Charles Bukowski

by Howard Sounes

  After ten days of drinking and sight-seeing, Bukowski arrived in Hamburg for the reading feeling very nervous, partly because he didn’t know if the crowd would understand enough English to follow what he was saying. The venue was The Marktahalle, a covered market building by the docks, and Bukowski was astonished to see hundreds of fans lining up for tickets when he went over for a sound-check. ‘We had no idea so many people would turn up,’ says Carl Weissner. ‘Because it was at very short notice. There were only a few posters in the town announcing the reading. Nobody was sure he would come, that’s why there was practically nothing in the papers. But it was all word of mouth which explains the fact that people from Sweden and Denmark and Holland and Austria came.’

  It was a sell-out with a capacity crowd of twelve hundred, paying ten Deutschmarks a head, and another three hundred turned away at the door, five times the number who had come to see novelist Günter Grass. People were standing in the aisles, reaching out to touch Bukowski as he pushed his way to the stage. They offered bottles of wine and chanted his name like they were at a football match.

  There was that audience, all those bodies were in there to see me, to hear me. They expected the magic action, the miracle. I felt weak. I wished I were at a race track or sitting at home drinking and listening to the radio or feeding my cat, doing anything, sleeping, filling my car with gas, even seeing my dentist. I held Linda Lee’s hand, about frightened. The chips were down.

  (From: Shakespeare Never Did This)

  ‘Hello,’ said Bukowski, adjusting the microphone, ‘it’s good to be back.’

  He started with ‘Free’, a poem about airplane passengers drinking complimentary champagne and getting sick. The crowd seemed to enjoy it. The second and third poems were more serious, but the audience stayed with him, not like when he tried to read serious stuff to American crowds. There was laughter when he read a line he meant to be funny, but the rest of the time they listened quietly, applauding when he came to the end. Apparently they understood English perfectly.

  My poems were not intellectual but some of them were serious and mad. It was really the first time, for me, that the crowd had understood them. It sobered me so I had to drink more.

  (From: Shakespeare Never Did This)

  There was a rowdy element in the crowd: some bikers, a group of feminists and a young man who screamed abuse as if he were demented. Bukowski dealt skillfully with the hecklers.

  ‘Haven’t you gone home to your mother yet?’ he asked the young man. ‘She’s got a little bottle of milk for you, warmed up.’

  The crowd applauded his wit and style, and he rewarded them with ‘Looking for a Job’. It was meant to be funny and they laughed in the right places:

  it was Philly and the bartender said

  what and I said, gimme a draft, Jim,

  got to get the nerves straight, I’m

  going to look for a job. you, he said,

  a job?

  yeah, Jim, I saw something in the paper,

  no experience necessary.

  and he said, hell, you don’t want a job,

  and I said, hell no, but I need money …

  Encouraged by the reception, he told stories about his life in Hollywood. ‘Where I live I drink a certain brand of wine, two or three bottles a night, and the liquor stores run out so I have two liquor stores stocking my wine. If one doesn’t have it, I run to the other. The liquor men love me. I’m making those bastards rich and I’m killing myself!’ There was more clapping. ‘You mustn’t applaud when I’m killing myself,’ he laughed.

  Afterwards he signed books until his hand was sore and drank champagne as the promoter counted out his money in crisp one hundred-Deutschmark notes.

  Montfort hired a white BMW and drove them to Andernach to see Heinrich Fett, Bukowski’s mother’s brother, whom he had been corresponding with on and off since was a child. Uncle Heinrich was ninety but he came bounding down the stairs with gusto, smartly dressed in jacket and tie, and exclaimed in English: ‘Henry! Henry! My God, I can’t believe it.’ Bukowski was close to tears as the old man embraced him. ‘It’s Henry. After all these years!’

  They went to the house of Heinrich’s son, Karl, and his daughter-in-law Josephine. She served wine and cake, like Bukowski remembered his German-born grandmother doing in Pasadena.

