Living on Luck
Page 17
March 23, 1973
Listen, here is a photo of me. Didn’t you want a photo of me? o.k., here’s one. is the Bukowski issue still on? I want to get famous.
When do you want me to start working on a cover idea? How much porno can you handle? when in the hell are you coming out with this issue? summer? will I live until summer? I think I’ll get a statement of sorts to you. I think maybe a longer statement, bio and rambling, will be better than a short story. I’ll get a couple of bottles of wine and sit down one night to the typer. we’ll get many imperfections that way but I’m not against imperfections. I think that the literary people are too smooth too careful, cover mistakes. we’ll piss on that. all right? after all, it’s my old ass that is going to be exposed….[***]
[To A. D. Winans]
April 2, 1973
sounds like you did it up but there you go, it’s the price and pain of drinking and it’s like the price and pain of women—you’ve got to pay hard sometimes when you least expect it. I’ve been in so much trouble, jail jail jail jail jail jail jail jail jail jail jail and fine, fine and jail, drunk driving, getting beat up while drunk, all that, well, it’s the same for most of us but one of the best things I learned was to stay out of the bars and also to try to stay off the street. I fail sometimes to stay off the streets but not too often. the finest place on earth to drink is in your own place and alone. you probably know all this. all right. [***]
so now look I’ve got to scrape myself together and work the typewriter ribbon a bit. some real dead creeps over last night, brought no energy, and I had to split with the beer though there were 4 of them. taken again. they ate my time. nothing to do, they had nothing to do, and there are billions like them.
[To John Martin]
April [?25], 1973
[***] they’re rough on the P’s lately. Picasso gone, Pound gone, it’s hardly false humility when I say I’m not in their class, but it’s still good going on a while, working with the word and the way. there’s no other life and when I realize and look back on all those years working for other men for their way and their profit and their glowing beings, I realize that this is a very magic and lucky time, indeed indeed indeed, and you had very much to do with making it so. sometimes I awaken at night and think, my wrists are here, I’m here, my toes, my body, there’s the walls and there are the streets outside, dark hard blood-tasting streets, I know them. And I think, just a few years more like this and I’ll be paid back for all of it. well, now we have been very somber and serious. let’s let up. you balding red-haired devil, don’t get run over in the streets, I won’t know which way to look.
[To Joanna Bull]
May 1, 1973
I’m still living with Linda. Some rough battles. I don’t know if we’re going to make it. I don’t know whose fault it is. Some of it might be mine, but not entirely.
Anyhow, Linda makes her annual trek to Utah around mid-June, stays about 3 weeks, and I’d like to see you a few times then. I have good memories of you—so far. So, around mid-June, if you’re still there I’ll try to contact you. I hope you’re still there. We needn’t push too hard at each other. I have nothing to prove. It’s just that I feel that the Linda situation won’t hold up, and it would be good to know somebody. I have male friends but it’s hardly the same thing. You be happy if possible.
“SPR” is the Small Press Review published quarterly by Dustbooks from Paradise, California, from 1967 to 1974, and later as a monthly. Nikos Stangos was the editor of the Penguin Contemporary Poets series, in which Bukowski shared a volume with Harold Norse and Philip Lamantia.
[To A. D. Winans]
May 16, 1973
I think the SPR was a hatchet job to begin with, Fulton leading the tribe. I don’t mind Norse; I think he’s truly mixed-up on what has occurred, he’s basically honest and stung, it’s just that the eyes that see out of him or whatever sees out has it wrong. It’s like Martin said when he read Norse, “But, Jesus, you told me to print him!” Al, things happen to us all and when things don’t work we tend to point to others. I’ve been in the same room with Norse when he has made his accusations to me and they were so out of the way and ridiculous that I didn’t respond except to take another drink. I still think Norse is a fine poet but he has become a great big grandma weeping into the towel. I don’t know what to do with him. I suppose the best thing to do with him is just to let him go on writing his poems while I write mine. His claim that he got me into Penguin 13 might have some truth. He was a friend of Stangos, one of the editors. If I wanted to be a bitch I might suggest that Norse got in the same way. But I’m sure that Stangos and Penguin and Norse himself wouldn’t have wanted me if I hadn’t shown them a good spitter, a good slider and a fair fast ball.
