Living on Luck

by Charles Bukowski

  [To Gerald Locklin]

  September 19, 1979

  [***] I am honored that you are laying the Piano on some of your students for a week. The idea, of course, might be to let them know that writing needn’t be hard work; the hard work is getting out of bed in the morning or at noon; the hard work is looking at people’s faces in long supermarket lines; the hard work is working for somebody else who is making money using your life’s hours and years. The typing comes easy, especially with the chilled wine in the thermos to the left of the machine. [***]

  [To Hank Malone]

  October 15, 1979

  So you’re still in Highland Park with Sharon—she seemed a good one, might do you well to stick around. I’ve been with one almost 3 years, basically good sort, although some of her ideas on the Hereafter and her particular god seem to me to be pretty assy, her other qualities seem to overcome most of that. She’s the “Sara” of the novel Women. Linda Lee, actually. [***]

  No, I didn’t vomit on national tv in France. I just got stinking drunk, said a few things and walked off, pulled my knife on a security guard. Actually it was good luck. All of the newspapers in France gave it a good write-up except one. It went over good with the people of the streets. Went to Nice next day, was sitting getting drunk with Linda Lee at outside table and 6 French waiters waved, then walked up in a line, stood and bowed. I write better of the incident in a book due out in November via City Lights, Shakespeare Never Did This, all about the European trip. Actually, it’s two European trips jammed into one with photos. I think it might be lively writing.

  Finished a screenplay called Barfly for Barbet Schroeder and he claims he’s going to do it, although at the moment he’s only pulled in $200,000 for production and it takes maybe 5 times that but he’s good at that sort of thing. Meanwhile, Women and Factotum have a good chance to become movies. Di Fonzi of Italy says he is going to produce it here in America (them) and he seems to mean it. So it’s contract time and lawyers, all that shit. I drink with strange people now, including James Woods of Holocaust and The Onion Field. He wants to be the Chinaski of Barfly and I think he’s a good actor…Meanwhile, I still write 15 poems a week. I’ve got this room upstairs overlooking the harbor and I drink 2 or 3 bottles of wine and tap it out. NYQ just accepted 12 poems. So I’m not finished yet…

  Just back from Vancouver. Read to 680 at Viking Inn, standing room only. Drank before reading and 4 bottles of red wine during. Got back to hotel, fell and cracked my head open real damn good on the heater. Probably my best poem of the night. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  October 25, 1979

  It takes about two weeks to get over one of those readings. I don’t understand how the poets can go on reading, some of them giving two or three readings a month…Yes, I know how they can do it: vanity. And also, lack of energy: when they read they sound as if they were lisping into teacups.

  Back at the track, trying to forget all that nonsense. I play the horses like the average man plays chess or maybe like an extra average man plays chess. I know all the traps, bad plays, panic plays. I’ve only had time to attend the meet 6 days, won 5, lost one day. I bet moderately. I’ve averaged about $90 profit a day. I suppose if I were a desperate man playing for the rent and the baby food I would lose. But going to the track, making my bets, following my knowledge, this teaches me movement. A cutting through the fog. I can understand why Hemingway went to the bullfights. There is death at the track too and there is life and sometimes victory. All the women I have known have been incensed with my horseplaying. They think it is very foolish and when they attend the races with me they become angry because I usually win and they usually lose. The problem is that they don’t put any effort into the game, they are listless and distracted. And it’s strange that most of them believe in some kind of God. That doesn’t take any effort either. At the track one must overcome a 15 percent take.

  Well, it’s been about 20 years since my first book, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail was published when I was 40. I think it’s been a good twenty years of creation and I think it’s still coming. And even if it should stop now, I’d feel particularly lucky. And I was lucky when the Sparrow came by and you printed my stuff when it wasn’t particularly literary, you know what I mean. I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about it from some quarters. So it’s been a good show. Let them rage, let them weep, let them bitch. o.k.

  Poems enclosed.

  [To Carl Weissner]

  November 9, 1979

  [***] Back from Canadian reading. Took Linda. Have video tapes of the thing in color, runs about two hours. Saw it a couple nights back. Not bad. Much fighting with the audience. New poems. Dirty stuff and the other kind. Drank before the reading and 3 bottles of red wine during but read the poems out. Dumb party afterwards. I fell down several times while dancing. They got me on the elevator back at the hotel and I kept hollering for another bottle. Poor Linda. Afterwards in hotel room, kept falling. Finally fell against the radiator and cracked a 6 inch gash in skull. Blood everywhere. Hell of a trip. [***] Nice Canadian people who set up reading, though. Not poet types at all. All in all, a good show.

