The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way

by Charles Bukowski

  It’s night now and very quiet and I am finished with this.

  Doug Blazek, Skull Juices

  San Francisco: Twowindows Press, 1970

  The Impotence of Being Ernest: Review of Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream

  This book does not make it. I wanted this book to make it. I have been pulling for Hemingway to hit one out of the lot for a long time now. I wanted another novel like The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, or To Have and Have Not. I’ve been waiting a long time. For Whom the Bell Tolls was mediocre (comparing Hemingway to Hemingway) and Across the River and Into the Trees was worse. Our hero had let us down. The big man had struck out with the bags loaded. The Old Man and the Sea, while it fooled many of the critics and prizegivers, did not fool the serious reader or writer or Hemingway maniac.

  So here, in Islands in the Stream, is his last at bat. From beyond the grave. What a chance for drama! But Mr. Hemingway took a called third strike, lying down. Well, he has done enough and he’s about as embedded in American literature, and in us, as anybody can get. He quit with a high lifetime average; let’s give him that.

  All right, the main character is Thomas Hudson, a “good painter.” At least, he survives on his paintings. He’s in Bimini in a house that faces the ocean. It’s dull for the reader as Thomas Hudson lounges about thinking about “discipline,” how he has learned discipline, while his houseboy insists that he (Thomas) should take a drink. Of course, you and I know that discipline is something old men claim they’ve learned after they’ve lost the strength of non-discipline. Meanwhile, his three sons are coming to see him the next day. That night Hudson does manage to get out on the docks somewhere and there’s a hell of a lot of drinking. In fact—“hell, hell, hell,” that word is used very extensively throughout the first part of the novel. When I was a little boy, that used to be a bad word, now it’s a yawn; it has passed from the tough boys to the effete.

  All right, there’s the secondary character, Roger. He’s Thomas’s best friend. Roger wants to write a novel. He hasn’t done so. Everybody’s on the docks. Some drunk in a boat throws Roger some verbal swill, the drunk’s main word being “swine.” The drunk is objecting because another drunk with a signal pistol is trying to set the town on fire and blow up some drums of gasoline. But instead of calling the man with the signal pistol a swine he calls Roger a swine and Roger is just sitting there, you know. So a fight begins. And it’s all Roger’s. The fight scene is in the best Hemingway tradition, written as the master used to write. . . . Well, the next day the three sons arrive and it gets dull again. They are some sons. They all talk like very sagacious philosophers; in fact, almost all of Hemingway’s characters do. Hell, yes. And there’s talk of Paris and Mr. Joyce and it all wheezes on. A day or two wheeze by and then a sagacious and beautiful lady gets off a rich man’s boat and the next thing you know, bing, she’s out swimming with Roger and the three sons while Hudson paints, and then Roger runs right off the pages somewhere with the sagacious, beautiful lady and we lose our secondary character and wonder if the novel ever gets written. This one doesn’t.

  O, wait. Before Roger runs off, the boys and a drunken boatman and Roger and Thomas Hudson go on a fishing run. It’s the worst part of the book. The young boy, Dave, hooks a big one, the biggest one they’ve ever seen, and they strap him in a chair and let him go to hell while giving all sorts of Big Man advice. It drags and drags and drags, page after page after page. And finally they get the thing close enough to gaff, it’s about finished, and you guessed it, it slips off and sinks down into the sea. The Young Man and the Sea.

  Then that’s over and Thomas Hudson is on a boat going somewhere (a big one, not his) and the lady is honorable and has a husband and there’s much sagacious talk between them, and the lady is lovely but she does object to most of the places Thomas Hudson wants to take her in order to make love. She’s a fine lady. Finally, I believe, they make it standing up on the deck with something wrapped around them.

  “Now are you ashamed of me?” she asked.

  “No. I love you very much.”

