so now, even as I write this it is time to go back to work. and even at work I am sliced with jackasses. I have a half hour to eat, I get a table by myself—a tough job. and here some nit catches my eye and brings over his tray: “I just hate to see somebody sitting alone,” he smiles. “I really don’t mind at all,” I tell him. “well, I’ll sit down anyhow.” “yes,” I say, “tell me your troubles.” and he does. he tells me he was somewhere or other, babysitting or something, and somebody gave him 2 cans of beer and he got high right away, he fell asleep, and the next day Sunday he slept almost all day, those 2 cans of beer. this was the essence of his conversation. I grunted something and tried to eat during his cold turkey insanity. I finished and excused myself and went outside in the freezing cold in my shirtsleeves and stood out there for 5 minutes and then went inside, back to my foreman.
so then, I know you have your things too. it’s not the large tragedies that moil us to pieces—we are fucking well ready for those. it’s the little scratchings and drippings, the continuous stubbing of the toes and elbows, the car that won’t start, the piece of tooth that breaks off as you are biting into a peach, dirty stockings, a sudden face in the market goring your peace like a bull, a ring in the bathtub, constipation, insomnia, a dirty newspaper, toothpaste too sweet, a fingernail flipping back and ripping from the finger…these things again and again, the similar small biting donnybrook continuous hail…these tear us to the final pieces. ah ha.
* * *
James Lowell was the proprietor of Asphodel Books, Cleveland, an important dealer in underground and little press items in the sixties. When he was prosecuted for dealing in obscenity, a large number of leading authors contributed to a collection A Tribute to Jim Lowell (Cleveland, June 1967) to help raise funds for his defense.
[To Carl Weissner]
January 27, 1967
[* * *]—yes, I wrote an essay in defense of Lowell, literature, art, us, we’uns…. the vise closes in. the F.B.I. questions Blazek, asks about me. Richmond out on bail, bookstore still open, and he’s awaiting trial. yes, they picked up my The Genius of the Crowd at Lowell’s. d.a. levy who published that, and other things now hiding from the police, warrant out for him. but the police have not knocked at my door (about these matters) because all they have on me is that I write in a very plain and simple style and don’t even cuss too much—I am too god damned fucking mother fucking tired to cuss! [* * *]
I do not make it too well with the women because I refuse to throw them the smoke screen, and I really do not get enough good ass and I never will because if a woman’s soul is a sack of shit I will not fail to tell them so, esp. when I am drunk. there are 2 new women on my horizon now, hungry-eyed, trying to act decently human but they are really not decently human. I don’t mind that they are filled with snot and piss and shit and blood, with the newspaper print pasted above their eyebrows—it is the eventual explosive unfolding, the sharp claws stored in the coffee can. “hey, son, I gave you some pussy, now kiss my ass, run my errands, listen to my harpy song.” oye, oye, oye. [* * *]
I am sure Marina will make me feel better tonight. we have a direct line going. everything is simple and clear and magic and even funny.—your daughter? on back of pic? the date? 1944? is this correct? how OLD ARE YOU, Abraham? [* * *] I have to go over and get Marina now; she looks almost exactly like the photo you enclosed, even has a hat like that. thanks the photo. it cheered me.
I don’t know if I am glad I left Germany or not. I really think I would be dying wherever I was at. my formula remains the same-keep the last coal glowing long as possible. no sense in tossing in. make them come to us. we will throw the scabs, the guts, the pebbles in their faces, whatever they use for faces.
so now in the old car, the night streets, myself gagging in the love of their tranquil yawn, my los angeles non-people. Marina how do you live in this city? [* * *]
[To Carl Weissner]
[January 28, 1967]
the next day following earlier
letter (1967)
hello Carl:
this quick one, follow up, trying to fight off Marina who won’t let me type long (competition), but I screwed up—the photo is evidently of you, and I called it your daughter—so now I’ve put a dent in your mulch—sorry—but why in hell do they dress little boys like little girls and then hand the photo to a guy with a hangover? the 1944 makes sense to me now. should I consider you wounded forever? don’t be. I wish I looked like my daughter. now she’s making a train. I hold a conversation with her as I type: “Are you making a train? ah, fine, hum hum. oh, did the train fall down?” Bukowski gone soft as poached eggs for ulcer patients. I always used whiskey for my stomach—I mean my ulcers—got rid of my stomach and my ulcers too.
