Gary, your last entry didn't sound too good. I know the feeling. That's life.

I haven't got anything to add to the discussion as it was before I went away for a few days but when I got back there was the familiar rejection from a publisher waiting for me, so I thought I'd indulge myself and share it with you.

As you can see from the conversation so far, I'm much involved with Bukowski, as well as Céline, Adorno, Bataille, Nietzsche, et cetera, and as well as theorising about it I've been working on some creative writing that reflects these motivations. Four months ago I decided to send off the attached piece to the Melbourne-based literary journal Overland. I chose Overland because it advertised itself as being interested in publishing working class writing and in publishing material that could not get published elsewhere. They sounded like they were what I was after so I gave them a go.

Four months later I got the following rejection:

"Dear Trevor, Our reader found this interesting - the dialogue well paced and the characters recognisable - but they felt that it didn't go anywhere, in the end they wanted more. I hope this helps. Thanks."

There's some unreadable squiggle where the name should go. The editors are Katherine and Nathan but the squiggle doesn't look like either of those names.

The first thing I'd say about this was that I didn't think wanting more was a bad thing in writing. As I writer what I don't want is for readers to think they've had enough. But I'm being unfair. I think what the reader meant that (s)he wanted more in terms of a story than my piece provided. That's true. It doesn't provide a neat little story with a beginning, an end, and a message. That's precisely the nineteenth century bourgeois crap that I'm trying to break with.

I'm trying to write from a working class perspective about working class life, real working class life, not some romanticised twaddle as thought up by a bunch of pinko labourite left intellectuals who went to private schools and the sandstone universities. I'm writing from experience. I was a baker, my father a bus conductor. Sure I went and got myself an education and now I'm an egg-head, but that's where I came from I know the sort of things that fill working class lives---so did Céline; so did Bukowski. Working life isn't made up of neat little stories with a moral. It's bland and flat, made up of petty jealousies and little meaningless intrigues. The whole thing turns into a story, a biography but the bits and pieces, well, that's not what they're like. I'm just trying to give voice to it how it really is, instead of writing bullshit about kiddies rebelling and shooting smack, or unionists struggling with bosses and crims pushing drugs and making it big. Hey Kath and Nathan, that's just the usual literary crap. That's not working class writing. That's just the stuff that everybody wants to publish.

Have a look at my piece, anyway. Make up your own mind. What my piece is about is that our lives are full of doing the usual things in the usual way, even when they seem like unique events and that we really feel like we're doing something authentic, if I can use that word without sounding too pretentious.

There's nothing so novel about my piece really. It's not so different to the slice-of-life stories such as Katherine Mansfield was writing a hundred years ago, like her story 'At The Bay'. Nothing happens -- that's the whole point.

I was disappointed at my rejection but not really surprised. As the months ticked by it became obvious. If I really want to take some solace, it's the sort of thing that happened to Bukowski, it's the sort of thing that happened to Proust. I'm not saying I'm in the same league as these guys. I'm just saying that I'm copping the same kind of shit from the same kind of people. 's the same old story.

I think I got knocked back because I wasn't part of the club. I'm some guy from out there somewhere who no one knows and to whom no one owes anything, so I have to do it hard. On the other hand, if I was in the club I wouldn't have to jump through so many hoops, I wouldn't get kept on a string for months and then get rejected with a scant, rough little ungrammatical sentence. But this is the essence of academia. It's the same old story. Perhaps they didn't like my story because its about them. Everybody finds that their own shit stinks---that's why they can't wait to flush it away.

Oh well, Karen Blixen wrote for God so I guess I can as well. I don'; think (s)he sends rejection slips.