  Next, Hudson is in Cuba and he has trouble with one of his houseboys but the other houseboy knows how to pimp Hudson up, make him the fool, and Hudson likes him. Hudson also has trouble with his chauffeur. A surly chauffeur, worried because his family was almost starving to death. Hudson sits in the back with a cork-lined drink and straightens him out. It’s a good big drink. Fresh green lime juice mixed with cocoanut water and Gordon’s gin, and also tautened by bitters. Thomas H. ends up in a bar with an old whore named Honest Lil and a few other horny characters. The wind’s blowing too damned hard, Hudson figures, to chase Germans through the ocean. Time out for the War.

  Hemingway knows his drinks and his drunks and the bar scene is good and the conversation is a little bit on-stage but not bad. You can get thirsty reading this part. I didn’t. I drank all through the book. And I drank everywhere I read it. I read it in the bathtub, on the crapper, in the bed, on the couch, in the breakfastnook, and so on. But here it came again—a woman gets out of a car and comes into the bar. Another very sagacious and lovely female. They embrace. It’s one of his x-wives. They run back to his place, pack into bed, make it, then argue a bit, just like old times. But their arguments aren’t like other people’s arguments. They have this deep wisdom. Then Thomas packs off to sea. In the wind. Orders.

  It’s quite a ship. Everybody drinks and talks that talk. Sassy. A few “shits” enter and a great many “hells.” But, for it all, this is the best part of the book. There’s a movie in this part, and a good one. A German sub has been sunk and part of the crew is on the run. The Germans have knocked off some people on an island and gotten themselves a boat. Hudson and his sassy drunken crew must catch the Hun and give him Justice. By the way, all through the book there is a great deal of talk about what a “rummy” is and who is a “rummy.” Actually, they’re all rummies. The chase is a good one and the writing and the conversation is early Hemingway—crisp and fine and interesting. It felt wonderful to see the old boy back in shape. There is an encounter with one German and then another with the main group. Hemingway knows his warfare, large or small. He writes of it with accuracy and brilliance.

  Like the old-time reviewers, I will not give you the ending. Maybe you can guess.

  All in all, Hemingway knows his men and his war and his food and his drinks and the wind and the sea and the birds, and how to boat, and he knows his crabs and his wild boars and his dogs and his insects, and he knows his death is coming. He’s weak on his women but most of us are, and his conversations aren’t quite real; they are Hemingway conversations, but once you realize this you can accept them. And there’s free knowledge in the book on all sorts of little things besides making good drinks. Although I don’t care too much for his peanut butter with raw onion sandwiches. Or hanging up a slightly demobilized bird in the kitchen with a piece of string by one leg and finding out later that the big cat got it. 466 pages are many pages and maybe that’s why it’s ten dollars or maybe it’s because it’s the last of Hemingway. I suppose it matters how you feel about Hemingway and how much money you have, or both. No, the book doesn’t make it. Few do. I’d say buy it just to know which way things went. They went that way. And he’s gone now. You know how. And, without lying, let’s not try to be too unkind.

  Coast FM and Fine Arts, November 1970

  An Introduction to These Poems: Al Masarik, Invitation to a Dying

  This old man has been reading poetry for some years, mostly with a feeling of disgust, futility, and frustration (plus anger, boredom, seasickness, so forth). Much of this poetry I was forced to read, having once been editor of the little magazine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. If you believe that printed poetry is bad, you ought to read some of the things that arrive in the mailbox. My problem is that not only does little mag underground poetry displease me, but also the sterling accepted stuff of a more holy and rarefied air (no need to name names). But it does seem to be
a bloodless, cloudy gang full of tricks and niceties.

  I feel that the breakoff of real poetic talent began with World War II and that it never returned. What the causes were (are) I don’t know. But from the beginning of World War II and up to 1971 it has been a very barren time for poetic production, not only that form of production but, I feel, creation in other art forms & originality outside of the art forms. Even our clothing styles must revert to past eras. It is as if we simply lack the energy and the initiative to break into new molds. Poetry, in particular, has remained without movement, stale. (Concrete poetry? Please, my friends!) Jon Webb, editor of The Outsider, told me not too long before his death, “Bukowski, it’s a bad time for poetry, it’s a very bad time, very little is being done.” Jon was forced to read many more manuscripts than I. Each morning at the p.o. box there was a bucketful of mail, a bucketful of shit.