heard from Greg who got the bundle of Earth Rose I slipped past the F.B.I.—Richmond busted for these—and now Dan is walking around hanging them in public places, like Spellman’s crapper, so forth. a very energetic fellow. I always picture him with knife in bloody teeth, working upon the Fall and Decline of Empire, which ain’t a bad idea. only I am lazy and mixed up with spondees and beer and bad health. all revolutionaries should be 6 feet 5, weight 380 pounds, look like young Gregory Peck with Heidelberg scars, and never be bothered with constipation, insomnia or the search for employment in the capitalistik nestegg. by the way, I hear that the Heidelberg scars are coming back. saw a perfectly bloody set in a mag, I mean photos of the faces directly afterwards, the faces of the lucky boy who collected his scar, and the hogfaces, the cementfaces, the lustfaces of the onlooking club members. you live in a hot town, old man. ACTION. the reason I am reading this mag which is a kind of sex-sadist outlay is that somebody sends it to me, regards an article, portion of which reads: “It’s possible that the New Bohemia stands on wobbly legs so far as terminology is concerned. It’s possible that the New Bohemia is not avant-garde at all, but merely an appendage of beatism at best, and perhaps even the ‘rear guard’ of that social phenomena. Take a look at the heroes of the beatniks of the sexy Sixties have chosen. They include Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, LeRoi Jones, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Dylan, Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, Eugene Ionesco, W. H. Auden, Anais Nin, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski, to name a few.” so there I am put in my place, but of the names mentioned I am only partially in tune with a few. (now they are going to give me Bruckner’s 9th. and a bit of Hindemith.) Genet in portions when he doesn’t creampuff out in love with his writing, Brecht in portions, and the very early Auden. and I doubt very much if I am any man’s hero. as the mass goes down to a generalized and easy death there seem to be at the same time more and more individual people springing out of rosebushes with lushlife fire to make me wonder—3 or 4 months ago I had not heard of either you or D[an] G[eorgakas], now my mailbox is on fire with loveletters from hell. not as an act of writing a letter—but as information from the center of the sky to keep me from cutting my throat. [* * *]
woman from Sacramento just phoned. she says she likes to hear my voice. wow wow. I’d sure like to help her. I’m told she’s a looker. writes me 2 or 3 letters a week. she also writes poetry. god damn just dropped a cigar ash on my only good pair of pants and before I could get the damn thing up I burned a hole in the pants, and a hole in the leg. but the pants, that’s what hurts. constant tragedy. ah, me. but these letters from Sacramento. little scrawls, tired: “it rained today. I cleaned the house. 2 poems accepted by X. one of them is about you.” I keep this gal going in a kind of haywire way, and it’s kind of sloppy and bites me in the back of the neck, but I try to remain the fucked-up human I am. everybody needs help and I like to help them: especially good-lookers with sexy voices who have read more than the morning paper. luckily for me, she’s married, has children, and is probably disillusioned with her husband because he does not have fits, does not brood in the closet. a lot of guys marry these gals with poetic backgrounds because they think they are getting a chance at class, when all they are really
getting is a pain in the ass. I have spoken. then too, these poetic bitches with looks always (almost always, I have found by my experiences) marry money-makers and then WONDER WHY MONEY-MAKERS ARE SUCH DULL STUPID PRICKS WHEN THEY ARE JUST SITTING AROUND NOT MAKING MONEY. so both sides are disillusioned, and the bitch sits around looking at her husband and ends up trying to write a novel on character-disintegration (his, of course!). in fact, I got a letter from my x-wife who writes me every Christmas, and she said she is going to write TWO novels on character-disintegration. mine, I suppose, and her present husband’s. now, if she could write about hers…twice…she wouldn’t have any classics, but maybe a couple of best sellers.
