Sonny Brewer will be at Off Square Books at NOON to sign copies of Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.
The book features essays by Larry Brown, John Grisham, Rick Bragg, Howard Bahr, Pat Conroy, Tom Franklin, William Gay, Winston Groom, Silas House, Tim Gautreaux, Suzanne Hudson, Joshilyn Jackson, Barb Johnson, Barry Moser, Janis Owens, George Singleton, Daniel Wallace, Brad Watson, Steve Yarbrough, and more.
Dear Booklover,
P.J. O’Rourke said, “Creative writing teachers
should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words
‘Write what you know’ is confined to a labor camp…The blind guy with the
funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think
he saw?”
Like O’Rourke, William Faulkner had his own take on the
Other Commandment for writers, the one that goes, “Thou shalt not quit
thy day job.” Faulkner, who won the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature,
had, twenty-five years before, worked at the post office in his hometown
of Oxford, Mississippi.
Mister Faulkner was known to say, “One
of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight
hours, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight
hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.”
He must have been
determined to give something else (writing, we may assume, perhaps a
glass of whisky on the side) a whirl when he tendered his resignation to
the postmaster. “I reckon I’ll be at the beck and call of folks with
money all my life,” he said, “but thank God I won’t ever again have to
be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who’s got two cents to
buy a stamp.”
The authors in this book have tried their hands at
some of the same jobs you have held, or still keep. They’ve worked on
the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped
tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered
boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, and, yes,
delivered the mail. They’ve driven garbage trucks.
And like William Faulkner they have quit those day jobs.
And
like Faulkner they write. These authors tell good tales. If you wonder
what work preceded their efforts to produce a great pile of books, if
you would like to know how they made the transition to, as William Gay
said, “clocking in at the culture factory,” then this is the book you’ve
been waiting for.
Sonny Brewer, Editor
Fairhope, Alabama
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