After all these years, The Occasional Margareader is finally in print.
Believe me when I tell you that this project first began years ago, when I began to make mental notes about the allusions that Jimmy was putting in his songs, not to mention the quotations that he was dropping onto the back covers of his record albums (those round, black vinyl things), as well on the liner notes of the record sleeves inside. These were not at all secret messages, but things that Jimmy wanted us to know. The lines came from writers such as William Faulkner and John D. MacDonald, Don Blanding and Ralph Middleton Munroe.
Most of these things appeared in the early years, when Jimmy hung around with published authors and yearned to develop that same reputation himself. One such scribbling in his notebook simply read: "For inspiration: Hunter Thompson, Robert Penn Warren, E. B. White, Juan Cadiz." In one way, all these things were a sort of shorthand for Jimmy to convey a grander idea; in another, they were sort of a treasure map for interested parties to hunt down the rest of that wealth of information. For me, though, it was another thing that I had in common with Jimmy. Aside from having been raised here where the river meets the sea and having a sea captain or two in my own family lineage, Jimmy and I both seemed to have let a few other universal truths through our little, hometown minds.
At some point in the early 90s, I sent a note to Jimmy and suggested that we create a library of books that he would want to have with him on that proverbial deserted island. He liked the idea, and that was not only the beginning of Margaritaville Books, but also The Shipwreck Editions. (Because those were printed as hand-numbered limited editions of only 3,000 copies each, you'll probably have a tough time finding them now. Still, good luck in that search.)
Not long after, though, I began to write down my mental notes, then track down the full sources of all those references I'd been discovering over the years. I knew that any eventual book would require a lot of paperwork to publishers and agents to ask about the rights to such things. That much I had already learned with The Shipwreck Editions. After all, if we could interest Parrot Heads in such writings, why wouldn't any publisher simply to sell those fans those books they had already printed and promoted? Good question. That would take some convincing, as well as some money to protect their own share of the market. But enough of that business talk.
Then came Jimmy's Barometer Soup, the album whose songs were inspired by a whole shelf of writers, including Mark Twain, Jim Harrison, Carl Hiaasen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This not only added to my list, but also served as a further impetus for The Occasional Margareader.
So, when I say this book's been years in the making, I truly do mean years. These things take time, but now I hope that you'll take time to look into it. The website is: www.margareader.com, and you can read more about it there..
