I haven’t been doing my work, so must get into it. Univ. of Ariz. next week. not a drop off the typer.
Linda’s very violent. She kicked down my door in S.F., clawed my face, bit a hole in my arm. But what love we make together! She’s 32.
This is just to let you know that I am still together, it’s hardly a letter; will write when I have more time.
Yes, you got left alone on your own doing…left with the tv tube, but I’m happy for you that you were able to have a few drinks and write to me, for you weren’t entirely alone then, and you know me well enough to let loose a few things. I wonder which of our love-life’s the most fucked-up? You with all your beauty and youth, you have troubles too. me, I’m extra emotional, my mind’s half gone, I expect trouble, I may even create it. But with your equipment you should have things under control.
well, listen, my invisible love out there, I really have some WORK to do. keep touch. I’ll write again if I’m alive.
[To Patricia Connell]
October 2, 1972
It rather cheered the old man up to talk to you today, all these low dark clouds, and somehow you got me to laughing. I guess that reading at the Univ. of Ariz. looped me down. such a staid gang…afterwards there was a reception…cookies and some kind of lemon punch…Christ, and me with my tongue hanging out…I mean for a drink, Connell, a drink…
yes, the sculpt. is a looker, a vamp, a tease…a bitch…a schitzy, and, at times, a wonderful woman. I don’t suppose it will ever be smooth with us and I don’t suppose I’ll ever stop breaking up with her. but it does me good to break off from her because it gives me more area. but, I must admit, this last get-together, it was my idea, I did the work, I did the talking…but we’re still always on explosive ends. the male-female relationship is almost impossible, yet one keeps looking, trying…so many things fuck it up, small things really, like not getting together on a Thursday night…some small offhand thing can crash it all down. nerves, maybe. or looking for an edge. it all seems to keep crashing. and it’s not just me; I look around and everybody is in trouble. and now what am I doing writing a 27 years old woman? you’re 25 years younger than I. I gotta be crazy. but I guess we ought to have a drink together sometime just so we can laugh each other off. you might think, why that ugly old dog, what’d he think he was gonna do? and I’d think, why, that stewardess, she ain’t got no SOUL like me. you know. something.
Liza I did wrong to and there’s no excuse, except I know that if somebody dumps me now I have no need to cry in my beer—I’ll be getting just what I gave.
How are all your loves going? You may have too much going at once. It might make it lively but it might make it hard to level off so you can see where you are. It’s almost impossible to have a steady relationship going with one man while carrying on side relationships with others. Me? I’m different. I’m the dirty old man. I can do what I want.
I got an offer for a reading in Canada. Do Eskimos really kiss with their noses? What else do they do?
ta ta, this is your invisible lover.
[To Carl Weissner]
October [?3], 1972
[***] Made the San Fran reading, 800 at 2$ a head, I got $400. I suppose there were various expenses. They put a refrig. full of beer on stage with me. After a while I mostly stopped reading and sat there drinking beer. Split with sculptress up there, went back to Liza. Then split with Liza, went back to sculptress. At moment am with sculptress. There’s no rest, there’s no victory, there’s no meaning, and love comes in salt-grain size. Well, you know this.
There’s this airline stewardess, 27, maybe she’s the one. Maybe I can drag her ass down to the Bukowski depths. but the sculpt has quite a hold on me; maybe not as good a hold as she had 6 months ago, but it is some kind of hold.
Speaking of a “hold,” there seems to be a hold on my writing now. Is this the end, old buddy? Has Bukowski coughed it up? I’d suppose not. I suppose it will be along. No telling, though. That’s what makes the madness good.
[***] Maybe I’m just a drunk. You know, you get with the female, they get on you for the drinking. I suppose I do act the ass when I’m drinking, but there’s a necessary release there. I get out into this available space that is always there to float in. No, it doesn’t make any sense to anybody but me. But it puts me somewhere, and when I get back down I walk to the typewriter and the keys work better. But drinking, to the female, really violates something in them. THEY HATE IT WORSE THAN ANOTHER WOMAN. It might kill you, they say, we love you. But they don’t figure it might kill me a thousand other different ways to remain sober and drink tea. ah ah ah well.
[To John Martin]
October 8, 1972
Now that you’re thinking of bringing out a collection of my columns—stories—you needn’t feel like my energies are being taken by somebody else. I rather like to earn that hundred and a half if possible. How about the title? Can I cut loose on that too?
I still need to work with my old pal the poem, tho, and I enclose a few more. The novel? Well, I believe it will awaken soon…faith, faith. Everything must work by itself. I don’t know why I tell you these things—you already know them. Hello to Barbara. yes, yes.
old 52, Henry Charles
p.s.—I’m on the comeback trail. Linda seems to inspire me when things are going well. B.
[To Gerard Malanga]
October 27, 1972
Man, you know, I am under it too, under all that any of us are. this doesn’t mean I am too weak to respond, but basically I am fucked…I mean, fucked with what I am and how to work it and not work it.
Signs, counter-signs keep working, they keep working me, I don’t know how to work them. there’s neither humility or artistry here (in me), it’s just a working of a process and it is more clever than I am.
