The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way

  . . .

  Stonecloud No. 1, 1972

  Confessions of a Badass Poet

  Interview by Loren Means

  (Linda King is present)

  BUK: What’s this, Open City?

  LM: That’s John Bryan’s paper. He calls it Open City on the inside and Phoenix on the outside.

  BUK: Old John puts out the most lively paper there is. At least he used to. He’s always up to something—he’s too much.

  LM: You did some writing for John, didn’t you?

  BUK: Yeah, when Open City first started down here, he said,“Why don’t you do us a column?” and I said, “Hell, we’ll call it ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man,’ we’ll see what happens.” So it’s turned into two or three books—it was lucky. It was a nice paper—we sat around and drank beer, it wasn’t formal at all. It was real loose—it never did tighten up.

  LM: What ever happened to the paper?

  BUK: He got busted twice. You know, lawyers’ fees—he just had to leave town. So the paper folded, and I wrote for Nola Express for a while, then the Free Press picked me up. So I still do a column a week, whether I feel like it or not. Some of it’s bad, some of it’s good, some of it’s in the middle.

  LM: You miss a deadline now and then?

  BUK: Once in a while. Get drunked up. . . .

  LM: Didn’t you quit writing for a while?

  BUK: Ten years. Concentrated on the bottle. We had a romance going. Still married. It was a pretty rough trip. Park benches . . . odd jobs, here and there, most of the time I wasn’t working—I don’t know how I made it. I was always drawing unemployment insurance—I really got the last ounce out of that system. It’s nice to get fired. But I missed a lot of meals. Got pretty thin. I hit L.A. one time, and I was down to one hundred and thirty-one pounds . . . usually weigh around two hundred. I was down to nothing. If you don’t eat, you melt away. It’s that simple.

  LM: When did you go back to writing?

  BUK: I started writing again when I was thirty-five. I’m fifty-three now, That’s eighteen years.

  LM: Where were you publishing?

  BUK: Just in little magazines. That’s my stuff behind you there—most of it’s poetry. So you get published in those things, then somebody picks you up, they read your stuff and ask if you want to do a book. Jon and Lou Webb did some of the first ones, and they’re really nicely done. Like this job here—paper’s supposed to last two thousand years.

  LINDA: Doesn’t look like it’s holding up too well. . . .

  BUK: It’s got stuff all over it. They did nice work. That was my first big break. Amazing people. They starved in order to publish.

  LM: Crucifix in a Dead Hand. . . .

  BUK: Deathhand . . . I didn’t like that title. I had other titles, but he insisted on that title which I don’t like at all—it’s too staid, too dramatic. It’s the title of one of the poems and he claims it highlights the book. . . .

  LM: Had you written any fiction when you started writing for John Bryan?

  BUK: Yeah, I’d written a couple of short stories that were published in this magazine Story when I was twenty-four years old. That was the big magazine at the time—they discovered William Saroyan and lots of guys. Then I hit in Portfolio—in there with Henry Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, everybody was in there. So I did score a couple of times, but then I went on the drinking thing when I was about twenty-five. I just gave up writing and hung around bars—I don’t know, I just gave up. Then along came the hospital, and all that, and after that, I got out, got a typewriter, bought a couple of sixpacks, and started typing all over again. Had a long rest—lots of material stored up. I don’t know the reason for it—I just took ten years off.

  LM: Does that Free Press deadline help you get work done?

  BUK: Sure it does. But of course, I wrote more than the column, I write poems and I’m into my second novel. It’s called Factotum, and it’s about my ten years on the bum. I read Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, and it’s a pretty good book, but I said, “This guy hasn’t been through anything—I can play the piano better than that, as far as experience goes.” He had some rough trips but he didn’t have as many as I did. So, it’ll be an interesting book, I think. We’ll see. So I’ve been making it on my writing the last three years, since I quit the Post Office. It’s all right, I can’t complain. Little checks come in, royalties . . . I’m a professional writer, man, get up at noon, get up at six, get up at three, hell, my life’s my own. But that can get rough too, you know, you have to face yourself, it’s all sitting on you. But it’s lively.

