Jeff Weddle is the Alabama Beat Poet Laureate (2024–2026). He won the 2007 Eudora Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press and his work has been nominated for a Pushcart. Several of his books have won medals in national contests, such as the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Book Awards, the Feathered Quill Book Awards, and the Next Generation Independent Book Awards. He has two collections of selected poems published in Kosovo in Albanian translation and a smattering of his poems have been published in Spanish translation. Jeff has been a faculty member in the University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies since 2004.
Jim Camp: Jeff, before we talk about Bohemian New Orleans, I want to talk about Bukowski. Buk got his hooks into me with Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. For you, it was Mockingbird Wish Me Luck. What was it about that book that grabbed you and made you want to keep reading?
Jeff Weddle: Bukowski came to me at the perfect time, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky. This was probably 1980 or ’81. I was a small-town kid, pretty much a straight arrow, before I moved to Lexington and fell in with a bunch of wonderful drunks. We all lived in a great old building called the Minor-Dixon Apartments. I started drinking a lot and barely did enough schoolwork to keep from getting kicked out of the university. It was a glorious time. One day my downstairs neighbor, a guy named John Patterson, knocked on my door, handed me two books, and said I needed to read them. One was Patchen’s novel Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer and the other was Bukowski’s Mockingbird Wish Me Luck. I’m pretty sure I read the Patchen first, and it was really great, but when I read Bukowski it was like the scales fell from my eyes. I had always liked poetry, but until I read that book I had no idea how immediate and pure a poem could be. I couldn’t get enough after that. There was a very cool alternative bookstore in Lexington called SQecial Media, and they carried all of his books. I read every poetry collection, then the short stories, the novels—all of it. When there was nothing more to buy at SQecial, I turned to the UK library to see what they had. That’s where I fell into the world of little magazines. Wormwood Review was the best of the best that I found there, and it was in a memorial issue dedicated to Jon Edgar Webb that I first learned about Loujon Press.
JC: One thing that jumped out at me in your answer is that the path wasn’t really Bukowski straight to Loujon Press. It was Bukowski, then the little magazines, then Jon Edgar Webb, and only then Loujon. At what point did you realize you were no longer just reading Bukowski, but becoming interested in the ecosystem that made Bukowski possible?
JW: That actually took quite a long time. You have to remember that I was very young, maybe 19 or 20 when this started, and I was following a blinding light. I was always on the lookout for anything I could find about Bukowski and it was almost incidental what it was. I was also incredibly obnoxious in my obsession. One of my friends described me as being a Bukowski fan in the same way other people are Southern Baptists. So, I was not only consuming all of this, I was preaching it to anyone who would listen, whether they wanted me to or not. I’ll call it the arrogance of youth, but it lasted until I was 40 or so. Don’t get me wrong, I have never stopped loving Bukowski, but I did finally settle down some. I guess I started consciously putting what I knew and loved about Bukowski into the context of the small press and little magazines when I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Tennessee. Bohemian New Orleans, by the way, is a revision of that dissertation. It was the first time I considered his career — not just his writing — in a systematic way. That said, I had been personally pulled into the small press world years earlier, probably in the late 1980s, when I started sending poems to the littles. A few years after that, a buddy and I started our own little magazine, which we called misnomer. It ran for four issues and each one had a section dedicated to a featured poet. The final issue featured Bukowski, but he unfortunately never saw it because he died before it was published. I treasure the items of correspondence that I have from him.
JC: You mentioned discovering Loujon Press through a memorial issue of Wormwood Review. Do you remember your first direct encounter with Loujon? Was it one of the books? Or an issue of the Outsider?