I thought Packard did a good professional job, and Linda King’s was amusing and Quag’s was drab o.k. but most of the others were in with some kind of buildup or bitch or grind, trying to make a climb upon the Buk myth or mystique or Buk bullshit or whatever. It was an attempt at a personal advancement of sorts—saying: if he’s no good and I know he’s no good, I must be good, even great. It’s all right. Watergate poetry. These tiny shit climbers bug me, hahaha. Winans, too much time used upon talking about them gives them what they need. I don’t want to go into them or out of them anymore. Except to say, that frankly, it’s not bad being attacked, it was expected. long ago, when I first started writing poems at age 35 to Jon Webb: “I know when I get them angry that I am getting there.” These aren’t the exact words. I just went over to the bookcase to find them but didn’t want to bother. Tra la la.
[***] listen, criticism is all right—if they can break it down and say it’s wrong and why—I think I did that with my review of Hemingway’s last book Islands in the Stream for TV and Fine Arts Guide. There is a way of doing things. but the cheap shots never pay off. I have given a few low shots—for sake of caricature—but not too many cheap ones have I dealt. I don’t run cheap; I keep it strong and clipped and even, and that’s what pisses them.
I am glad that there are some littles that play something besides the lonely heart and diminutive talent game. these few show that there’s a chance somewhere in all of us, a human easy decent chance. that’s plenty, that little chance. the whole god damned nation of the United States of America is now wobbling. failing, failing, with all that power. think of how some 19 year old kid in his mother’s bedroom, just getting over acne and going to college and having his 25 buck Sears Roebuck mimeo machine sitting there must feel? he can reject Ginsberg if he wants to because Ginsberg likes to send to such shit rags. 25 dollars doesn’t make an editor, though it can. there are just too many non-things playing as things. I do suppose it’s the age of super-fluousness. everybody is something, or thinks they are. what a vast can of shit. how are we ever going to get out of it?—meanwhile, while I write this I’m not writing something else. [***]
[To Joanna Bull]
July 1, 1973
All right, after the first week in July I’ll phone and see if I might come by with my tiny bottle of beer.
Things very tenuous here. I once loved Linda very much and I believe she still loves me (love is an easy word to use here for lack of something else) but it is slowly breaking off, it has to be final, eventually. I don’t want to break your back with my side of the story. Perhaps, someday, I can write it down—novel form. Somerset Maugham wrote something near to it, but hardly near enough and he seemed to lean towards homosexual proclivities and I think it takes a man to write about a woman. A woman can’t do it either, and maybe not me. It’s so difficult to tread center in the female-male Emote. But I am obsessed with the Art-form, it’s the only religion, the only beastly breath of air left. It purifies shit, it explains it; it lets you sleep at night, finally. I’m not a moralist and I don’t believe in conscience but in matters of feeling one should be careful. I am careful because feelings are holy and humorous and three-quarters of the sun. I don’t trust the mind unless it’s run by the bellybutton…god, how I go on! what
am I saying? I said that I wouldn’t break your back.
I suppose with Linda I filled the father-fixation process or whatever the fuck you call it? Ask the Calif. School of Psychology. Are you ready for a father-fixation process? My darling beautiful Linda goes into all manners of fits and fandangos when I reject her final innards and make moves to leave—mostly violent, very, physical attacks which I handle as best I may. Which means getting her under control with as little injury to her as possible. I am what you call a very cool cat under fire. Some other men would have killed her long ago; I am looking for material for a novel, and I once did love her; besides she came out of a madhouse and they haven’t put me into one, yet. That makes me master, doesn’t it?