  It was when one sat and talked gently of things; it was the pause in the battle of life; it was necessary and good. Uncle began talking about his life, of the past …

  (From: Shakespeare Never Did This)

  Uncle Heinrich needed no translator as he regaled Bukowski with the family history, stopping occasionally to urge more cake on Linda Lee and to replenish his nephew’s glass. ‘Your father was a sergeant and he spoke perfect German,’ he said. ‘“That handsome Sergeant Bukowski,” your mother used to say, “I’ll bet he tries to fool all the girls.” A couple of nights later Sergeant Bukowski came up the stairway and knocked. He had meat, the good meat, cooked, plus the other things … bread, vegetables. We ate it. And after that, late at night, every night he came up with his meat and we ate it. That’s how they met and became married.’ Bukowski nodded and emptied his glass. ‘Your father was a very intelligent man,’ said Uncle Heinrich.

  They spoke about what Bukowski was doing in Germany and Uncle Heinrich said he had read some of his books. He liked most of them, but not The Fuck Machine. ‘That’s all right, uncle, after I write something I try to forget it,’ Bukowski replied. ‘It doesn’t matter afterwards, even if they say it’s good.’

  Bukowski was concerned they might be tiring the old fellow, so he said they ought to be getting along, and they drove back across town to the Hotel Zum Anker, by the Rhine which had flooded the foreshore as it often did at that time of year. Bukowski and Linda Lee went to take a nap while Montfort settled in the bar to label his film. Shortly after he started work, Uncle Heinrich walked in and rapped smartly on the floor with his stick.

  ‘I demand to see Charles!’ said the old man. The hotelier pointed to Montfort and suggested he speak to him. Uncle Heinrich banged the floor again. ‘I forgot something and have to talk to him now.’

  ‘He’s taking a nap.’

  Uncle Heinrich would not be dissuaded, so Montfort called the room and apologized, saying he didn’t know what to do but Bukowski’s uncle was there and demanded he see him right away.

  The old man took Bukowski to see the house where he had been born and Bukowski was amused to learn that, until recently, it had been the town brothel. Then they went back to Uncle Heinrich’s home where the old man produced a case of letters and photographs Bukowski’s mother had mailed from America. There were black and white pictures of Bukowski and his parents at Santa Monica beach, a Stars and Stripes flag in the sand; posing with their Model-T Ford; and at Grandma Bukowski’s house – yellowing windows into that terrible childhood. Bukowski couldn’t help but cry.

  That evening at the hotel he drank like he was possessed, filled with emotion and memories of his parents. ‘I have never ever seen a man drink so much wine,’ said Rolf Degen, a journalism student who had come to Andernach to meet Bukowski. The film maker, Thomas Schmitt, also joined them in the bar where Bukowski drank at least seven bottles of wine.

  There was a group of travelling salesmen singing traditional German folk songs and, although Bukowski did not understand the words, he sensed their pomposity and started dancing and singing in mockery, prancing on the tables and clapping his hands.

  They went up to Bukowski’s room where Degen pretended to interview him using a shower head as a microphone. Bukowski played along with the game for a while and then hurled the shower head into the street, bringing the hotelier pounding up the stairs to see what was going on. Degen was thrown out and Thomas Schmitt was escorted from the building. Bukowski went out on the balcony and bellowed across the frigid Rhine to them. ‘Thomas, you marvellous motherfucker, a long life to you!’ he yelled. ‘A LONG LIFE TO GERMANY!’r />
  It was book sales in Europe rather than success in the United States that earned Bukowski his first substantial royalties, so much money that his accountant advised him to get a mortgage to reduce his tax liability. This led Bukowski to take a closer look at his general finances and, for the first time, he began to question his business arrangement with John Martin.

