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possible extra letter in wordplay..
30d Jack's middle-of-the-road pal (4) ?ALT ...looks like SALT??

4d Hardly lively Californian's happy-go-lucky with heart lifted (4) L??Y
2nd letter might be O

SALT P is extra ST is the road

LOGY hidden in clue backwards

No idea about the endgame though!

4 D. An American (Californian) word meaning the opposite of 'happy-go-lucky'. I'd never seen it before, but it's in the clue itself (reversed).

Thank you Don

and thank you Malone too.....any ideas on the endgame?

Hi don, if you need a nudge with the endgame, Daniel can give you my email address so as not to spell it out here.

Hi xwordfan, your post wasn't there when I started typing my last post.
neilmackay1960@gmail.com

There's no symmetry in the endgame and the thematic items in the perimeter are surrounded by extraneous letters (the four entries make real words).
All of the commas mentioned in the preamble go towards the end of the message spelt out by extra letters (that's why it's so hard to make sense of the 'message').

Struggling to complete top right and bottom left.
A little help with these two should get me there.
11a. Old Scottish porter caught acne alongside river. I have CA?E?
36a. Not many against occasionally eventless books. N??E?S
Both may have extra letter in wordplay.

11 Cadee - variation of 'caddie'. It's C +A +Dee (I'll let you find the additional letter)

36 Novels, books. No = not (m)any, V, against/versus + then alternate letters.