  LM: What’s the relationship between Bukowski and your hero, Henry Chinaski?

  BUK: Same guy. Most of it’s true—there is a little fiction in there. It’s a beef stew, but most of the meat is true meat. Like Chinaski, my shorts were hanging down in the rain, I screamed at old women, I was a mess out there.

  LM: I keep hearing you called a male chauvinist pig. . . .

  BUK: No truth in that at all . . . I used to like to play the old game, you know, the story opens up, “I walked into a bar, there was a blonde sitting on the end stool, I bought her a drink, she had nice legs. . . .” It’s not so much my attitude’s changed, I just get tired of writing that kind of thing; I’m going into another area. But I don’t know if I’m a male chauvinist pig. . . .

  LM: Linda thinks you are. . . .

  BUK: Linda says I am—she ought to know, hell. . . .

  LM: But your latest piece in the Free Press is about three women raping a guy . . .

  BUK: Well, actually that was just comedy. I was neither sympathetic toward the women or the guy, I just put a twist on it. Women are always getting raped, so I had the guy get raped. The reason I wrote that, one time a guy was walking down the street and some women tried to force him into the car, so I took it from there. Of course, I had the women talking like men, talking about the Lakers, how many points, you know, it was just a comedy . . . I don’t know what it meant. Just an idea you write about.

  LM: Then there’s a recent one about a poet being interviewed by some guy. . . .

  BUK: By me. That’s all fiction. . . .

  LM: And you asked him his advice to a young poet, which I suppose people ask you all the time. . . .

  BUK: Oh, yeah. . . .

  LM: But I figured it would be more appropriate to ask your advice to an old wino.

  BUK: I don’t have any advice for old winos. I don’t know. . . . That’s a real tough question. . . .

  LM: But a writer doesn’t want to give anybody advice, right?

  BUK: Yeah, you actually don’t want to, but people ask questions, you gotta answer them. A poet’s supposed to know everything, like Ginsberg, those guys, they have opinions on everything, but they create that themselves. They start out writing poetry and they end up giving advice. It’s a bad scene—they should just stick to the poem.

  LM: But more than anybody else, your poetry contains your life.

  BUK: It’s true. So if you read the poems, you know all about it—you don’t have to ask any questions.

  LM: So everybody who knows your work, knows you. . . .

  BUK: That’s right. In fact, when Linda and I split, everybody in town knows it. .Then the phone starts ringing—“Hi, Hank, whatcha doin?” They don’t wait long for the smoke to clear.

  LM: Are you really the badass you present yourself as in your writing?

  BUK: No. I used to be pretty badass, when I was in my twenties, did a lot of fighting. I was half out of my head. But now I’m really not a badass guy, it’s a clown act mostly. It’s an attitude that shows mostly in my earlier poems. I’m getting closer to what I really am, and not the badass clown. I realized when I broke in, I’d have to create something new to make people listen to me, so I stepped on the gas pedal, I clowned it up a little bit, to catch the public eye. Subconsciously, I knew what I was doing—I was creating something that might be noticed. But after having broken in that way, I’m drifting away from this badass
, tough guy shit. I’m writing more what I actually am. Like all the girls will tell you, I’m very tender, soft, lovable.

  LINDA: He’s like a marshmallow. . . . But he can be badass too. He hasn’t forgotten how. . . .

  BUK: Once I flip, I go . . . but I only flip once every three or four years. . . . Well, maybe once a year. Then I’m completely gone—I break windows, I just flip out. But generally, I’m pretty much Mister Marshmallow. It shows in the writing—I might come on badass, but I’m really not badass. There goes my image! Looks like I just screwed myself. . . . Can I retract that? But you know, you see a lot of George Raft movies, and Humphrey Bogart, and that stuff seeps into you.

  LM: You know, Bukowski, you remind me of Philip Marlowe. . . .

  BUK: Philip Marlowe? I’m not up on him. . . .

  LM: Raymond Chandler’s detective, the hero of The Big Sleep.

  BUK: Oh, well, I don’t go to many movies. . . .

