The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way

by Charles Bukowski

  I was thinking of horses when I said that, but I guess it applies everywhere.

  Have you been following through?

  So far. With minor fame. That’s what I’ve got now. Minor fame is bad.

  What is the effect of fame on a writer?

  Depends on your age, brainpower, and your guts. I think if you’re old enough, you have a better chance to overcome what they put on you. If you’re a genius at 22 and the babes come around, the drinks . . . How old was Dylan Thomas when he died, 34? It can come too soon. It can never come too late, I guess. I think I’m safe.

  I get letters from women who want to show their naked bodies. “I’m 19 years old and I want to be your secretary. I’ll keep your house and I won’t bother you at all. I just want to be around.” I get some strange letters. I trash them. Even before Linda and I got together.

  Nothing’s free. There’s always problems, there’s always tragedy, madness, bullshit. There’s a big trap waiting with all these dollies who send letters about what they’re going to do for me. They just want you to walk into it and put the clamp on you. No way. So I’ll answer, “Good God, girl, give it to a young man who deserves it and leave me alone. And drive safely.” Never hear from them again. . . .

  As Ezra said, “Do your W-O-R-K.” That’s where the vigor comes from, the creative fucking process. Puts dance in the bones. Like I said, if I don’t write for a week, I get sick. I can’t walk, I get dizzy, I lay in bed, I puke. Get up in the morning and gag. I’ve got to type. If you chopped my hands off, I’d type with my feet. So I’ve never written for money; I’ve written just because of an imbecilic urge.

  Even when you were writing for porno magazines?

  That was for the rent. [Grins.] That was sicker. I didn’t have the urge, but I did it. I enjoyed that. I would write a good story that I liked, but I would find an excuse to throw in a sex scene right in the middle of the story. It seemed to work. It was okay.

  Some guys manage to get hold of their creative energy when they’re young, some guys wait a while.

  I waited a long, long while. At the age of 50, I was still in the post office, stacking letters. I was still working, I was not a writer. I decided to quit and become a writer. When I went in to resign, the lady in the post office said [clucks tongue reprovingly]. I always remember that. It was my last day on the job. One of the clerks said, “I don’t know if he’s going to make it, but the old man sure has a lot of guts.”

  Old? I didn’t feel old. You’re just walking around in your body, you don’t feel any age. When you get old, people say things, but there’s no difference.

  So that was a big blow. I said, “Oh shit, what have I done?” The landlady said I was crazy. But she was nice, and sometimes she’d leave a big dinner out for me. And every other night I’d go down and drink with them all night long and sing all night. In between I wrote my own stuff. Dirty stories. That was on DeLongpre.

  I’m 66 now. That was 1970. I guess I got lucky late.

  . . .

  In Europe, now you are recognized on the streets. Does this get in the way?

  All a drunk wants to do is have an excuse to get drunk. So if your celebrity is an excuse to get drunk, you get drunk.

  I write when I’m drunk. Take away the typewriter and I’m a drunk without a typewriter. Could be some goodness left over, or some charm or some bullshit. It’s all mixed together.

  One of the hurtful things about fame is that you play more to a past image than to a future image.

  Exactly. Especially a writer. The only thing that amounts to a writer is the next line you’re going to write down. All past things don’t mean shit. If you can’t write that next line, you as a person are dead. It’s only the next line, this line that’s coming as the typewriter spins, that’s the magic, that’s the roaring, that’s the beauty. It’s the only thing that beats death. The next line. If it’s a good one, of course. [Grins.] That bothers me a lot. No, it doesn’t. Consider that the next line could be dead. But we’re not our own best critics, are we? I imagine a lot of guys keep typing while saying, “This stuff is great.”

  It may be madness, but I feel I’m still growing. It’s like somebody trying to push out of the top of my head. Working, working . . . A good feeling, man. The gods are good to me. They haven’t always been good to me, but lately they’ve been kind to me.

  [Raises toast.] Here’s to my father, who made me the way I am. He beat the shit out of me. After my father, everything was easy.

  Film Comment, Vol. 23, No. 4, July/August 1987

  Lizard’s Eyelid Interview

  Sterling: You are a highly accomplished writer, what do you hold responsible for your success?

  Bukowski: A brutal childhood, alcohol, half a dozen rotten jobs, a dozen rotten women, plus an overpowering fear of almost everything, plus a strange arrival of luck and bravery in sub-zero situations.

  Sterling: Of which of your works are you most proud?

  Bukowski: I’m not proud of anything. What I always like best is the last thing I’ve written. At the moment it is the answer to question.

  Sterling: Was the character Chinaski based on anyone you know, yourself?

  Bukowski: I am Chinaski. By changing my name I was able to step back and slap myself around a bit more. Maybe a half-laugh here and there. Mostly there. The “Chin” part, if you must know, was thrown in because of my chin—I was one of those guys able to absorb a terrific punch. I was not a very good fighter but taking me out was a great problem. I won a few by simply outenduring the stupid son of a bitch trying to do me in.

  Sterling: What do you feel is the greatest tragedy of our time?

  Bukowski: The 8-hour job. You die on it and you die without it.

  Sterling: What are your hobbies, other than writing?

  Bukowski: Playing the horses and knowing it is stupid but going on and playing them anyhow. I don’t know what draws me to this. A half-dream of death. A reminder? I don’t know. There are so many things that I don’t know.

  Sterling: You seem to have a fascination with sex and alcoholism. What is this fascination?