JW: My first encounter with Loujon was actually a telephone conversation with Louise Webb. I knew a little bit about the Webbs and their press through things I’d read here and there, primarily Neeli Cherkovski’s biography — Hank — but had never actually held or seen any Loujon publications. Neeli’s book didn’t have a lot of material on the Webbs, but it was enough to really get me excited about learning more about them. When it came time to pick a dissertation topic, I asked one of my professors if he thought a history of Loujon Press would work. He said that it sounded good and agreed to direct the dissertation on one condition: I would eventually publish the dissertation as a book. The Internet was still relatively new in those days, but I went online to see what I could find. A quick search turned up an online interview with Lou and that led me to getting in touch with the woman who had conducted the interview. She gave me Lou’s phone number and I gave Lou a call. I’ve got to tell you, I was very nervous when I made that call. Lou lived with her sister in Slidell, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, and the sister was very controlling. She always answered the phone. Never Lou. I remember I was sweating pretty hard, because what little I knew of Lou made me believe that she and Jon were highly consequential to the evolution of American literature in the second half of the twentieth century. So, I was very nervous when Lou came to the phone. I introduced myself and told her about about the dissertation and that I’d like to interview her sometime. She thought I meant I wanted to come over to her house right away and told me that I couldn’t do that because the bus was waiting to take her to the Senior Center where she spent most of her days. Of course, since I was several hundred miles away, in Knoxville, a visit that day was never my intention. Lou was very sweet, but also wary. She told me that she might be willing to help me, but first I would have to pass muster with her stepson, Jon Edgar Webb, Jr. She gave me his contact information and that got everything rolling.
JC: You just described Jon and Lou Webb as “highly consequential to the evolution of American literature in the second half of the twentieth century.” That’s a remarkable statement because outside of collectors, small-press publishers, and literary historians, most people have never heard of them. What made you feel that strongly about the Webbs before you had even met Lou, and what did you learn afterward that either confirmed or challenged that belief?
JW: Before I address that question, I need to backtrack just a bit. All of this that we’re talking about took place over a good many years and sometimes I can be forgetful. It had completely slipped my mind that, a few years earlier, when I was living in Oxford, MS, I met a guy who had a copy of the second issue of the Outsider, which he sold me for ten bucks, and which I later ended up losing in a move. Also, around this time, my folks found a copy of the final issue of the Outsider somewhere and bought it for me. I still have that one. Bukowski had such an impact. The common narrative on Bukowski’s career explosion is traced through the lens of John Martin and Black Sparrow Press, which makes sense, but you’ve got to remember that Martin didn’t show interest in Bukowski until the Webbs had already launched him via their “Outsider of the Year” award in the third issue of the magazine, an award which not only gave him his first, full-blown, major notice in the little magazine world, but also came with a book deal. In truth, the award was mostly conceived of as a marketing tool to push the book Jon Webb already wanted to publish, but that’s neither here nor there. It worked. When It Catches My Heart in Its Hands came out in 1963, in an edition of 777 handmade copies, it caused quite a stir. Jon made sure of that. Not only did he nominate the book for a Pulitzer Prize, but he hustled through his extensive network of contacts and made sure it was reviewed in major publications such as the Village Voice and the New York Times Book Review. The Times review was written by Kenneth Rexroth and, other than taking a swipe at Loujon for promoting Bukowski so hard, it was a beautifully nuanced and highly positive piece. It took Bukowski seriously on the national stage. This was huge. It’s possible that John Martin may have been slightly aware of Bukowski before the Webbs brought him his first great success, but it was the Loujon connection that made Bukowski’s star shine bright enough for Martin to really take notice. I don’t think I have to make the case that Bukowski’s impact on American and world poetry has been, and continues to be, profound. There is no question that his rise to prominence is directly rooted in Loujon’s efforts.
JC: Who was Jon Webb as a person? Beyond the mythology that has grown up around Loujon Press, what qualities allowed him to recognize Bukowski’s importance before most of the literary world had caught on?