  Thanks for sending rundowns on monies. Have rec. all. All is well. Mortgage half paid for. I figure if I get this place paid I can make a stand here after the talent diminishes and they start closing in. It’s a great place, Carl. I wish your gang were here in that downstairs bedroom. You’d all like the harbor, and the people. San Pedro and Mannheim are my two favorite places. [***]

  [To A. D. Winans]

  December 29, 1979

  I don’t see how you’ve stood the little mag game as long as you have, but no, I can’t read, I don’t know which is worse, that Frisco gang or the so-called New York School. [***]

  It’s not true, as per rumor, that I have purchased a sports car; it’s a 1979 BMW and now it is in my poems instead of the 69 Volks. About buying a house, it’s not that easy; I’ve got a mortgage around my neck. Both investments were made to help avoid some of the tax bite out of European royalties. Here in America, if you don’t lay the money off, they take it. I offer no excuses for buying a car or living in a house. Although some may take this as a sign that I am losing my soul, most of these same have been saying for years that I am losing, have lost, my soul. If these would pay as much heed to their typewriters as they did to my soul (or lack of) they might (?) get some work done. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  December 29, 1979

  There won’t be any poems for a little while. It won’t mean I’ve died. Barbet laying some more money on me and I’m going to re-work Barfly a bit. It shouldn’t take too long.

  We had one large producer willing to make Barfly into a major motion picture. Only one catch—he wanted to use Chris Christoferson [sic] as Chinaski, and in the part where Chinaski comes back to the room and lays in the dark listing to classical music, he wants Chris Chris to break out his guitar and start singing. We told him, no.

  1980. It’s been a long war. We’re rushing in fresh troops. Enemy still everywhere.

  Happy new 365,

  your boy, Henry

  Index of Principal Names

  Adler, Lottie

  Aiken, Conrad

  Alta

  Altrice, Janice

  Andersen, Hans Christian

  Arnaz, Desi

  Artaud, Antonin

  Bach, Johann Sebastian

  Baker, Jane Cooney

  Ball, Lucille

  Beethoven, Ludwig van

  Beighle, Linda Lee

  Bennett, John

  Bergé, Carol

  Berryman, John

  Blair, Ed

  Blatt, Veryl

  Blaufus, Bix

  Blazek, Douglas

  Boccaccio, Giovanni

  Bogart, Humphrey

  Bonaparte, Napoléon

  Boswell, James

  Boyle, Kay

  Brahms, Johannes

  Brandes, Pamela

  Braun, Eva

&n
bsp; Bremser, Ray

  Bronstein, Lynne

  Bruckner, Anton

  Buck, Pearl S.

  Bukowski, Marina

  Bull, Joanna

  Burroughs, William

  Cagney, James

  Camus, Albert

  Catullus, Gaius Valerius

  Cervantes, Miguel de

  Céline, Louis-Ferdinand

  Chandler, Raymond

  Chatterton, Thomas

  Cherkovski, Neeli. See Neeli Cherry

  Cherry, Neeli

  Ciereaex, Listade

  Clark, Tom

  Clayborn

  Connell, Patricia

  Conte, Joseph

  Corman, Cid

  Corrington, John William

  Corso, Gregory

  Creeley, Robert

  Crews, Judson

  Cummings, E. E.

  Cynthia

  DeFreeze

  De la Mare, Walter

  DeLoach, Allen

  DeMaria, Robert

  Derschau, Renate

  Di Fonzi

  Dickens, Charles

  Dickey, James

  Dillinger, John

  DiPrima, Diane

  Dombrowski, Gerard

  Dorbin, Sanford

  Dos Passos, John

  Dostoevski, Fedor

  Eliot, T.S.

  Eshleman, Clayton

  Fante, John

  Faulkner, William

  Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

  Fett, Heinrich (uncle)

  Fife, Darlene

  Fitzgerald, F. Scott

  Fitzgerald, Zelda

  Flynt, Larry

  Ford, Henry

  Ford, Robert

  Foreman, George

  Forrest, Bernard

  Fox, Hugh

  Franck, César

  Freud, Sigmund

  Frost, Robert

  Fry, Barbara

  Fulton, Len

  Galiano

  Garnier

  Gauguin, Paul

  Georgakas, Dan

  Ginsberg, Allen

  Glière, Reinhold Moritzovich

  Graham, Billy

  Grapes, Marcus

  Graves, Robert

  Gray, Thomas

  Griffith, E.V.

  Grosz, George

  Hackford, Taylor

  Hageman, William

  Hammett, Dashiell

  Hamsun, Knut

  Hardluck Bob

  Harrison, Jim

  Hayakawa, Barbara

  Head, Robert

  Hearst, Patty

  Hemingway, Ernest

  Hemingway, Mary

  Hendrix, Jimi

  Hirschman, Jack

  Hitler, Adolf

  Hooton, Harry

  Hope, Bob

  Ibsen, Henrik

  Jack the Ripper

  Jeffers, Robinson

  Joan of Arc

  Johnson, Lyndon B.