  Bukowski: Sex? Well I was drawn to it because I missed so much of it from basically the age of 13 to 34. I just didn’t want to pay the price, do the tricks, work at it. Then I don’t know, about at the age of 35 I decided I’d better get with it, and I do suppose that playing catch-up, I overdid it. I found it to be the easiest thing in the world. I found dozens of lonely women out there. I banged and slammed like a madman. I’d be in one place or another. My car parked here or there. Dinners. Bedrooms. Bathrooms. One place in the morning, another place at night. Now and then I got caught. I’d meet one or another who’d make me feel real bad, they’d reel me in and hook me, work me over. Sharks. But as time went on, even I learned how to handle the sharks. And after a while fucking and sucking and playing games lost its reality. I screwed so much my dick was rubbing raw. Dry pussy? Sure, but mostly I knew the tricks, what to do, how to do, and then it got old and senseless. Sex is too often just proving something to yourself. After you prove it a while there’s no need to prove it any longer. But in a sense, I was lucky: I got all my fucking workouts before the advent of AIDS.

  Alcohol is another matter. I’ve always needed it. It needs me. I’ve had any number of beers and a bottle of wine tonight within a couple of hours. Great. The singing of the blood. I don’t think I could have endured any of the shitty jobs I had in so many cities in this country without knowing I could come back to my room and drink it off and smooth it out, let the walls slant in, the face of the subnormal foreman vanish, always knowing that they were buying my time, my body, me, for a few pennies while they prospered. Then too, I could have never lived with some of those women unless they were transferred by drink into half-dreams which wavered before me. Under drink, their legs always looked better, their conversations more than the lisping of idiots, their betrayals not a self-affront. Drugs I had no luck with. They took away my guts, my laughter. They dulled my mind. T
hey limped my dick. They took everything from me. The writing. The small, tiny flick of hope. Booze rose me up to the sky, slammed me the next morning, but I could climb out of it, get going again. Drugs sacked me. Threw me on the mattress. A bug thing. If there is an out for the disposed, it’s alcohol. Most can’t handle it. But for me, it’s one of the secrets of existence. You asked.

  Sterling: Who were you inspired by?

  Bukowski: Originally, Hemingway but he faded. No sense of humor. A craftsman, got down the beautiful and uncluttered line, which I believe he got more from Sherwood Anderson than from Gertrude Stein. Sure I liked Gorky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, then came Hamsun (see Hunger) but I really got blasted away when I read Céline’s Journey . . . I read it in one reading, laughing out, thinking, now, here is a writer who finally writes better than I do. But only in Journey . . .

  Most overrated writers: Shakespeare, Mailer, Isaac Singer, Chekhov, Tolstoy.

  Sterling: Who do you consider the finest writers of our time?

  Bukowski: There aren’t any. Or they haven’t been published.

  Sterling: How does old age agree with you (I can’t imagine you ever growing “old”)?

  Bukowski: Old age agrees with me greatly. I hammer the line in with greater luck than ever. I drink beer and wine and more of it. Things that bother most people don’t bother me. One thing I can’t get over or adjust to is Humanity. It’s not moving, it’s glued to its own shit. I love animals. Their eyes, their grace. Me, I’m 71 now, but I feel 47. But I always felt 47, even when I was 17. But I know death is at my elbow. But I don’t mind. I never much cared for the game. And when it comes to take me out, I won’t be sad. I’ve had a good strong run. Each line that I write down now is just more laughter against the impossible.

  Sterling: Do you prefer to be known as a writer or a poet by conventional classification?

  Bukowski: I don’t care how they “classify” me. I’ve never searched for a place among the immortals; they haven’t impressed me that much. I’m just like the plumber or the dope dealer or the jock on the 5 horse, I’m just trying to get from today and into tomorrow, somehow, trying to feel as good as possible, trying to avoid the hell-traps.

  Sterling: What is your most recent project?

  Bukowski: Right now, I’m working on a novel, Pulp, “dedicated to bad writing,” a detective novel, and I’m having a right good time playing around and I might finish it, if it carries me without push.

  Sterling: Your works, published as many as 34 years ago, are still increasingly popular today, does that surprise you?

  Bukowski: No, it doesn’t surprise me. I always knew that I had a way of slamming the line down that was bright and crazy, which carried its own gamble. As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s not that I’m so good, it’s that they are so bad. There have been centuries of graceless drivel, we’ve been fed pap and crap. I can hardly believe all of it. It’s like a dirty trick against everybody.

  Sterling: What is your opinion of religion and politics?

  Bukowski: Religion is what a person builds through endurance against the forces of life. It’s what he finds out is true for himself. Within and against those forces. That’s all there is.

  Politics is a blind horse leading a horse’s ass into darkness. Politics draws the greatest fakes towards it. A true leader is either propagandized out of essence or murdered. The masses always prefer a political leader within their own likeness. In other words, an idiot.

  Sterling: What is your message to the world?

  Bukowski: I have no message to the world. I am not wise enough to lead, yet I am wise enough not to follow.

  Lizard’s Eyelid, Winter Issue, 1991

  MORE BUKOSWKI TITLES FROM CITY LIGHTS

  The Most Beautiful Woman in Town

  & Other Stories

  Tales of Ordinary Madness

  Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  The Uncollected Columns

  Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook

  Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990

  Absence of the Hero

  Uncollected Stories and Essays, Vol. 2: 1946-1992

  The Bell Tolls for No One