no, haven’t read anything by Jim Harrison; that isn’t saying that he couldn’t quite well have it, though.
the millionaire’s daughter and I lived (for a while) in Wheeler, Texas…the place with 7 lakes and wild turkey and green woods…Frye Interceptor, World War II plane, planned and put together by her father. Gramps owned the land and the farmers did the work for 1/2 the profit while the son’s planes sprayed the crops and were paid for it. on and on. like you know, we didn’t make it. if I remember, Wheeler very near to Oklahoma border and voted by a panel of experts as the last place in U.S. anybody would care to lay an atomic bomb upon. pop. then about 2,000. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
January 21, 1974
Went to the p.o box today and there it was—Vol. 11, no. 3. I don’t go to the box often, don’t know how long it has been laying there, but to let you know—much more solid than The Small Press Review. better writers writing. I guess it was needed to get some of the grit out. I think the best part was that most saw me for what I was—fucked-up, battered, battering, punchy but durable, trying to get out, trying to get it on down. Literature has always had this sheen of dignity, it’s disgusting. I’m glad if we put some dirt and blood on the carpet. even those who were always crying for a changed literature, a better literature, a more real thing, guys like Pound and W. C. Williams, they still worked out of the formal, stilted cage. I hope we’ve now gotten some freedom for those who follow. Maybe I carry it too far. for instance, I’ve always advocated that they serve beer, play music, maybe have strippers at our museums. think of how much better and more real the sabre tooth tiger would look? o.k., you know what I mean.
I liked the Richmond. He knows how to give due to the object without destroying the object involved. this is no easy thing. Steve also knows how to write a sentence. Most can’t. [***] I have said for years that Steve Richmond is the most underrated human and writer and painter that I know. perhaps it’s best that way. he’s protected. he may be lucky too if they leave him alone. a man must have time to build certain walls so if they finally come with their pompoms he can take that, and still go on.
Micheline was fine, god damn romantic hustler, he turned on high, he sings those lines, he’s in rhythm and breaking through. [***] when Jack is turned on high he is capable of writing a better poem than I could ever write. I write more good poems over the long haul but when he is totally high and singing I can’t touch him. if he stays at it and stops hounding the publishers and just does his work he will be found again long before he is dead. [***]
Norse? I understand his viewpoint. we simply come out of different poetic backgrounds. [***] And when I’m drunk I am generally rude and boorish and stupid to everybody alike. I just don’t select Hal. If he could understand this he might feel better. before a man can ever meet the gods he must learn to forgive the drunks. [***]
Alta. I understand her viewpoint and it certainly must seem plausible and right to her, but creation, art, is the breakthrough. we hardly do what is proper or kind, though often, in life, we are kinder than most, much more. without flying flags about it. Alta does not know how to write a sentence down. it hurts her pitch. I don’t want to rape Alta. I don’t want to rape anybody. I never have. But if an artist wants to go into the mind of a rapist or a murderer and look out of that mind and write down that mind, I don’t think that is criminal. furthermore, I didn’t say my stories in NOLA were “sarcastic.” I don’t apologize for my work. If I write a story about a shitty woman then that shitty woman did exist. one form or another. blacks can also be shitty as can whites. I refuse to be restricted in the materials I can paint with. it’s really all so ridiculous to defend anything as just that thing, can’t they even understand that? Oh, Alta, I have love…that’s why I can write of other things. [***]
Hugh Fox, as usual, uses the opportunity to advertise himself. that’s all right. if you got the talent to back up your breakthrough. see: Hemingway—Fitzgerald. When Fox claimed he had been beat about more physically than I had, that’s untrue. [***] no man knows what a physical beating is until he gets one. getting off your knees in a dark alley with 14 drunks watching and before you can get your hands up to your knees he lands again and gives you a knee in the nuts as you go down. Nothing to do but get up. finally it becomes a matter of breathing. you can hardly breathe. and neither can the man who is murdering you. and finally, as you start to come back on him, they stop the fight. you get in 7 or 9 of these, you know what a physical beating is. and the factories and the farm labor market. Fox is a dreamer. he’s never had a physical beating. I looked at his face. he still hasn’t had one. I can tell by the way he writes.