JW: Those are big questions, and for full answers I would refer readers to Bohemian New Orleans. Jon was a remarkable man, at least as interesting a person as was Bukowski. He was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. During the Great Depression, he married an alcoholic by the name of Opal, with who he had several children. He also became a newspaperman who committed a daring armed robbery for which he served three years in the Mansfield State Reformatory, where he began writing and publishing short stories. When he was released, he found the love of his life in Louise, who became his second wife. Jon wanted to be a great writer, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson or Ernest Hemingway, both of whom he eventually became acquainted with, but came to realize that while he was a good writer, it was unlikely he would achieve the greatness he craved. He chose instead to become a great editor and, to my mind, he succeeded. As to how he came to find and understand what he had in Bukowski, the answer to that is that Bukowski was pretty much brought to him by California poet Jory Sherman. Sherman was acting as the Outsider’s west coast editor and he was well acquainted with Bukowski’s talents. He showed Jon some of Bukowski’s work and Jon recognized the power of the poems. He also felt a kinship in the very real outsider status both men shared. Bukowski’s style was fresh, raw and unlike anything others were doing in those days, or at least he was certainly doing it better than anyone else. Jon solicited poems for the first issue of the magazine and they were a hit with readers. He solicited more poems for the second issue and Bukowski was actually a little hesitant to comply, because he thought it might be overkill. Jon was insistent, though, and Bukowski sent the poems. They were likewise well received. Jon knew he was working with a rare talent and saw that both he and Bukowski could profit greatly from a continued collaboration. Jon had already decided that he wanted to pivot from being only a magazine editor and publisher to being a book publisher and came up with the idea to promote Bukowski as “Outsider of the Year” in the third Outsider and use that as a way to launch a collection of his poems. It Catches My Heart in Its Hands was certainly a big achievement for Bukowski, but it was likewise a big achievement for Jon.
JC: Do you think Jon’s own ambitions and disappointments as a writer made him a better editor?
JW: That’s hard to say with certainty, but I wouldn’t be surprised if if that were true. I mean, as a writer he created a network of associates in the literary world and that alone helped him be a better editor. When you have good people to work with, it’s easier to get good results. And knowing the possibilities and challenges inherent to the business probably made him more discerning, and perhaps more forgiving in some instances, of writers who might not be living up to their potential. I don’t have any evidence to back any of this up, but it would make sense if it were true. A couple of things I forgot to mention earlier were that, in addition to being a short story writer, he also published a successful novel with Dial Press. It was called Four Steps to the Wall and was based on his prison experiences. That book almost became a movie starring well-known character actor Dan Duryea. Also, while he was incarcerated, he edited the prison newspaper, The New Day. I suspect his work with The New Day had a significant impact on his editorial approach later on with the Outsider. It’s my understanding that he not only published work by inmates, but also the work of established writers on the outside who used prison numbers as pseudonyms. Oh, and by the way, the prison where he did his time was used extensively in filming The Shawshank Redemption. That’s kind of cool.
JC: Maybe there’s a direct line between the prison newspaper and The Outsider? In other words, was Jon already becoming Jon Webb The Editor and Champion of “The Outsider” long before Loujon existed?
JW: I think that’s a great observation and a reasonable hypothesis. I’m sad to say that I’ve never seen a copy of The New Day and, as far as I know, none still exist. I’m not entirely sure that Jon’s editorial stance was as cut and dry as being a champion of outsiders and outsider literature, though. Still, that wouldn’t negate your point about the through line between the two publications. Jon was shrewd and also believed in the power of good writing, no matter where it was from, either by way of tradition or author. He said as much in some of his promotional materials. As an example in support of him putting this into action, one of the regional editors he used in the early days of the Outsider was Marvin Bell. I believe Bell was already an MFA student at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and you can’t be much less of an outsider than that. Bell became a regular correspondent with Jon and one of his staunchest supporters. He later had a long and distinguished career teaching at Iowa and other universities. In one of his letters to Jon, he mentions that the first piece of his that Jon accepted for publication was a sonnet. Of course, Jon also made a point to say that he was tired of old ways of writing that didn’t take chances. The man was complicated. In some ways, the bottom line with him was the bottom line. That is, while he was both determined to publish great work in a spectacular format, he was just as interested in selling as many copies of his publications as he could. He definitely wanted to make money. When I was first looking into doing research on the Outsider, I compared the contributors list for issue one with the poets represented in Donald Allen’s landmark, and immensely popular, 1960 anthology, The New American Poetry, which was mostly made up of work from the Beats and the Black Mountain poets. There were many of the same people in both publications. Part of this was due to Jon being guided early on by his friend, the leftist poet Walter Lowenfels, who had his finger on the pulse of what was important and popular at the time. Lowenfels helped guide him to many of the high quality literary outlaws he published. In Wayne Ewing’s excellent documentary, The Outsiders of New Orleans: Loujon Press, Louise Webb says that Jon picked a title for the magazine that described the two of them. I think that’s probably closer to the truth than the notion that he was a passionate champion of outsiders in general. One more example in support of this comes to mind. After building Bukowski up and publishing not one, but two books of his, he dropped Bukowski in the middle of a project Bukowski didn’t want to do, but was doing anyway out of a sense of obligation. It was a record that was to be called Bukowski Speaks. He tape recorded a good deal of material and sent it to Jon, but Jon unceremoniously abandoned the project when an opportunity to publish a book of Henry Miller’s work arose. Say what you will about Miller’s status within the literary community in the mid-sixties, he was selling a lot of books and was by no means an outsider in the same way Bukowski was. Jon thought he could make more money working with Miller than he could with Bukowski, period. It turned out to be a miscalculation on Jon’s part.
