Living on Luck

by Charles Bukowski

  …all these poems running out of my ass now…I get somewhat worried about the short story…have only done one since last Sept. but I go with the tide, maybe it’s a rip tide but you don’t fight those either.

  yes, I know about Celine. they stole his bike, his hog, busted up his berry patch because of supposed anti-semitism and Nazism. Hamsun got the same hard boot. see Ezra. it’s surprising how many of the good writers got caught and hacked like this. what people don’t realize [is] that it is hard for a good writer to go with what is an overwhelming political Thou Shalt Believe. they have to go the other way simply out of their natures feeling that most of the people around them are wrong most of the time. I’m not saying that the right is always right or that the left is all that’s left. I’m just saying that these men puked up against the obvious. ah, well…[***]

  [To Carl Weissner]

  April 3, 1978

  [***] The Academy awards are on t.v. tonight, Linda Lee watches and I sit with ear plugs in. movies don’t do it for me; I even find the so-called pretty good ones pretty bad. they miss somewhere, they seldom get down near the bone. it’s a giant shuck, the whole entertainment field, and the masses suffer brain damage from eating the shit. earplugs are a blessing. sometimes when the rock stars come on I bless the gods for these motherfucking red rubber plugs. I still prefer to select the areas I move around in and if people think me an egotist and a crank, they may be right—but I have some thoughts for them too. amen.

  Mannheim dull or not is o.k. I don’t expect a circus over there. I expect people to be walking around, most of them with arms and legs, most of them dressed in clothing, some of them constipated, some of them frenzied, most of them sleepwalking and a few of them all right. we, I, don’t want to stay at your place for 2 days, that to me is an imposition. maybe we could find a place around the corner and take you and yours out to a few meals. you’ve got your work to do. I would enjoy drinking some wine with you and talking easy, lazy. I think we should room somewhere nearby, a city nearby Mannheim and we can bus about and take our little tourist photos, got another AE-1 and am trying not to lose it. also, like a god damned writer and unlike I do around here I’ll probably carry a little green notebook and write down names of streets, places, so forth. I’m not much of a sight-seer, I’m mostly a lazy man except that I type about as much as I sleep. got to see unc, though, he’s 90, has a bad heart and I want to go very gentle with him, no drinking around him, no hippies, no door-knockers. [***]

  [To Hank Malone]

  April 25, 1978

  [***] Read at the university of Wisconsin, Milwauk., on Ape 17 but they got me too drunk before the reading and I drank during. I think I blew the whole god damned trick but I got the check, a grand plus air, so that will teach them.

  I get plenty of mail, most of it thin and sick—my readers Some of them act as if they own me. Many of them claim I have saved their lives, which doesn’t perk me up one tit’s worth: Billy Graham and Bob Hope have probably saved some lives too.

  Going to Germany in May. Taking my girlfriend if we don’t split before then. You know how human relationships don’t work.

  [***] Physically and spiritually I am feeling pretty high lately; I used to be afraid of that; now when it comes I embrace it like a beautiful virgin; I know that the other—that whore—is going to come back quickly enough. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  May 3, 1978

  this is probably the last writing I’ll send you until I get back from Germany. life gets more curious; I peek under the edge of the tent: clowns in there, clowns outside, but not very funny. but gimme a little credit, Mencken, I ain’t formed no schools or preached any directions nor have I taken guru-shape. there’s hope and when a man has hope he’s got hold of 3/4’s of the ball of string. o, yes. [***]

  [To Carl Weissner]

  May 3, 1978

  yes, it’s here on the ticket: 3:20 p.m. I don’t worry about the terrorists, if they think I am important enough to be killed, well, that’s it. actually, I’ll pass through without a whisper. no, not exactly, a German stewardess who knows us might be on the same flight and a photographer, I forget his name, will probably be clicking away. don’t be alarmed, don’t pose. [***]

  All right. not much time. cleaning things up. Carl, even if anything and everything turns to shit it’s still o.k. no mountain climbing. I’d like to meet your wife and your boy. sit quietly. I should be tired but I’m not. But still, vast spaces of air and easiness are wonderful. [***]

  [To Carl Weissner]

  June 6, 1978

  Well, Linda took another week or so off and we layed around and drank some more and played the horses but 5 or 6 weeks at 24 hours a day together can be murderous and Linda’s physic pyschic [sic] somebody says that thereby makes her a saint and I suppose she is. anyhow, this is one of my first nights alone at the old machinegun and it’s good that it’s still cranking…4 or 5 new poems, not too bad, I think…one about a Rhine cruise, so I know I’ve been to Germany. Got a letter off to Unc down on Privat Strasse 1, refused to open the door to some visitors who claim they are my friends…had a sign out: “WORKING…please call at another time, thanx, Hank…” they saw the sign, heard the typer, knocked anyhow. never catch a writer working, jesus christ, it’s shameful, and if you do catch him working, it doesn’t matter, he can do it at another time, he can do it anytime. Right, Carl? a plumber or something, you don’t fuck with him. you don’t stop a fireman or a dentist, but a writer??? shit, it’s all a shuck, my god, every man’s a poet…