  LM: Well, he reminds me of you because he’s big and tough, but he’s intelligent and he cares about literature and chess and like that. And in Farewell, My Lovely, Chandler puts down Hemingway in a way that reminds me of your story “Class,” where Chinaski kicks Hemingway’s ass in the prize ring. . . .

  BUK: Of course, that wasn’t serious. I admire Hemingway . . . But when I’m clowning it up, you’d be surprised how many people take it seriously, especially at poetry readings. Especially the female libbers. I’ve got one poem, “The Colored Birds,” how does it end?—“This guy beats his wife every evening, one of the few real men in town.” And they were hissing—they didn’t know I was really putting the knock on the guy. My God, that audience was touchy.

  Half the people who come to my readings, come to give me hell. When I read at City Lights, a hundred people showed up with garbage to throw at me. But they paid two dollars a head to get in, so that’s pretty good. That’s two hundred dollars and they never got around to the garbage. It all helps the gate. . . .

  LM: Do you think audiences really hate you, or is it just a game?

  BUK: Some people truly do hate me—they want to see me die, but a lot of that hatred is game-playing, too. “Let’s go there and razz him”—they’re clowning in a way too. But some of it isn’t clowning—they actually want my balls, they really want me hanging upside down.

  LM: Do you think people come to readings hoping you’ll do something outrageous?

  BUK: That’s the trouble with poetry readings. If you drop your pants or vomit on stage or go crazy—they don’t come to hear the poetry. They’re looking for something. . . .

  LM: I had a friend who was a bike racer—he told me the crowd didn’t come to see him ride, they came to see him fall on his ass.

  BUK: Yeah. Auto racing, poetry.

  LM: But you’re profiting from it, right?

  BUK: Well, it’s a hustle. I always say, if I get enough ahead, I won’t do it, but how much is enough ahead?

  . . .

  LM: Have you ever been out of L.A.?

  BUK: Hell, I’ve bummed all over the country. Name it, I’ve been there. St. Louis, Miami, Houston, Ft. Worth, Dallas, New Orleans New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta—I don’t know, hell, I’ve hit ’em all. Little tiny rooms full of roaches, drinking wine and starving. I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know what I wanted. I was discontented with life. I didn’t want a job—I didn’t want a gig, you know, that eight-hour gig. It drove me crazy thinking about it. ’Cause I saw what it did to my father.

  It turned him into nothing—he just became job-oriented. He’d come home from work, sit down to the table, he’d talk about the damn job. “Oh, I told off McDonald today. No wonder they rob pennies out of that bucket—he’s over talking to some woman, he’s got his back turned! I went and saw Finsterwald, I told him about McDonald talking to this woman, they’ve been stealing money. The guy’s not been doing his . . .” blah, blah, blah, blah. Every night he’d talk on into the night about his job. . . .

  LM: Wasn’t he curator of a museum?

  BUK: He started out as a guard. Then this job offer came up. So I’d hit town and I was in this magazine Portfolio with Sartre, García Lorca, the whole gang. So I heard him talking to my mother, he said, “Henry writes, but he doesn’t know how to use his writing. I’ll show you how to use this.” So when he applied for this job, he said he was Charles Bukowski, he had written that story. And, so on the basis of this, he got his hanging-picture job. And, God, I thought, people think that man wrote that story? He was such a bumbler—one of those guys who’s always trying to make jokes. They thought he wrote that story? How embarrassing. . . . But that’s how he got his job—he became Charles Bukowski.

  LM: And it was a good job, right?

  BUK: It’s a good story. Yeah, I guess it was a good job.

  LM: But when you finally did take an eight-hour gig, it was one of the shittiest jobs in the world—the U.S. Post Office.

  BUK: Yeah. Well, I never know how to find good jobs.

  LM: So somebody else used your name to get a job that was better than the jobs you got yourself. . . .

  BUK: Yeah, well, of course I wouldn’t go in and say, “I’m Charles Bukowski.” That’s corny—you just don’t do that. I worked as a janitor, shipping clerk, stock boy for Sears and Roebuck, that sort of thing. You don’t go around saying you’re Charles Bukowski. I had lots of bad jobs. Bad jobs and bad women.

  LM: I get the impression you’d rather have a bad job than a job connected with the art world.