Look, you say obsessions die hard with you? Is that what men are? Obsessions? Don’t you ever want to give up the game of hurt and hunt and chess and cheat? Can’t you make a value judgment? Can’t you choose anybody? To lay down with and look at the ceiling with and listen to music and smoke cigarettes and talk and laugh and flow? Wouldn’t it feel good to you to become something? Shit, I’m not saying it’s me. I’m your father. But it should be somebody. Somebody for somebody, even if it’s only yourself. That’s what I’m working on: me for me, easy at first, and then maybe I can open a door for somebody else.
[To John Martin]
July 4, 1973
Well, shit, I don’t know, I’m heading for some foolish Utah mountain, I might be gone from two to four weeks and I suppose there might not be much work done. Linda wins again. But don’t worry. I’m making a study on her. If I ever get it down right some day you’ll see the female exposed as she has never been exposed. Very difficult to do, though; the tone of the writing must be impartial, exact. The more it’s that way the better it will be. meanwhile, haha, there’s still Factotum, isn’t there? [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
July 16, 1973
been on a week’s beerdrunk, back from Utah, Linda and I have split, I have to be out of here by the 29th. I’ve got a little book with 3 or 4 numbers but I’ll be damned if I quite want to get involved again, maybe never again, kid, I’ll be 53 in August, and this battling with and living with the female has kept me trim in a fashion, but so much of the game is run on trickery, chess moves, false moves, ticklers, blasters, farts and one-tenth feelings…Ugh, I’m too simple to comprehend, understand…I think most of our women have been raised too much upon movie magazines and the screen. They’ve learned game-playing and dramatics but my head just wants to go where it is.
yes, run the Norse, I haven’t had a good belly-tickler in some months. I think that what has happened with Hal is that he has put total importance upon poetics and what a poet is supposed to be. a good poet never knows what he is, he’s a dime from the edge, but there’s nothing holy about it. it’s a job. like mopping a bar floor. I can’t rail too much against him; I suppose that the things he has imagined in his mind seem very true to him. who is the judge? I rattled around his place in Venice a couple of nights drunk but it was much more in energy and clowning than malice or a wish to destroy. I’m an asshole in many ways, I even enjoy my assholeness. I can tear a man in half in a short story; I can also tear myself in half, but I’m no knifer, I don’t whisper things into editors’ ears. I’m no destroyer. Nothing can be destroyed that has the power to move forward into its own thing. fame or acceptance or politics or power has nothing to do with it. nothing is needed but self going-on as self must. one only need realize this small realization. [***]
Mich[eline] is all right—he’s one third bullshit but he’s got a special divinity and a special strength. [***] I can’t think of another poet who has more and who has been neglected more. Jack is the last of the holy preachers sailing down Broadway singing the song. He’s right: they’ll find him after he’s dead. [***] Jack has it; through all the bullshit and con and hollering, Jack has it. may the gods give him a good woman who understands him, and a better Age to live in than this castrated, deemphasized, titless, toothless, anti-human, anti-word, anti-feeling 20th century, amen.
the split with Linda isn’t easy. I never go into things with just a toenail. but we can’t fall down on the rug and die. we came up too hard and too slow. we are dumb but not quite damned. and most of the things that happen to each of us happen to everybody. not that it lessens the feelings but we have to keep remembering that we aren’t especially singular or especially precious. [***]
think how low we’d feel without even the word to bounce around? well, there’s beer and a rolled cigarette and my radio plays a touch of Brahms. I haven’t grown much. I don’t know how.
[To Carl Weissner]
August 11, 1973
sorry the silence but as you can see I’m at a new address, Linda and I have split and I am a little bit out of my brain, guts dangling…[***]
I am really down low. can’t even get the word down. forgive.