  By the way, Martin gets 20%, I told you 10. He used to get 10. Linda dislikes him, thinks he is fucking me, so I told you 10 so she wouldn’t start the shit. I appreciate her concern but I don’t want to end up like Celine…bitching and bitching against editors and publishers. the idea is to write about something else. by the way, thanks again for the complete rundown of finances…must have taken you two weeks but it keeps the air clear for me. [***] the radio’s on. I’m alone. I’ve got to get alone, finally. I fill on the walls. people confuse me, crowds of people. they are all so sane. they all know what to do. what to say. the assholes terrify me. yet, I am able to write about them, about it. that’s luck or I’d have to hide in a madhouse. in fact, that’s what I’m rather doing. I’m stronger than the people and I’m weaker. I see what they see, only I can’t use it; what’s honey to them is sawdust to me. well, fuck a pig in the ass! listen to me weep! [***]

  [To Hank Malone]

  June 27, 1978

  Your stuff is getting better, you are banking your shots in with more ease and laughter—that way is better because if you are telling the truth it’s done without preaching and if you’re telling a lie you didn’t mean it because you weren’t trying. so. [***]

  Things rough on the human relationship scale right now right here. she is a good person but I am not. well, not really. it’s just that I don’t understand things. like proclamations, reality, subject matter, excreatia [sic], trips to Paris and yellow submarines. it’s just that so many things interest so many people and they don’t interest me. it causes a grinding, a gnawing, a wearing away of the parts. eliminating people is more important than finding them. the walls are my honeys, the walls are my whores.

  how’s that for a speech from the pulpit?

  Hang onto Michigan, Malone, while I watch them unwind down that long stretch, the strain of numbers while the geese paddle senselessly…

  ah, boy, the taste of the arrow ain’t no mushroom.

  [To John Martin]

  July 1, 1978

  Still more poems…, that particular mind-state holds and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  The lack of good fat prose worries me but there have been, and still are, worse things to worry about, if we must do that.

  Working on drawings [***]

  Women is my proudest and best work. The arrival, that day, of that book in the mail will be the day the sun bows down to me. Not too much, I hope.

  p.s.—We have a l
ong journey together, Ace. Do you think you can hold up? Better cut down on the boozeroni…yeh…*

  [To John Martin]

  July 16, 1978

  Yes, John: I’ve heard it against Black Sparrow from my “friends” for some time. And I figure you’ve rejected them. It’s the nature of the writer to believe it’s the editor’s fault if they aren’t published. They never consider that their stuff might simply stink. I don’t listen to them much and get rid of them as soon as it’s possibly able to be done in a fairly decent manner…To hell with them…(bad grammar above…ah, well…)

  But for our sakes we ought to have a working method. I sign a contract with you for each book; all I want is what is in that contract, nothing extra. So the semi-yearly or yearly statement takes care of that. Nobody likes to work in the dark. And your idea of continuing to pay me in spite of what occurs, we don’t need. Just what is due. If the sales fall off, let the checks fall off. And if you die or sell Black Sparrow, then whoever takes over and continues to sell my books should pay me my just accord as per contract. I don’t ask any more than any other writer, nor do I ask less. If this is understood then we have no worries. My job is writing, yours is editing and publishing. Let’s keep the air clear and neither of us will go down the tube, together or separately.

  I await Women unlike I’ve ever awaited any other book. As I wrote it I could feel it happening—that certain carving into the page with certain words in a way that you feel the power and the magic and the luck. I don’t think you’ve ever taken a gamble like this, nor have I. We’ve rolled for the works here, knowing damn well about the rancor and bitterness and good old simple white hatred this thing would cause, and in a way while writing it I even now and then gave them a little flick here and there so that they could scream and bitch just some more. We’ll hang together—you from the right branch, me from the left. O.K? Let’s get the son of a bitch out. I meet people in the marketplace and liquor stores, they keep asking me, “When’s Women coming out?” This is our big baby, John…I congratulate you on your courage…some of those literary tea cup ladies and boys just ain’t gonna like you very much now. Me? I’m used to it. And please don’t think I’m against you. You were there when nobody else was. I don’t forget.

  Linda isn’t against you either. She hears the bad mouths. We know where that comes from…She sends regards. [***]

  [To Carl Weissner]

  July 16, 1978

  [***] On page 25 of the German photo trip…of course, it isn’t going to be what anybody expected, for my mouth is in my ears and my eyes are in my asshole and my asshole is in my mouth. o, boy. anyhow. then I am interrupted by the poem and the racetrack and the bottle. only to say, no excuses—everything as it always was.

  Linda has not really gotten to eating again since Germany. I watched her. I knew she was starting too fast like a child broken into a candy storehouse, she’d have to pay. I’ve got this crazy food thing. I’ve starved so many years, got raised in the depression. I just can’t stand to see the stuff thrown against the ceiling. I was very glad that you were about to clean up people’s mental excesses toward food when their bellies couldn’t follow up. And with food that expensive…you were a brave man and you did the brave thing. I don’t give a damn who’s paying for a thing, I don’t like to see it beat to Death with a stick.