  Jones, LeRoi

  Jones, Tom

  Joplin, Janice

  Joris

  Joyce, James

  Juarez, Ebenezer

  Kafka, Franz

  Katherine

  Katz, Bill

  Keats, John

  Kelly, Robert

  Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier

  Kennedy, John Fitzgerald

  King, Linda

  King sisters

  Klopp, Karyl

  Koertge, Ron

  Kosinski, Jerzy

  Kristofferson, Kris

  Lamantia, Philip

  Larouche

  Larsen, Carl

  Lawrence, D. H.

  Laxness, Halldor

  Leithauser, Brad (note)

  Lincoln, Abraham

  Locklin, Gerald

  Loewinsohn, Ron

  Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

  Lowell, Robert

  Lutz

  Lytle

  Mahak, Orlane

  Mahler, Gustav

  Mailer, Norman

  Malanga, Gerard

  Malone, Hank

  Maronick, Gregory

  Martin, Barbara

  Martin, John

  Martinelli, Sheri

  Marx, Karl

  Marx, Zeppo

  Matthaei, Renate

  Maugham, Somerset

  May, James Boyar

  McCullers, Carson

  McGillan, Tommy

  McKuen, Rod

  Meltzer, David

  Mencken, Henry

  Menebroker, Ann

  Micheline, Jack

  Mike

  Miller, Henry

  Miller, Larry

  Montfort, Michael

  Monroe, Marilyn

  Moore, Archie

  Morley, Christopher

  Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

  Namath, Joe

  Nietzsche, Friedrich

  Nixon, Richard

  Norse, Harold

  O’Doul, Lefty

  Olson, Charles

  Orlovsky, Peter

  Osterlund, Steve

  Oswald, Lee Harvey

  Packard, William

  Pascal, Blaise

  Patchen, Kenneth

  Peters, Bob

  Peters, Nancy

  Picasso, Pablo

  Pissarro, Camille

  Pitts, Jimmy

  Plato

  Pleasants, Ben

  Plymell, Charles

  Polanski, Roman

  Pollak, Felix

  Potts, Charles

  Pound, Ezra

  Presley, Elvis

  Purdy, A. W.

  Quag

  Reed, Scott

  Reznikoff, Charles

  Richmond, Steve

  Robson, Bill

  Rogers, Will

  Roman, Jim

  Roosevelt, Franklin D.

  Rosenbaum, Veryl. See Veryl Blatt

  Ruby, Jack

  Sanders, Ed

  Saroyan, William

  Sartre, Jean Paul

  Schopenhauer, Arthur

  Schroeder, Barbet

  Scott, Walter

  Sedricks, Andre

  Segal, Erich

  Sesar, Carl

  Shakespeare, William

  Shelley, Percy Bysshe

  Sherman, Jory

  Shostakovitch, Dmitri

  Smith, Frances

  Smith, Harry

  Snyder, Gary

  Spock, Benjamin

  Stangos, Nikos

  Stein, Gertrude

  Steinbeck, John

  Steiner, George

  Stetson, William

  Stevens, Wallace

  Stone, Oliver

  Stravinsky, Igor

  Sullivan, Frank

  Swastek, Joe

  Tate, Allen

  Thomas, Dylan

  Thomas, John

  Thurber, James

  Tibbs, Ben

  Tolstoy, Leo

  Torregian

  Truffaut, François

  Truman, Harry

  Turgenev, Ivan

  Vallee, Rudy

  Vallejo, César

  Vangelisti, Paul

  Van Gogh, Vincent

  Vaughn, Robert

  Vivaldi, Antonio

  Wagner, Richard

  Wakoski, Diane

  Wantling, Ruthie

  Wantling, William

  Warhol, Andy

  Webb, Jon

  Webb, Jon and Louise

  Webb, Louise

  Weissner, Carl

  Weissner, Michael

  Weissner, Voltrout

  West, Linda

  Whitaker, James

  Whitman, Walt

  Wilkofsky, Roth

  Williams, Liza

  Williams, Williams Carlos

  Willie

  Winans, A. D.

  Winski

  Wolfe, Tom

  Woods, James

  Woolf, Douglas

  Yeats, William Butler

  Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

  Young, Lafayette

  Young, N
iki

  Zahrnde, Mollie

  Acknowledgments

  The editor and publisher thank the following institutions for supplying copies of some of the letters in this volume:

  University of Arizona, Special Collections

  Brown University, Providence, John Hay Library

  The University of California, Los Angeles, Special

  Collections

  The University of California, Santa Barbara, Special

  Collections

  Centenary College, Samuel Peters Research Library,

  Shreveport, Louisiana

  The State University of New York at Buffalo, Poetry/

  Rare Book Collection

  The University of Southern California, Rare Books

  Collection

  Temple University Library, Special Collections

  A section of photographs follows page 138.

  About the Authors

  CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California on March 9, 1994 at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

  During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). His most recent books are the posthumous editions of Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997); The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998) which is illustrated by Robert Crumb; Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978—1994 (1999); and What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999).