  At the time, Bukowski was being paid around $6,500 a year by Black Sparrow Press, advance royalties for the novels and books of poems and short stories published in America, apart from those published by City Lights Books which brought in extra income. It was not very much to live on. After paying child support and rent, Bukowski complained he was probably eligible for food stamps. He had also begun to resent producing original artwork for special editions of each new book, the habit he and Martin had established years before. He informed Martin in one angry letter that he felt like wet back labor and reminded him there were New York publishers interested in his work. Several friends had advised him to leave Black Sparrow and Linda Lee, in particular, felt he had been loyal enough. In a June, 1978, letter to Weissner, Bukowski wrote that Martin also took twenty per cent of foreign sales:

  He used to get 10. Linda dislikes him, thinks he is fucking me … I appreciate her concern but I don’t want to end up like Céline … bitching and bitching against editors and publishers, the idea is to write about something else.

  His concerns came to a head late on the evening of 11 June, 1978, when he telephoned Martin at home. He said he was no longer happy with being sent a monthly check, currently $500. In future he wanted specific information about sales and a reckoning-up twice a year. If it meant he was paid less some months, that was fine. There was another complaint: he was frustrated with the delay in publishing Women, which he considered the best work he had done. The manuscript had been with Martin almost a year and still the book was not out.

  ‘It was the only rancorous call, and he didn’t even remember it the next day,’ says Martin, but although he assured him they had never been more than a few hundred dollars apart, if that, he agreed to send a regular royalty statement twice a year in future. The monthly payments continued as before. ‘In the thirty years I published him we had remarkably few tense moments and I always understood that he was basically in charge.’

  Reassured his affairs were in order, and encouraged by a check for $9,000 from his publishers in France, Bukowski and Linda Lee began looking at property to buy. They went all over the Los Angeles area, going as far as Santa Monica and up into Topanga Canyon, before finding an old two-storey detached house in San Pedro, the port town at the southern edge of the Los Angeles sprawl.

  The house, which had an asking price of a little over $80,000, had been built on the crest of a small hill overlooking the harbor. There was a hedge in front which Bukowski liked (privacy was becoming increasingly important now he was famous). The living room was large, with an open fire, and sliding glass doors led into a garden planted with roses and fruit trees. Upstairs – he had never lived in a house with stairs before – was a master bedroom and a box room with a balcony overlooking the harbor, a perfect place for writing.

  It was strange to be buying property after a lifetime of renting. Frightening, too. What if he couldn’t make the payments? But he decided to take the risk and was soon pottering happily in his garden with Butch, the stray cat he brought with him from Carlton Way, a suburban home owner at last.

  One night the telephone rang and a foreign-sounding fellow introduced himself as Barbet Schroeder, a film director. He wanted to meet to discuss a movie project. Bukowski’s number was unlisted, now he had got laid as much as the average man, and he did not take kindly to the intrusion. ‘Fuck off, you French frog,’ he said.

  Schroeder was thirty-seven, born in Iran and raised in France. He had studied philosophy at the Sorbonne before becoming a promoter of jazz concerts, then a journalist, an actor and finally a director of underground movies. He was a charming man, both in person and on the telephone, and managed to persuade Bukowski to meet him, telling him he had read all his books and wanted to make a ninety-minute film from one of his stories, not to exploit the work but to pay homage to it. Bukowski was not sure, wondering whether any of his stories could stretch to such a long adaptation. Schroeder seemed sincere, however, and Bukowski liked him. He said he would think it over but first he had to go to Paris to appear on a TV show.

  Apostrophes was a discussion program broadcast on national French television. It was hosted by Bernard Pivot, a well-known personality in France, and had an audience of several millions. The TV company were so eager to have Bukowski on the show that they paid for flights from Los Angeles, for him and Linda Lee, and put them up in a hotel in Paris. Bukowski figured the show would help his European sales, and he and Linda Lee planned a holiday around it, hoping to visit Carl Weissner and Linda Lee’s mother who was staying in the South of France.