  Al Masarik arrived one morning in my mailbox and I listlessly extracted him along with the others. I had an Alka-Seltzer, a beer, and two hard-boiled eggs and decided to knock off the dead. Neeli Cherry, my co-editor, lives in San Berdoo, and I was the official reader. I always tried to say something kind and amusing even if the poetry was bad. You can destroy a man or a woman for a week with a nastyass rejection. But then if you write too generous a reject they’ll be back with more bad poetry. You have to know how to kindly murder. I kindly murdered some of the dead. Then I opened another envelope—from one Al Masarik—and began to read. The first few lines drew me in. You just don’t know what it is to discover a new poem, a new talent. It’s a once upon a time experience for most. I thought of Whit Burnett when William Saroyan came along one day in yellow second sheets single-spaced. I thought quietly, this man can write. And I’ve been thinking that ever since . . . when I see a poem of Masarik’s in the magazines. The man can write, and I welcome him to the club. To my mind there are only four or five writers writing poetry in the U.S. today, and I probably can’t name those unless I am goaded to do so.

  Whereas World War II killed most poets and poets-to-be, I have the feeling that the Korean War awakened Masarik. Not that this makes the Korean War noble or that Korean Wars are necessary to create Masariks. But it did take him from the hard and plastic American dream and set him in a landscape of uncovered and real lives, and deaths. His Korean poems about the whores, about the boy taking a shit, all the Korean poems have that simple picture quality that says it with such an easy totality. The sign of a good artist is his ability to say or create or re-create a real thing in a simple way. By simple I mean without accoutrements that will weight it down later as a display or a trick. To be simple, to be basic is a thing that most artists simply cannot do. Ah, to get down to the bone, to cut away the swill. Masarik does this. He does it with an almost unbelievable easiness. I mean, the writing seems easy; the price is probably something else.

  When you read Masarik, you might feel like eating an apple or drinking a beer. All the good writers make me hungry for food. It’s like the writing comes in with warm light, it enters you; you simply feel like jamming more substance in. Céline gave me many a bellyache. I used to read Céline in bed, laughing and eating Ritz crackers. I was in a trance, reading, and slamming crackers into my mouth. Soon the whole box would be gone and then I’d get up and drink water, and then, jesus christ . . . what a gutache. Céline, you son of a bitch: Masarik, too, makes me hungry.

  When I’d see my few friends I’d tell them, “There’s a new guy around, Al Masarik. He can write.” Then I’d show them a poem. “Hmmm, yes,” they’d say.

  I’ve written three or four forewords for some other young men, all of them showing some original blaze. I meant what I wrote. The fact is that those I wrote about have not advanced in their writing. In fact, they have gone backwards. Something in life has gotten them. For this, I can’t be responsible. I don’t have time to go around pointing out the traps to young genius. Masarik has gotten off well. Not only in the Korean poems here but the others. “Autographed Baseball”: check those last three lines. “Marilyn Monroe” poems, we’re all guilty of them. I wrote one myself. This Masarik one is as good as any. “Mentally Retarded” is Masarik at his best. Focusing. Check the last five lines. If there are surprises, they are surprises of truth. I rather think of most of Masarik’s poems—although some of the Korean whore poems are love poems—as photographs from hell. An almost lovable but still worldly hell. See, he says, it’s like this and here are the words.

  I feel that Masarik will go on. He has style but I don’t think he will be confined by his style. Let’s hope not. I see him going on, his style altering ever so imperceptibly, his photographs changing as his life changes. This selection, along with his earlier work, is one grand foundation. It has been quite some time since a vigorous, plain-talking new blood has entered the scene. This is a victory for all of us. It shows us that new men can do fine things. We had almost forgotten. We had almost lost hope. Masarik, you son of a bitch. Come on in. It’s been a long drought. Those scarecrows out there. I thought they had us. We’ve fooled the killers again. Sit down and have a beer, Al. On the house . . . . . .