  Jack Micheline by a couple of nights ago. He talked and drank and read me his poems and showed me his drawings, then slept on the couch and puked all over the place, missing the huge wastebasket I had placed right where his head was supposed to be. [***]

  It’s been a long journey and a clean, hard, decent fight. I’ll always remember you, baby, in your white tennis shoes and your good quietness and your good laugh, and your honor and your knowledgeability. You’ve got it. You’ll keep it. You drive a good car and a good life.

  [To A. D. Winans]

  July 27, 1978

  [***] bad night last night, right, no left arm tightened up, hurt like mad, from thumb to elbow. no sleep, no great thoughts. they just send you pain now and then and it sits on you. most people say mental pain is the worst but at least you can fight your way out of that; the other way you depend on outside sources and they may be wrong. I thought in terms of stroke but today the doc said it was nerve-ending fuck-up generated by the spine. now that’s not so bad. except I drank 3 bottles of wine and it didn’t ease a thing. enough.

  the German trip, yes. I only wanted to do one reading to help the cause: mine. read in Hamburg. there don’t seem to be so many haters over there. they seem to be trying to ingest the poem and get what there is. they listen quite carefully and seem to laugh when it seems the place to do so. the German girls are quiet in a beautiful way. and the men have a quiet reserve. it was, it created a feeling of no-con and a sensible generosity. [***

  The photographer who recorded Bukowski and Linda Lee Beighle’s trip to Germany was Michael Montfort. These photos were subsequently published with text by Bukowski as Shakespeare Never Did This (1979, 1995).

  [To Carl Weissner]

  August 1, 1978

  [***] Still on page 30 on the travel book; the photos rather staid—don’t tell Michael I said this—they need a drink or a goose in the ass. anyhow, I might save the thing? so putting off getting into it I wrote 12 poems this week, most of them 3 or 4 pages long and about half of them pretty fair. If I ever go to France there’ll be no photographer along and nobody is going to plan me a little picture tour. I know people mean well, they want me on a boat or looking at a castle. I think slowly. next time it’s my turn. I felt as if I were tied with ropes and drugged most of the German trip. in France if I wanna sit at a fucking table and drink for 3 days I’ll do so. unless a man’s nature is allowed to reach the surface it’s no good being anywhere. well, enough of that bitching. [***]

  Barbet Schroeder was later to direct Barfly. The documentary here referred to is General Idi Amin Dada: Self Portrait (1974).

  [To Carl Weissner]

  August 24, 1978

  [***] Barbet Schroeder, the French film maker, by the other night. We drank, of course. I don’t know if you’re familiar. He’s done More, Koko and a documentary on the African dictator, the crazy and original one. Sends so many bodies down the river the crocodiles can’t eat them all and it fucks up the power supply and the lights go out. He wants to do one of my long short stories, a 90 minute work. I don’t know if I have anything that might fit that length. [***]

  Saggitaire phoned. Want me to come to Paris. I said, “o.k., write details.” So it’s probably Paris around Sept. 16 or 17 for 5 or 6 days. They will get air fare and hotel, including Linda. They speak of meeting the press on the 18th and going on the # one t.v. station on the 22. Should do. [***]

  My tax accountant over the other night. He said that I was antagonistic. He wants to talk about his soul and tell me how intelligent he is. I don’t want to make a life time friendship, I just want him to tell me how to save money. That’s what I’m paying him for. I think I’m getting guidance from a bum. It fits my theory that most people can’t do anything near what they claim they can do. [***]

  [To Carl Weissner]

  November 3, 1978

  Has Mikey burned down east Germany yet? And you tell Voltrout, Linda’s love and mine to her for her hospitality and her understanding, her gentleness. And like I said over the phone, thanks to you for getting part of the hotel bill; now we know why it was so small, and thanks even though you shouldn’t have, you bastard. And thanks for driving us for hours and days and suffering with us and drinking with us and living through airline fuck-ups with us. Now your suffering due to us is over for a while. [***]

  I was dissatisfied with the first 50 pages I wrote on the first German trip and I’m now writing it all over again, up to page 40. It’s looser this time with more madness. I was guided too much by the photographs the first time. I’ve got to write my thing and just hope the photos fit…Women still at the printer’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is the slowest book gett
ing off the blocks. The lag is maddening. I finished the novel in August 1977. [***]

  Hope Ginsberg isn’t screwing up your brain cells too much. With that guy it’s one line at a time, then forget that line and go to the next, which will have nothing to do with the line which preceded it or the one to follow…

  Bukowski and Linda Lee Beighle moved to their new house in San Pedro in November 1978.

  [To Carl Weissner]

  November 11, 1978

  [***] I am still fighting the little horrors and fuck-ups of moving but am levelling out now and trying to work my way toward the typer, the only normal place for this abnormal fleshpot.