In the poem “So You Want to Be a Writer,” Charles Bukowski cautioned, “If you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it.” But his estate has gone for the cash and let that piece of writing be used for a really crappy Dewar’s commercial, which is populated with the kind of faux tough guys and artists and carefully disheveled males he would have deplored. Hank was an ass, sure, but he was right about such people. The spot only would have been acceptable if it included footage of Chinaski vomiting scotch or showing X-rays of his damaged liver.
Charles Bukowski, a poet of despair who questioned the wisdom of crowds, was a person of interest for the FBI. Open Culture points out that Bukowski.net has published 113 pages of FBI documents from 1968. It’s mostly pointless investigation into a man who was most dangerous to himself and his spouses, but it’s there if you’re a completist.
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.
•••••••••
“You are marvelous…the gods wait to delight in you.”
“Look,“ he told me, “all those little children dying in the trees.” And I said, “What?” He said, “look.” And I went to the window and sure enough, there they were hanging in the trees, dead and dying. And I said, “What does it mean?” He said, “I don’t know it’s authorized.”
The next day I got up and they had dogs in the trees, hanging, dead, and dying. I turned to my friend and I said, “What does it mean?” And he said, “Don’t worry about it, it’s the way of things. They took a vote. It was decided.” The next day it was cats. I don’t see how they caught all those cats so fast and hung them in the trees, but they did. The next day it was horses, and that wasn’t so good because many bad branches broke.
And after bacon and eggs the next day, my friend pulled his pistol on me across the coffee and said, “Let’s go,” and we went outside. And here were all these men and women in the trees, most of them dead or dying. And he got the rope ready and I said, “What does it mean?” And he said, “It’s authorized, constitutional, it past the majority,” And he tied my hands behind my back then opened the noose. “I don’t know who’s going to hang me,” he said, “When I get done with you. I suppose when it finally works down there will be just one left and he’ll have to hang himself.” “Suppose he doesn’t,” I ask. “He has to,” he said, “It’s authorized.” “Oh,” I said, “Well, let’s get on with it.”
"I'd like to rest my heavy head tonight/ On a bed of California stars."
For those of us suffering through frigid climates, I came up with the warm-weather excerpt. I found this passage from Charles Bukowski’s novel, Hollywood, in an anthology called Los Angeles Stories: Great Writers on the City. It concerns the efforts of his doppelgänger (Chinaski) to buy a house after years of drifting, drinking, brawling and writing.
“Finally after a few weeks of house hunting, we found the one. After the down payment the monthly payments came to $789.81. There was a huge hedge in front on the street and the yard was also in front so the house sat way back on the lot. It looked like a good place to hide. There was even a stairway, an upstairs with a bedroom, bathroom and what was to become typing room. And there was an old desk left in there, a huge ugly old thing. Now, after decades, I was a writer with a desk. Yes, I felt the fear, the fear of becoming like them. Worse, I had an assignment to write a screenplay. Was I doomed and damned, was I about to be sucked dry? I didn’t feel it would be that way. But does anybody, ever?” Read the rest of this entry »
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