All in all, Al, it was a very good issue, and the stuff I wrote and the way I lived was mostly for me, but I see that if some have picked up a certain style and meaning in it, good. But I never mean my way to be their way. they can have theirs and I don’t think they’d fit in mine. that’s fair. I do much of my stuff out of tune, out of one ear. we don’t want a mythology or a hero. it was just a way to go. and there’s still tomorrow. Shakey’s tomorrow &&&&&&&. then Dashiel H’s, or was it somebody else’s Big Sleep. ah, hahaha. after I’m dead Hal Norse will be able to eat his soft-boiled eggs and his Egyptian parsley in peace.
[To Carl Weissner]
May 17, 1974
I got the Gedichte die einer schrieb…your signed copy, plus 5 others from the publisher. You put it together so well, babe, you make me feel like Bogart Bukowski Bukowski Bukowski. I like it. I like to like things sometimes. You know I’ve gone a hard route and have put down some words and you don’t mind admitting it. all right, it has been a good circus, and I’m lucky to have you over there to transmute me. ah. the book has the warm feel of burning and there. you’ve done it. You know you have. I won’t brag anymore on the book—except to say the good things you’ve done for me usually arrive at times when I need them most. Like you know, hahaha, I am rifting with my woman again; it is such a slow process, these many breakups, but it’s necessary to finalize it finally. the woman’s thoughts and feelings are continually against mine and the other way around. she seems to understand my enemy more than she does me, so there’s only one thing left to do—let her go to the enemy. it’s not easy, but she belongs with them; I’ve only borrowed something from them. tra, la. tra, la.
Big shoot-out tonight. I guess it happened just as I left the racetrack, a loser, after the 9th race. I passed very close. The SLA* Army, it seems. Trying to look for some symphony music on the radio I passed upon the news. Nothing finalized at this moment. But much fire-power. Where they were holed-up caught on fire. There are so many angles to this thing. One is that DeFreeze was allowed to escape from a minimum security area when he was in jail. whoever knows that and what the truth is? who knows who squealed? Who knows who is who? Who knows what it finally really means? Maybe just the tv screen brought into the streets? maybe an overdose of Marx? Christ knows I am one of the last who knows what’s going on around here, and I hardly adore it. But I don’t know if I love the SLA anymore than I do the USA. It’s all a manner of hard hunger and wanting control. Each side pushes so hard that they become dehumanized. religion and the popular vote, of course, are the softeners. but, babe, I’ve got to believe that we are in the right slot—creation is the greatest and purest revolution of them all, and it finally causes everything else to move behind it. Maybe too far behind it. But we are the prow. we know the death and the waste and the glory, and some of the way, and we have Eye enough to see the Revolutionary, the Capitalist, the Fascist and the cabbage. We have trouble with women, but give us a new typewriter ribbon and some of the rent paid, we get the courage up, and getting the courage up and moving toward the sun, that’s fair enough in this time of bending funnels.
since I got kicked out of the lady’s house for not caring for her parties and my friends (she likes my friends), I came on over here, and there has been much trouble here, I inhale and they phone the police, I scratch myself and they beat on my floor
(I’m up on the 2nd) and the little man came around and said, Inflation, gave me a notice of a rent boost and also my friends below and all those about this frog-in-the-garden-pond-vine-death-cement endurance of quiet posing and pissing and murders; how they HATE the sound of my typewriter…[***]
so the town is half burning down again over here. and I’m still on my second novel…Let’s hope that the German female and the German life is fairly good to you over there. if I ever get enough money, which I won’t, I want to come over and see you, have you lead me down the streets of Andernach, I will weep and we will drink beer somewhere and my mouth will form into a round toothless and insensible hole, and you’ll think, great god, what’ve I got on myself here? Bogart turned to mulch and butter. I shoulda translated Douglas Blazek.
Winans published Wantling’s 7 on Style in 1975. Bukowski’s foreword was not included (see letters of July 25 to Weissner and November [?] to Winans, below).