  Bukowski arrived at the Channel 2 building forty-five minutes early. He had stipulated he wanted two bottles of good white wine delivered to him before he went on the show and the first arrived while he was in make-up. He was soon drinking wine from the bottle, and was very drunk indeed when he was led through to meet his fellow guests. These included a distinguished psychiatrist, who had treated Antonin Artaud, and an attractive female author, of what exactly Bukowski was never sure. They were seated round a coffee table on which were arranged several of Bukowski’s books.

  Bukowski was the star guest, so Pivot began by asking him how it felt to be fêted in Europe, to be on French television.

  ‘I know a great many American writers who would like to be on this program now,’ replied Bukowski, speaking even more ponderously than usual. He was puffing on a sher bidi, a type of Indian cigarette Linda Lee had introduced him to. It looked like a joint and smelt awful. He was also obviously drunk, slurring his words and nodding his head. ‘It doesn’t mean so much to me …’ he said.

  Pivot tried to develop a discussion from this unpromising start, but Bukowski seemed to have trouble following the translation so Pivot turned to the lady writer. After a few minutes Bukowski broke into the conversation, saying he would like to see more of the woman’s legs. More specifically, he wanted to examine her ankles. That way he felt he might know how good a writer she was.

  Pivot gave him a withering look and Bukowski told him he was a ‘fucking son of a fucking bitch asshole’ which set the translators an interesting problem as the show was going out live. Pivot fully understood what Bukowski had said. He put his hand over the American’s foul mouth and told him to shut up.

  ‘Don’t you ever say that to me,’ Bukowski growled.

  He pulled the translation device from his ear, rose unsteadily to his feet and turned to leave. Pivot bid him au revoir with a Gallic shrug. The other guests watched in astonishment. Bukowski stumbled momentarily, steadied himself by touching the head of the man next to him, and then tottered off, as the translators and audience rocked with laughter.

  Bukowski and Linda Lee made their way down to the reception area where they were met by police. ‘When Hank saw that, he got this crazy little fiction going in his head, like the enemy is approaching,’ says Linda Lee. He pulled out his blade, a small hunting knife he always carried, and brandished it at them. There was a scuffle, but Linda Lee kept her cool and watched where Bukowski’s hands went. She grabbed his blade from him and then they both got the hell out of there.

  The TV appearance was punk-like at a time when punk music and attitudes were fashionable in Europe. (He had been interviewed the day before by a punk journalist who endeared himself to Bukowski by asking for heroin – Bukowski said he wasn’t carrying – and by saying he liked pollution, which Bukowski thought very funny.) Consequently his antics on Apostrophes made headlines in France’s daily newspapers. Some took the view that it was a scandal. Others were of the opinion Bukowski had been a breath of fresh air on an establishment show.

  ‘You were great, bastard,’ said the e
xcitable journalist who rang from Le Monde. ‘Those others couldn’t masturbate.’

  ‘What did I do?’ asked Bukowski, his hangover obscuring the events of the previous evening.

  ‘He didn’t remember anything, of course, but the whole of France was running to book shops to buy his books,’ says Barbet Schroeder. ‘In a few hours they were all sold out.’

  A couple of days later Bukowski and Linda Lee were in Nice on the French Riviera, visiting Linda Lee’s mother, when a waiter in a café recognized Bukowski and asked for his autograph. He signed obligingly and then glanced across at the neighboring café where he saw five more waiters watching him. When they saw that Bukowski had noticed, the waiters bowed solemnly in unison to show their respect, and then went about their business again. It was a remarkable moment for a man who had spent more than half his life as an unknown writer, a humble postal clerk, but then so many things were new and strange now Bukowski was a success.

  * The travelogue, Shakespeare Never Did This.

  13

  CHINASKI IN SUBURBIA

  Most of Bukowski’s former girlfriends had no idea he was using them as material for a novel, and he certainly never asked permission to write about their sex lives. So when Women was finally published after a long delay, in December 1978, it was the cause of some consternation to those women who had shared his life before he settled down with Linda Lee Beighle. The embarrassment was further compounded by the fact that Women sold more than any of his other books.