I’ve gone through, I think, plenty, but there’ll be plenty more.
I suppose this all sounds very holy. I am supposed to be the tough guy, the battered Bogart with a typewriter. that’s their idea.
there’s very little to subsist upon. all this grist we are supposed to create an art upon. sometimes I think that the greatest creators have been the greatest liars. well, inventiveness, that counts, doesn’t it?
too precious, too precious, I know.
well, shit, hang in.
Copyright by Charles Bukowski.
[To Carl Weissner]
December 7, 1972
[***] I am still in this female battle, and I can’t quite figure it, they are entirely too clever for me. it rips me up and makes me late answering to good people like you who are only trying to keep me together and you together while trying to make whipcream out of mudshit. (Life, ya know.) I never met a guy who fought harder for me while getting as little via $$$$ so I just know you’ve got to like what I am writing down in a line of words.
all right, I say let’s get it all going. I wrote Ferling to accept all offers, but he is strange, he runs hot, he runs cold, yet I can’t bitch he put out a fat book of my screams. whether he likes me personally is another matter, it doesn’t matter because it’s my work I’m selling not my drunken days and nights and fits and panics and dreamatics [sic], swans with knotted necks singing Elvis Presley…[***]
like I say, I’m sorry I’m so long on this answering but you know what a woman (women) can do to a man. at 52 I’ve taken some guts shots that my mind (and experience) should have warned me to ward off. not that I’m crying: maybe that piece of my soul that was blown off needed to be. but it all weakens energy and is a pissing upon my barricades. so much for excuses…I don’t know if I’ve said anything relevant here, but the two bottles of beer were good, and I still remember the unexpected birthday gift, the cigars and the bottle. I’ve kept the box. I’m soft on that kind of shit. and feel justified being that way. I hope your life isn’t going too bad. Tell Andernach I said hello.
Martin had been urging Bukowski to write an autobiographical novel based on his childhood but Bukowski found the memories too painful. Severa
l short stories based on this material had been published in Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts and some more would follow in his book of short stories South of No North.
[To John Martin]
December 16, 1972
on the novel, you know, shit, we stumble. I’ve decided that I must enclose parts that were printed in earlier mimeo editions to fill out parts. otherwise, it can’t be done properly. yet the writing will be different, better. I do believe I am writing better than ever. how long this will hold has much to do with the gods and luck and the way I walk down the street. o.k. so I’ll start the novel up again. I’ve hardly felt like writing the immortal novel, maybe I never will. if I do I’ll probably be 65 or 70 or 80. I think of some of Hamsun’s tomes. he did some living. that has to be there first. I suppose that’s the trouble with professional writers—they become so professional they stop living. well, I mean they live as writers, consciously live that way, they stop living haphazardly as humans. well, I don’t like humans or writers but I think I’m still loose, I’m not a professional writer and if I ever become one I promise you first boot at my ass, hemorrhoids and all. yeh, they’re back. o, yes. poems enclosed.
p.s.—I get good rays off your Robert Kelly, he is basically a good sort although he has maneuvered himself into a strange area where it becomes more button than bone. he reminds me of a big dog heavy with water that he wants to shake off. but he’s kind, that counts. I think he wants to sing on and on, throw words like pebbles. that’s all right, you know. he’s a little too holy but most of us are…
[To John Martin]
December 29, 1972
[***] Got your good check today. It’s a lifeblood thing and always appreciated. I suppose I’m into you for a bit now but maybe it will work your way, finally. I think the writing has gotten better since I got out of the post office—except for the first frantic months…
Creeley’s all right. He’s been sniped at too long. We’ve got to allow him an occasional tantrum or bitterness. the rancor that’s out there is unbelievable. I rather enjoy their knocks but that’s because I’m a little punchy. That is, I don’t mind their knocks when they are published in magazines or newspapers, so forth for everybody to see. what I object to is little hate letters, little jealousy letters to Linda about me from various mimeo editors and poets (?)…meanwhile, look at their poems, and who are they trying to write like? ta, ta.
[***] you tell Barbara that I’m still punching this machine. Harry Truman’s gone, Ezra’s gone, but I’m still here. laying down the line.
*Perhaps “The strongest man is he who stands alone,” Halldor Laxness, Independent People (trans. 1945), quoted by Brad Leithauser, New York Review of Books, May 11, 1995, p. 44. But see the letter of November 15, 1974, below, where Bukowski attributes the remark to Ibsen.
· 1973 ·
[To A. D. Winans]
January 18, 1973
Excuse the delay but I’ve come off a 4 day drunk that damn near did it all the way…still shaky…but alive. I’ll get some work to you soon for your project. I’ve changed my mind on answering my critics. I did that in the last Holy Doors bit and I think one can only go so far in answering that way…it gets you down there wallowing in all that shit: kind of like a COSMEP conference. I’ll just let them have their say, all right? by the way, I’m honored, if I didn’t say so before, to have a special issue [of Second Coming] on this Charles Bukowski guy. [***]
[To Joanna Bull]
January 19, 1973
It’s bad to be down but we all get down, I get down all the time. Breakups are bad because 2 people just don’t realize how much they fill in for each other until the bust-up, then you feel it all. There’s no advice I can give or no wisdom. I drink when I’m down but it only makes it worse. I suppose you’ll make it through—women are tougher than men.