[To A. D. Winans]
May 21, 1974
Have been in bad mental state so have not responded to yours…. sobered up now and on better spiritual grounds.
Yes, I know about Wantling, Ruthie phoned me about it some time back. Like, we’re always ready for the death thing yet when it happens we’re still not ready. I picked up on Bill, all the way. So, sure I’d like to do the foreword to Style. Wantling had been sending me some of the poems but I can’t seem to locate them. If I do a foreword, of course, I’d like to see the poems. Can you manage to send me xerox copies? [***]
On Bergé, she’s down on me. We had a bit of a haggle when I was editing Laugh Literary. Nothing much. She wrote what I thought to be a letter that was a bit precious when I rejected her poems. I mailed the letter back but she returned it. I had no recourse but to publish the letter. I guess she hasn’t forgotten. She’s never met me personally so her knowledge of me is through my writing. Enough. [***]
Bukowski is here reacting to an advance copy of Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame, officially published June 21, 1974.
[To John Martin]
June 17, 1974
I react slowly…it’s my nature…but your (and Barbara’s) (and my) Selected Poems book is a marvelous creature. I have not lost my wonderment toward very good things. Grace and luck to all of us. New poems enclosed.
[To A. D. Winans]
June 24, 1974
Well, here’s the shot at it. I had to wait for it to pull together. If it doesn’t work for you, send it back. See enclosed s.a.e.
I’m single again, trying different women. They’re all pretty good if they don’t stay over two days. [***]
Kitty Foyle (1939) was a novel by Christopher Morley.
[To John Martin]
July 16, 1974
on the Linda split—she could become the 3rd novel if I ever finish the 2nd. I don’t know if I’m man enough to write it straight. S. Maugham did something similar—what was it? Kitty Foyle? No, something else, I believe. o.k. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
July 25, 1974
[***] no, Prince, I don’t take the ups and downs of women very good; I am a very emotional fellow, I get to like almost everything—even mosquitoes. one thing, though, I’ve never gotten much of an affinity of attachment for is the roach. only Kafka’s marvelous roach, poor fellow. but I do take it hard because when I go, I go. I throw away the oars. I know, I ought to know. hahaha. the female is generally very good to me. I haven’t known a great many but most have been long runs. I’m not a chaser or a hunter. If one doesn’t arrive, I don’t search. But upon arrival, my guts generally go right down the mother drain, they’re spilled in there, helplessly. I am tuned-up to this inside roar and when this inside roar touches upon something—it flicks off in a rather helpless state. it feels very good but the headlights are sometimes dim. what happened this last time is that I kept compromising in order to hold. she began to drift, at first, spiritually elsewhere because she thought she was beautiful and maybe she was, but this type of woman needs constant outward attention from many outward sources. she needs feeding from many. I might need feeding from one, and when the chips are really down that one might only be me.
so there you had it. a Loner in bed next to one who needed the constant adulation of the Crowd. no way, Prince. the crowd drained me; it bucked her up like puffed wheat rice cereal dropped into milk. she found all manners of fascinating aspects about the crowd that to me only seemed pig-farts and creeping lies and game-playing and obviousness. she wanted parties, she wanted to dance and chat and giggle. she was Marilyn Monroe the sex pet, she modeled herself after her. she drove and whirled and gambled, wiggled her tits and ass, drove the men crazy. and I thought, christ, how did I ever get into this? it was simple: she had sought me out and I had sucked in. now she wanted me as the strong man springboard that she could leap off of and return to. she had her parties, she had her way. I held my ground, cooled it, looked the other way. she moved again. she started fucking guys, two in a week, followed quickly by another. same old shit—claiming she had only done it in reaction to me—the time she had caught my car outside Stella’s house, the time I had gone with Liza Williams to Del Mar and slept along the shore with the waves breaking under us.
Prince, I found that she was too swift for me. She looked better than I did—to most people. She could get fucked more often and more continually. Does this sound like a bitch? She was. So she took off for Utah for 3 months and left me her television set. She told me that she would accept a Summer man but that I would be her Winter man and that it was only fair of her to tell her Summer man that.