JC: Tell me more about Bukowski Speaks. I’m assuming he was reading the work Jon had already published? Or newer poems? Do you know if any of that work showed up later on the Black Sparrow Press reel-to-reel?
JW: There’s not much to say about it beyond the fact that Bukowski didn’t want to do it, but did it anyway out of loyalty to Jon. He was suffering horribly with hemorrhoids and it was miserable for him to sit there and do the recording, but apparently that’s the kind of man he was, regardless of the persona he crafted around himself. From what I gather, he could be a very standup guy. The idea behind the record was for Bukowski to talk about whatever he wanted to. I suppose that could have included him reading poems and stories, but generally speaking, it was going to be him talking off the cuff. I don’t know what became of the tapes, but the record that Jon had in mind never happened. By this time, Jon had already published a second Bukowski collection, Crucifix in a Deathhand. Some of Henry Miller’s correspondence with Lowenfels had already appeared in the Outsider and he and Jon were acquainted in that way. Miller loved the beautiful work Jon did with his magazine and the Bukowski books, so he queried Jon about publishing a manuscript called Order and Chaos Chez Hans Reichel. For all the praise the Bukowski books and the Outsider elicited, Loujon wasn’t bringing in much money. I think Jon wanted both the prestige and the profits publishing Miller might bring, so he dropped Bukowski like a hot rock in favor of the much more famous Miller. Order and Chaos was a gorgeous book, but it didn’t sell nearly as well as Jon had assumed it would. This left Jon without his true star and with an association with a disgruntled Miller who had helped bankroll his book and now felt at the very least underwhelmed with the turn of events and maybe a little cheated. Near the end of his life, Jon did another ambitious book project with Miller, but Jon didn’t live long enough to see any results at all from that project. In the time between the Miller books, Jon did his best to get a book project with Kenneth Patchen off the ground, but it didn’t pan out.
JC: If a reader came to the story knowing only that Loujon published just the two Bukowski books, what would you want them to understand about what Jon and Louise actually accomplished?
JC: As I mentioned at the start of our conversation, it was Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame for me and Mockingbird Wish Me Luck for you. If someone reading this interview decides to follow one trail we’ve discussed—one “primary source”—where would you point them first, and why?
JW: That’s a very difficult question to answer. When it comes to Bukowski, as a writer, I would need to know if they preferred poetry or prose. For prose, hands down I would recommend his novel of childhood, Ham on Rye. Not only is it a great read, but it provides context for everything that came after in his life and career. For poetry, it would be a toss-up between Mockingbird and Burning in Water…, and I would probably throw The Roominghouse Madrigals into the mix for good measure. I’m sorry that I can’t be more decisive, but for me, those three collections are each indispensable in their own way. Mockingbird has poems like, “If We Take,” which is simply magnificent, along with “The Mockingbird,” “More or Less for Julie,” and “Consummation of Grief” and others which are essential. The Roominghouse Madgrigals includes stunning pieces such as “Brave Bull,” “Old Man Dead in a Room,” and the amazing “Layover” among the highlights. If we are looking at a single book that takes into consideration both Bukowski and Loujon, however, it has to be Burning in Water…, since that’s a collection of new and selected poetry, with the selected work coming from Bukowski’s two Loujon books. Burning in Water… has some magnificent pieces, including “The Tragedy of the Leaves,” “The Twins,” and what I think is Bukowski’s greatest poem, “Something for the Touts, the Nuns, the Grocery Clerks and You.” You can’t go wrong with this book. I will always, personally, go with Mockingbird as my favorite.