(this quick letter to tell you I am sorry I called you your daughter in 1944. in 1967.)
this has been a better weekend. last weekend there were about 12 different people here, and although I tried to treat them straight, easy, I might have been a bit weary, nasty and downright cruel, hahaha, and I haven’t had all these people here this weekend, so I guess I know what I am doing. unless I can get at my piano (typewriter) an hour or so each day I am not worth a shit to anybody. not that I am creating anything immortal, although now and then I may slip over that line (?) but it is mostly the sound of the typer like ENGINE ///////// MY ENGINE MY ENGINE GOD DAMN IT, and when they shut my motor off I am no better than a hockshop owner. hey, there’s a good beginning: suppose Dan G. and I went around assassinating all the hockshop owners, as many as we could until they got us? Dostoyevsky would say no. and it wouldn’t change a beetle. and when I have been broke the hockshop owners always looked good to me even when they gave me almost nothing for something—because you see, nobody else would. it meant food or rent. to hell with the loss. so even vultures are sometimes useful. although I might agree with Dan that there might be a better way of helping the poor and the disowned. like say, a gun to begin with, and a gun to end with. the good thing about G. is that he is not just another standard faded commmie liberal pissedoff nuerotic anarchist, carbon copy like. he speaks from an ORIGINAL FRAMEWORK springing from the gut-soul of his breathing and wanting to breathe. he suggests that one of the reasons the F/B/Itch is fucking with me in the background is that I am corresponding with him. I consider that correspondence as a joy and an honor, sunlight and orange juice—it is Marina walking across the room bringing me a bottle of beer. about D., tho, I am afraid for him in the sense that he seems to feel the NEAR READINESS OF UPHEAVAL. things like Watts, so forth. the French Revolution. the Russian. me, I am not ready to mount the parrapets. I am a shit. I remember the 30’s, the depression, the same talk—tho not as creatively sensible and warm as Dan’s—and nothing happening. almost 40 years later and nothing happening. in fact, due to the ultra black Romanticism of the easily excited intellectuals (Camus to start with, Malcolm X to end with) the swing has gone way back to the RIGHT, and it is further away from them than ever. there are 2 very sad things to see in the world at least, and 2 of them are a very old queer and a very old revolutionary. man, hold, I have worked in the mills for their pennies, the fat capitalists, I have been drained drained and slugged and slugged and cheated, and Dan says bodies must go on the line and he means it, but we’ve first got to get enough bodies with stuffings, each with its own voice not somebody elses. YOU CAN ALWAYS PUT NEW GOVERNMENTS ON TOP OF MEN; WHAT WE NEED IS NEW MEN ON TOP OF GOVERNMENTS. the only way government (or no government) can work is through living men, and I am afraid we do not have enough of these around right now. this does not mean that I am for injustice against dead men, for even dead men have rights—mainly because they still feel pain, get hard-ons, have bellies.
[* * *] like any individual with individual experiences I have impaired vision. the capitalist goes by his experiences and instincts. I am afraid I would make a very good rich man and I am AFRAID I would keep my money. I would build walls. I would create a Greecian Art from the souls of my slaves. I would fuck young girls until I got tired of fucking young girls. I would not worry about the lettuce pickers of Salinas. I would feel pretty good: I would feel pretty brainy; I might still even have a soul. THE WHOLE THING NEEDS TO BE CLEANED UP BY FUCKING WELL REALIZING EVERYBODY. you see, your boy Dan gets me to thinking about these things. I think of Norse standing up at a table when you walk in. I think of Norse sick sick dying cornered, I think of the good men everywhere being swallowed by the iron sky. and it just isn’t government and capitalism and MAN BEING VICTIMIZED BY OTHER MEN, IT IS MEN BEING VICTIMIZED BECAUSE THEY WERE BORN TO DIE. all this is basic, all these things are basic—yet I have never read them anywhere. why? I suppose it is in the libraries somewhere, but IT IS SO DILUTED AND TRICKY AND ARTY that it flips off like a live fish out of the hands. truly, there has been very little good clear plain and true Art created within the life of Man. in Music, yes; in Painting yes—but in the written word, no no no NO!—the written word is till sucking its own tits, crying for mama, posing. let’s take a case. Burroughs. all right. he is reaching, shuffling into a NEW DIMENSION. he is bored, mad, pissed with the ordinary product. rightfully so. any sane man is, any sane insane man. but Burroughs in mixed and mixing new paints, combos, finds flicks, colors, discoveries…. surcharged with butter and fire, much of it not bad Art. fine. but still he is sliding off the horizon. in trying to discover a New Reality he is losing the actual REALITY. this is his failure. let me illustrate—the only true forward-moving art is an art that discovers new form by still retaining actual reality—perhaps the best example of this is Finnegans Wake by Joyce. he moved the word out of the concept of the word but still gave us the actual world. the instance came not by accident but by the force of innards and the lonely madness of luck and the way. Burroughs pasteups of the clipped-up London Daily Heraldor whatever, or standing on his knees upside down reading the bible through a film of boiling skimmed milk is often entertaining and REAL but more often a trick, a falling together of an insignificant world by tricks and a lot of glue. now it is possible to get a FREE WORLD WORD, a REAL SHOT FROM THE SKY BY WORKING THE TRICK, but down in us we know, finally, that the only way is to slug it down the river. not because our masters and schoolteachers taught us this but because the masters and schoolteachers must go, and Burroughs is only pasting their dry canine flicks upon our murdered brows IN DIFFERENT ORDER. not enough. we need new blood, new miracle—not the mixing of old soup. and now that I have killed Burroughs, enough of that.
