I linked with him at his spot last weekend in Jersey City to talk about Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930), which I happened to be reading when I saw, via Twitter, that he too was reading it. Faulkner also worked manual labor for a time—as an operator as a chemical plant, while writing this book.
Bud Smith is the author of Teenager (Tyrant Books, 2019), Double Bird (Maudlin House, 2018), WORK (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2017), Dust Bunny City (Disorder Press, 2017), Calm Face (House of Vlad, 2016), among others. He works heavy construction building and destroying chemical plants, refineries, and generating stations. He’s on Twitter @bud_smith. Here is a list of his stories online. He is currently writing a serialized weekly series called Good Luck, from The Nervous Breakdown.
Intro song: "when i die" by yamz
Sean Thor Conroe is a writer and carpenter living in Harlem. Bars in X-R-A-Y, Soft Cartel, Expat Lit; forthcoming in Philosophical Idiot, BULL Lit, Back Patio. Twitter / Instagram
Quotes from WORK (2017) I like:
On Writing/Art. “Writing isn’t a precious thing and I’m not in eternal search of keeping what I do holy or built up out of shimmering gems. I don’t eat my lunch off a gold plated lunch truck. The great American novel doesn’t know it’s the great American novel until it’s been out almost a hundred years and the woman or man who wrote it is dead. Who cares about the great American novel while we’re in the golden age of TV?
“Art isn’t something you should protect from yourself. Just run towards it full spirit and embrace how ridiculous your ideas are, how unguarded, how close to something a child might think up, lying on their back in a field overgrown with weeds. The sights and sounds of the rotating world revealing itself to you, or not.
“Take a sip of black gas station quality coffee, take a bite of fish sandwich, write down the adventures of the day. Every day adds up. Every lunch break is something more than a lunch break” (20).
"It's hard for me to keep a steady schedule for making art. There's too many things that can go wrong on a daily basis" (185) .
"I always have my cellphone in my pocket so I just write on my cellphone. A little computer that fits in my tar-covered blue jeans. Back in the day we carved our stories into cave walls. No more. No more" (186).
"Between working a full time job and all of the other things that living a life means, it feels easy to put the act of making some art on the back burner. But hey, blink your eyes and you're gonna be dead and sitting in a coffin down in the ground and you'll still be thinking about that idea you had for a novel. Only problem is, you can't move your arms now, because the coffin is so small" (187).