Webb, I dunno. he’s blown thousands of dollars running around the country for a year looking for a new Taos, a new Carmel, a new something, meanwhile staying out of direct Atomic Warfare areas, according to the experts. well, that’s his business. but he’s running around in special trains with his wife, 2 dogs, the printing press, tons of cartons of paper, type, books, manuscripts. they had to get away from New Orleans, couldn’t stand it—tourists, the Ku Klux Klan, thugs, bad weather for Lou’s lungs. o.k. I get postcards from this city, then that: “I believe this is it. everything fine.” then a week later, another card: “oh, we can’t stand it here!” and there goes the press and the dogs and the works somewhere else. Laredo, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Cleveland, Phoenix again. “I feel El Paso will be the place. I can get paper. can walk across the border to whorehouses. real life. everything I need.” no, something went wrong in El Paso. too low? Santa Fe was too high, and other things. one place they rented a house (Phoenix), paid 2 months rent, $200. fine place, they wrote, plenty of room for dogs. then I hear it is too hot. air conditioners don’t work or the blowers don’t reach the crapper or something. 3 or 4 days. on the train again. the press, the dogs, the works. 200 dollar rent lost, but o.k. they learned something. Phoenix won’t do. where now? now it’s Tucson. $235 to get the press hooked up again. triple wiring like in all the other places. Tucson, o.k. have made down payment on a house. fine, low monthly payments. everything fine. fixing place up. there’s even a bed for you. dogs love it. will have bookshop in front. send all your old books, paperbacks, little magazines. (I did.) well, fine I thought, they’ve settled. they went through the same thing a year ago, and finally came back to New Orleans. now, at least, they know New Orleans is not right for them. Los Angeles is in the Atomic area, Frisco is in the Atomic area, so forth. I had written them a long letter some time back trying to tell them that there weren’t any cities, that shit spread wherever humanity lived. but they didn’t seem to get the message, so when I got their notes from various cities, that “this might be it,” I just wrote back fine, fine, good. now I just got a letter from Tucson, “Lou misses New Orleans, wishes we were back. this is a lousy town. the busses stop running at 6 p.m. nothing but old, old people around, walking around. we haven’t made any friends.” But they are going to stay, Jon says now, a year anyhow. a lot of work to do. the record Bukowski TALKING won’t be out in April. Chi. Lit Times ad only pulled in about 20 sales so far. they just don’t have the kind of $$$ to put it out now. October better. would take $600 at least to press the record. broke. might do the Henry Miller book submission first, that would give them enough money to get into #5, the Patchen issue, and then, in October, the record. I busted my ass, shooting mouth into a borrowed tape recorder, laying on the floor first on one side then the other because my ass was too sore to sit on, I got them fresh mad tapes for their April deadline, and now I find I had until October, maybe forever. it’s Webb’s $$$ and his right to travel but when he cries Wolf now, when he cries broke now, I really just do wonder who is crazy, me or him or the dogs or the press or the American cities and The Bomb or what? he gave me 2 great books, Crucifix and It Catches, I can’t deny that. yet I wonder sometimes if I wouldn’t have been better off coming out in cheap editions of one or 2 hundred copies? certainly the writing could have been judged as writing. it’s difficult to hold down pages like that. I means Crux and Catches. automatically they are going to beanball you for coming out in a purple necktie. format, beautiful format! all right, fuck it, I wrote some poems one time, long ago, too. see the ungrateful wretch I am! [* * *]