god, enough of that. this is a short letter to explain that I did not mean to call you a girl. [* * *]
I am still listening to Bruckner 9th. do you think I am cultured, little girl? I like this stuff. if I weren’t so poor I’d make a beautiful snob. even now I think I could be a music critic for the New York Times if they’d let me. but they wouldn’t. before I was finished they’d burn the Times down or some music lover would assassinate me. let’s get the pawnshop owners first. then, me. yes, I’d make a terrible snob. I just don’t like most people’s faces or the way they walk or the sound of their voices or anything they say. the people make me physically ill. shut me in a room with 5 people for 40 minutes and then ask me if I had a chance whether I’d save them or burn them. Dostoevsky wouldn’t agree. somebody from some middle class mag was over to interview me last Friday night, no, the Friday before. but he just kept the tape going and I got drunker and drunker and I finally said, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, MERCY, JUST ASK ME A DIRECT QUESTION AND I WILL GIVE YOU A DIRECT ANSWER. but he wouldn’t. he was wiser than I. or more frightened. not both. there are very few, if any men, more wiser and more frightened than I am AT THE SAME TIME. I MEAN I FEEL TERROR CONTINUALLY. they have built me a little image shit thing of a brave and tough man. I will not buy it. I am a skunk thing, always turning, not knowing. I don’t know where I am at. incomplete, nothing full. his friend, John Bryan, kept saying, “Bukowski, you are a bitter old man!” and he meant it but I did not know what he meant. I am not bitter, nothing like that. I am mixed. I mean half the time I want to kill myself and the other half the time I am angry because I have almost
no means of staying alive in a society that asks for turret lathe operators or experts on Space, the stock market, so forth. I don’t know their game. I am these TWO HALVES AND NO HOLE. a good piece of ass would fix me for 3 or 4 nights but where is it?
I am now drunk beyond the meaning of my saying but go on. ??????
Kennedy was a half-man, hardly that, but a hero of the little punchy guy who wanted class and used K’s seeming class to fill the hole. I’ll always remember the day of Kennedy’s assassination, how all the people seemed HOLLOW without impluse or guide. as if they had been scooped out. me, I felt the same. but I got this terrible feeling as if the beehive had been raided and the QUEEN BEER BEE taken out forever. even their faces had no anger. WITHOUT THEIR LEADER THEY COULD NOT EVEN GET ANGRY AT AN (seeming) INJUSTICE. this was the day I really read the human race down, realized that each man must be HIS OWN QUEEN BEER BEE. and that they could not ever be stuffed with the apple pie of political fairytales to save their dull asses. you can kill one man. it is a little more difficult (tho possible) to kill a worldful. let’s try for a worldful. (Carl do you know any woman in los angeles who could come over and throw me a hot piece of ass? if so, tell her to wear high heels and a tight tight skirt, and my phone number is NO. 1-6385.) oh shit, it’s past ten p.m. and according to the rules I must stop typing. how can I make it? I am just getting warmed up. (Carl, do you know any woman in los angeles with a NOISELESS TYPEWRITER. if you do, tell her to bring it over. tell her to wear high heels and a tight tight skirt, and my phonenumber is the same.)