  BUK: You’ve got the right idea, because, if you get into that, it can suck you up. If you’re too close to creation, but it’s not really creation, you can lose it all. You’re better off mopping the women’s latrine. It keeps you straight.

  LM: Did you go to college?

  BUK: Two years, L.A. City College.

  LM: Did you hate that as much as you hated the Post Office?

  BUK: No, I kind of liked college. I’d lay around in the grass, and I had a bottle of wine in my locker, and I pretended I was a Nazi. I had a good time. People hated me—that’s where I first got the taste, that being hated is kind of nice. I was the Nazi, but I was faking it, you know. People would say, “There goes that son of a bitch!” and I’d say, “Hmmm, there’s something to that. . . .”

  There’s something about admiration that’s embarrassing. Somebody’ll say, “Hey, man, I really admire you. I really like your poetry.” I get sick inside. But somebody else says, “You son of a bitch—” hmmm, I feel good.

  LM: But you’re finding more people liking you all the time, aren’t you?

  BUK: The last reading I gave, this guy came up, he was trembling, “Mr. Bukowski, can I tell you something?” I said, “Sure, kid.” And he says, “You’re a beautiful man.” And I said, “Yeah? Keep buying my books, that’s all,” and walked off. And coming out, there’s some girl, she’s shaking and trembling all over and crying, “We can’t let him get away with that. I don’t know what you guys are gonna do, we can’t let him get away with this! Those poems are terrible! Oooh! Oooh!” She’s all torn up! So everything happens, man. Lots of reaction, good and bad, it’s wonderful. Nothing worse than just sitting there.

  LM: So you’re making out all right?

  BUK: Yeah, I’m making it on my writing. Never thought I would. I lucked it. I’m still lucking it. I don’t make a hell of a lot of money, though. . . .

  LINDA: That’s gotta be the most famous poor man in the United States. . . .

  BUK: But I’ve had a good year. I got a grant.

  LM: You? How did you get a grant?

  BUK: I applied. Sent in twenty poems. There were no negative votes from a twelve-man board So I’m either very bad or I’m very good.

  LM: Which foundation gave you the grant?

  BUK: National Endowment for the Arts. Five thousand.

  LM: Nixon’s foundation gave you five thousand dollars?

  BUK: I guess it was Nixon. It was last year. I have no objections.

  LM: It strikes me
as bizarre, that Nixon would give Bukowski money. . . .

  BUK: Well, I don’t think Nixon read the poems. . . .

  LM: Speaking of Nixon, what did you do about the draft?

  BUK: What happened was, I was drinking and flopping around in this room. I never read the newspapers or listened to the radio. I was totally isolated. There was a rule, if you moved you were supposed to notify your draft board—I didn’t even know that. So I was sitting in my room one night and the FBI arrived, hauls me off. But the best part was, they came back and read the stuff I’d been writing. I was twenty-one at the time, and I was writing pretty wild shit. So they went through all these papers and they read them, they figured I was crazy.

  So they gave the papers to the psychiatrist. So it was all set by the time I passed my physical and I walked in to see him. He said, “Do you believe in the war?” and I said, “No.” And he said, “Are you willing to go to the war?” and I said, “Yeah.”

  Then he said, “By the way, we’re having a party at my house next Wednesday night, we’re having professors, writers, doctors, lawyers, painters, creative people. It’s evident you’re a very intelligent man. I’d like you to come to my party. Will you come to my party this Wednesday night?” So I said no. Then he knew I was crazy—anybody who wouldn’t go to a party like that just doesn’t have it.

  LM: That’s exactly the kind of party you wouldn’t go to.

  BUK: Of course not. God, how painful! So he looked at me and said, “All right, you don’t have to go to the war.” Sweet words. . . .

  LM: So you got out of the Army for your writing, and now, the government’s giving you money for writing. . . .

  BUK: Yeah. And I’ve sold options on two books that might be made into movies. Two thousand, five hundred on one and two thousand on the other. One guy’s got Post Office, the other guy’s got Erections. So it was about a twelve-thousand-dollar year. And for poetry, that’s all right.