  Al Masarik, Invitation to a Dying

  Redwood City, CA: Vagabond Press, 1972

  Foreword: Steve Richmond, Earth Rose

  These are poems written by a human being. These are poems written by a man who sees demons and lives alone in a shack by the ocean. These are the poems of a loner and the loner is, finally, the only true creator. These are the poems of a loner who is capable of love but who has trouble—like the non-loners—in finding it. These are lines put down true, and like lines put down true can make one feel so good one can laugh at times. Truth is jolly, truth is the sun of laughter. These are poems like warm butter, sex on a stick, and the laughter of the mad. Richmond has broken through the wall. He lays it on down. It’s there. It’s a gift, a curse, and a signal. Steel in motion. Flash of night on rubber tires. The workings.

  These are poems written by a human being. I have met many writers, mostly poets, and while some of their work was very fine, upon meeting the actual creators I became sickened by their rays, their voices, their manners. How clannish and bitchy they are. They eat together, sleep together, talk together, party together, plan together, breed together. They have no chance in the final arena of creation because they weaken each other with their agreements. The creator must finally be the loner. Richmond is almost always alone. You’ll find no stereo going full blast at his place among the beerbottles and the gossipers and the wife-pinchers. There’ll be an occasional woman bringing him a plate of meatballs and spaghetti, but the next time around she’ll be gone.

  I like writers who are strong as their work. That is the final test. I don’t believe you can separate the man and his work. I don’t believe that if the work is strong and the man is weak that the work is all that matters. The strong man with the strong work will endure. No publishers have come to Richmond. The publishers are wrong. This work will endure. The poems you read here will endure. Not all of them but many of them.

  These are the poems of a human being, these are the poems of a loner, of a man with a face, of a man who can laugh, of a man who can walk across a room with easiness. These are the poems of a man who gives off good rays, strong rays. These are the poems of a man who deserves a good woman and has not found one yet. No matter. He’ll go on. Someday he’ll be found, some day he’ll be discovered, the universities and the groupies and the parasites will embrace him. At the moment he’s safe working. The longer he’s ignored the better the poems will be. I wish him a long period underground. Meanwhile, to those of you who have fallen across this book, this is the gift to you, these poems. Take them, taste them, button them onto your shirts, glue them on the shithouse walls, mail them to your aunt in Des Moines, feel good, these are the poems of a human being, he’s got it, and now you’ve got it. You’re early and the power runs ripe. Amen.

  Steve Richmond, Earth Rose

  Santa Monica, CA: Earth Books, 1974

&nb
sp; A Note on These Poems: Appreciation to Al Purdy’s At Marsport Drugstore

  All right. I corresponded with Al Purdy for years, and then as such things go, we stopped. At the time he was in splendid shape—had a house and a woman in it who treated him well, and best of all—he made his own wine.

  I don’t know how he’s doing now—outside of the poem—but looking at these I know that he hasn’t lost his magic. Whatever the viewpoint of the love poems, it’s still Purdy writing them. And that means a Purdy full of sorrow and grace and humor and lines that roll across the page and wash back and roll forth again.

  The proper authority for lovers is pain

  How many of us have doubled up in our rooms alone, holding both hands to the gut, verily chopped in half?

  Most of us have been in love.

  These poems are recordings of that almost impossible way.

  Nov. 24, 1976

  Al Purdy, At Marsport Drugstore

  Sutton West, ON: Paget Press, 1977

  About “Aftermath”

  Whit Burnett’s Story had discovered William Saroyan and many others and although they only paid $25 per story there was something about getting into Story which was much better than getting into the Atlantic or Harper’s or The New Yorker.

  I wrote two or three short stories a week and sent them all to Story. I even liked their standard rejection slip which began: “This, alas, is a rejection slip. . . .”

  I drank, starved, moved from city to city and kept writing two or three stories a week and mailing them to Story. My typer was in and out of hock, and then finally I couldn’t get it out. I hand-printed my stories in ink. I hand-printed so many stories that I was able to print faster than I could write in the standard manner. It was stamps before food, envelopes, paper before food. But not before drink.