I could come by to see you some night. Wednesday night is a good time. But it would just be talk. I’m 52 anyhow, and been going with a 32 year old sculptress-writer. We have some hard times but basically I feel like playing her fair. Not that I mean we’d fuck or such anyhow. just to mention, I could drop by…where the hell’s Ocean Front Walk?
Thanks the poem…You speak of reading a book. one of mine. which one?
I’ve been in a writing slump of late. I mean I haven’t written for a week. no, I wrote a column last night. I forgot. I had a fight with Linda. Confusing.
I don’t know. the human being is really durable. I’ve actually felt pain crawling all over me like a dark skin, meanwhile the same motherfucking shimmering knife in the gut in the gut in the gut in the gut…again and again. but sometimes durability ends. I tried one suicide and failed. gas.
and a new involvement hardly ever solves an old involvement. there’s no escape, and damned little hope. but we have to laugh. jesus we have to laugh.
as far as writing goes, other writers, they don’t come through much to me. it may be ego. I’ve got tons of ego and tons of selfdoubt. I’m in good shape.
you hang in,
Buk
[To John Martin]
January 23, 1973
Iz u still alive? don’t worry about the novel, the novel is taking another breather. the fat must stoke up and then I will skim it off. you understand: everything at its proper time. meanwhile, some more poems. I hope you and Creeley have patched up your broken knitting.
everybody’s dying—Truman, Johnson, some old jazz great today at 87…name slides past…we are still working the keys. My master plan is to live to be 80 but that last drunk damn near did me in. I can handle a one night drunk but if I hang 2 or 3 of them together my system just can’t take it. I’m 52. that doesn’t mean I have to stop living but it does mean that some of the living must be channeled away from the old bottle. I think too many writers have let it eat them up, kill them. if I can hang in 28 more years of fair writing, I’ll be satisfied. don’t forget, I rather more or less began at 35 so they owe it to me on this end. o.k. let’s see what happens.
[To John Martin]
March 8, 1973
[***] listen, I have the most expensive dentist in town. I don’t know where I found him. he has these nurses that crawl all over you (me), rub up against one (me) with tit and flank, stare deeply (platitude) into eye (mine). this costs (me). in the old days they called them dentists, you walked in, opened your mouth, stuck your finger in there, said “get that one.” you sat down and he yanked it out. now they’re called dental surgeons, have these prostitutes around, you just get hard-ons—no teeth pulled. consultations, x-rays, clever jokes. an appointment once a month. meanwhile you’re charged and nothing done. also I lost at the track the other day. [***]
I checked out Eshleman’s poem on the spider. do you realize that he is invading my sacred and private grounds? my poems are full of spiders. spiders, horses, beer and gentle and innocent lament.
[To Carl Weissner]
March 23, 1973
Well, it’s all not so bad here, I’m drinking a bottle of calif. rhine wine—cheap shit, granted, but not too cheap—smoking a rolled Prince Albert (and I still can’t type)…we waste some time playing the horses but not too much money…I’m waiting for the Muse to grow giant-size…. Linda wrote a one-act play, pretty good too, it’ll be on the boards in May, I think. no cash but a start. I’ve gotten some $$$$ offers to do a play but maybe I can’t do a play and I just don’t want to limp in with some lines…the force and the mood just gotta precede me. there are some wars here with the lady but then I’m a little crazy in my thinking, or maybe I’m not crazy in my thinking. anyhow, I’m still here, it’s a good change, and I’m not going to say LOVE too heavy because that might jinx it. [***]
as I write this Linda stands by the typewriter reading over my shoulder and scratching her beautiful ass. now she laughs. now she rattles papers. now she rattles papers and laughs.
now she says Bukowski will you please shut up about me? she’s such a modest kid.
o.k. she says the book of the year i
s hers not mine, and it’s called Sweet and Dirty. and it is. maybe I can get her to send you a free autographed copy. o.k.?
where was I?
all right, I’ve got to get into some work, work, work, but I hardly think of it as work especially after a long layoff (6 or 7 days) the words build and the ideas climb like hornets about the walls, ah. the divinity of our lives is majorly amazing…
I must roll another cigarette and watch the blue smoke curl and curl and curl and let myself feel good for a few moments. I never used to let myself feel too good. now, for some reason, I feel like I deserve to feel good. I’ve paid the baker, the druggist, the gods, the cops, the pimps and the whores…now, look—see how it works? Linda just came over and got some of my wine. a little shot, she says. little? there went half a bottle…
Love Story. yes, I saw it on tv. I never laughed so much in my life. what a ridiculous hunk of pretentious phoney shit but looking at it as pure comedy it was magnificent, if you know what I mean. I guessed each scene before it arrived. you know, the world is really a long long way from solving ANYTHING when they gulp in this kind of tripe and admire it. no chance, friend. we might as well give up. just saw off a corner of the action, a very tiny corner and sit there and wait for them to come and get us. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
Living on Luck Page 16