[To Carl Weissner]
September 10, 1973
sorry I dripped the blues on you last letter, I’ve got the pieces put together better now, still trouble, trouble with women and trouble inside of my head, but I guess that all the rumbling and shit and insanity counts, let’s hope so. if I ever get stable I might as well sell my ass to the peacocks. [***]
actually, though, I do have my UPS. I sometimes sit around thinking, god, some people think that I am a writer. How did I ever fool them? I can’t write a cat’s turd. I am still alive. I can lay in this bed for 4 days and nobody will bother me. That’s fine. I can masturbate, I can kill myself. dear god, I have all kinds of freedoms. I can even read The Rebel by Camus, that book I bought the other day at Martindales except I lost my glasses the last time I was drunk and I can’t read the print. I verily can even open a can or bottle of beer.
all right, baby, the hard rain falls for all of us sometime. take Job. take him a long ways away. I am tired of his wails. take me a long way away.
you hold too. all this lightning, she gotta stop.
[To A. D. Winans]
October 7, 1973
listen, Micheline did get me at a bad time. Some of the stories were all right but he does get too much into this MOON—GLORY—I AM A POET trip and it tends to sink the whole thing. like, poor bastard, he’s a poet. well, there are a lot of poor bastards—interns in hospitals, garbage collectors, dishwashers, factory workers, farm hands…if anybody has divine rights they probably have them too.
[To A. D. Winans]
October 24, 1973
you write a letter like a man who knows where it’s at.
yeh, we all come out of areas. Lefty O’Doul. boy, what a hitter. he was an old man when he was managing the Seals but he still pinch hits against the Angels down here, and damn, every time I saw him it seemed he got his hit…but, like you, all that has drained for me. you keep seeing them coming and going and there are all the screams and then it vanishes. I think Ezra played a better game even though he denied it at the end. I think he realized he played it a little too fancy and too heavy but he had guts enough to admit it and realize it.
getting over the documentary BUKOWSKI and making love to the ribbon again. I, shit yes, look forward to your special Buk edition, and with that maybe I can get back to the holy grind (poetry). ah.
you appear on the right road in. beware the blood-suckers. beware the friends. beware, especially, the poets. even me.
[To Gerald Locklin]
December 5, 1973
Well, readings are like women, they’re good and they’re bad, and you go on to the next one or you give them up altogether. But readings are only an aid to survival and I can’t in anyway judge them as a creative act. It’s closer to carnival and you need some luck and a few drinks to come out close to even. I think even guys like J. Dickey know this; he charges two grand, reads once or twice and goes out and shoots something with a bow and arrow. A man needs his basic strength in order to move that typewriter ribbon into good action. The idea of the game must never be forgotten: the laying down of the line.
· 1974 ·
These two young writers had founded a magazine entitled Aunt Harriet’s Flair for Writing Review, only one issue of which appeared, November 1974.
[To James Whitaker and Ebenezer Juarez]
January 3, 1974
got your ten. hot cha. you’ve got an immortal title to your mag. the problem is in setting the pages on fire. I know. I edited a mag once. 3 issues. I dwarfed out. just not enough around. o.k. I wrote these poems yesterday. look them over. let me know, plus or minus. I still got your motherhumpin’ ten. you seem to show style. do send me your first issue whether I’m in it or not.
p.s.—you needn’t drop a check on him because unlike me he’s got money and plenty, but it hasn’t seemed to diminish his humanism (whatever that is) or his artistry (whatever that is) but I’d suggest you write him for some poems…he can lay the line down: Steve Richmond [address follows].
[To James Whitaker]
January 14, 1974
help, help, help, help, help, now LISTEN: tear up poem “sitting around listening to Bach”!!! wrote this on split with my woman, was bitter and vindictive; may be good writing in there but it definitely is from the wrong source, especially now…wouldn’t want woman I’m back with to read that poem…DESTROY. I’ve destroyed my copy…stamped enclosed envelope to let me hear from you that you’ve done likewise, AND, I want to THANK YOU, MIGHTILY. o.k.?