How much shit can an old dog swallow? I wrote back and told her in three sentences that it was over. What the 3 sentences were don’t matter here. but I cut the knot, Gordian or otherwise. it’s finis. her tv is in her closet, the key is on the mantle and the birds piss into the wind. aloha. [***]
supposed to write foreword to one of Wantling’s last books, Style. I did but his old lady came out here and we didn’t make it at all—total opposites. It wasn’t because I didn’t fuck her, that wouldn’t have been nec. It’s only that all our ideas were reversed. I met and knew Wantling—we were on similar waves of a sort. Down in a motel in Laguna one night I snarled at his x-wife (death is divorce, isn’t it?), “No wonder the son of a bitch had to take the needle for 9 years. He was living with you.” Then I walked out drunk in my shorts and jumped to the bottom of the pool. came up. as you guessed. but at 54 I ought to wear water wings to pull shit like that. anyhow, she’ll prob. nix the foreword, which is all right. I was only talking about Style. [***]
No, nobody has my tape. Terror Street. it has vanished into the languishing cunts that once spoke love. and there are a few new women about. I’ve fucked a few but the one I cared for I was afraid to fuck. I didn’t want to make any mistakes. She had these rays shooting out about 30 feet from her body—I can’t explain it, very difficult, she looked good but without push. everything I said she understood and I tried some wild areas. she got it, I could tell by her counter-answers. I left her alone. I let her sleep on my couch; I slept in my bed. neither of us slept all night. wide-awake. it was very funny. when I took her to the airport, everything was a generous high…no cancer. I’m going up to see her in August. I know that things are seldom as they seem, but I must find out…again. we’re suckers to the last, Carl, cunt-suckers, soul-suckers. [***]
Carl, there has been a great emotional and spiritual spring-back since I cut myself loose from that Marilyn Monroe so-called good luck thing. she claimed that I restricted her artistic complexities. let her do well. you don’t know how many of her poems I worked over to make them o.k. She’d read them to me. I’d say, “Now, look, don’t you think you’d better just drop the 3rd line down? And the ending—what do you mean by that? It’s useful to you but insensible to anybody else. Why don’t you just say:…” and I’d give her the ending and she’d use it; one of them even rather immortal, talking about what a jackass I was…called “The Great Poet.” an ambiti
ous woman. they pop their cunts over you and their lips over your dick and expect all the answers.
Have written a hundred and ten poems in the last two weeks; a few of them are shit; 7 or 8 of them are immortal. [***]
[To John Martin]
August 2, 1974
Yes, that letter was from one of those modern sicks—thinks it’s clever to steal a $35 or $15 book from the library and then write to the author and brag about it. hell, the best thing about a library book is that more than one person gets to read them (it).
And I’m to come by and eat dinner with him? Such an immense stupidity. Ow, ow, ow—and we’re both poets! He says.
[To Carl Weissner]
November 7, 1974
Thanks the good letter. You over there in Germany waving Bukowski around feels damned fine to me. Glad you like Burning. It’s been a long hot journey but I want to go on a long while yet…typing…and I hope the gods let me. Meanwhile my life is about the same—fighting the women, the horses; getting frightened and brave, up and down, low and high. [***]
Just in from Utah and Michigan. Michigan reading paid $500, plus air, plus room and food and booze. Cost ’em a grand to hear me sing. Stopped off in bookstore after reading. They’d advertised in the Detroit Free Press. 700 arrived, massed-in, asshole to asshole. I signed books, danced, read, drank and insulted people. It was crazy but I was so damned high I didn’t care. Slept in hotel 200 years old, stayed 3 nights and days. Awakened one morning sick, retching, phoned down to switchboard lady: “Look, I have a complaint. I wake up sick here every morning and the first thing I’ve got to look at is that American flag out there. Can’t something be done about it?” She got very pissy-assed and asked if I didn’t LIKE the American flag. “Look,” I said, “I just told you. I’m sick and it makes me sicker. If that makes you uptight, just forget it’s a flag. It’s just a matter of white and red stripes waving in my face. And the stars. I’ve got a bad stomach.” They didn’t take the flag down for me, Carl.
Living on Luck Page 18
