (I can't remember which, but it was a big one), on the bottom of which the editor or reader grudgingly scrawled, "The last sentence was good." Ha ha! Which reminds me: the other day it dawned on me that all my books are out of print. Someone who should know (Richard Howorth) told me it's not true, but I admit to lingering doubts, even in the face of his unquestionable expertise as the former mayor of the town and, more significantly, the owner of Square Books. Anyway, before Richard gave me that comfort, the notion came to me to organize an event in which I read from my out of print books (all my books). I thought I could sell whatever copies I could scrounge up around the house at bargain basement prices. Then I realized we have just one copy of SWEET BANANAS, of which there were not that many copies to begin with. So I looked around the "internet" and found exactly one for sale, and I bought it. Now, I wondered with some anticipation what would be on the cover, because, as you would not recall even did you exist, each copy had a different cover, featuring the beginning sentence (or so, as we shall see) of each of the novel's 365 chapters. Well! I was delighted, despite all my failures as a writer, as enumerated in part above, to unwrap the package and discover by wild and statistically unlikely happenstance my favorite chapter of the book staring at me from the cover. (See above.) Yes, that's a whole chapter, just so you know what you're missing. I think it's Mary Miller's favorite, too. She mentioned it in ELECTRIC LITERATURE as one of her favorite sentences. It is churlish of me to note in the face of such generosity that it is two sentences.
