I am somewhat over the thing now, alive, that is, something gone, that is, but the language of the thing is bad, I cannot get through, writing has nothing to do with it, and it is better to leave it alone if it will leave me alone. In the week gone I have done things that are not in the classic normal mourning, but she will know that they were necessary.
A letter from Sherman. Jeffers died. Couple of nights back I thought, well, maybe I go see the kid, I feel better. It’s a hundred miles round trip to San Berdo, hadn’t slept or eaten for 5 or 6 days. The kid’s split with the wife again. Found him out back someplace on “I” st. He had his book of poems propped on the mantle, So Many Rooms. The typewriter was going when I knocked on the door. Went to liquor store where he tried to tap me when I opened my wallet but I wasn’t in the mood. Went back and sat there a couple of hours while he read me his poems.
Met a high yellow negress at racetrack next day and she wound up riding me at her apartment, bobbing, bobbing, bobbing, and I said beautiful, my dear, beautiful, and grabbed her can, but it wasn’t any good—I guess the old woman was watching me from heaven and she shut off my water, and the negress rolled off and I finally fell asleep.
Went over to Winski’s and we made the rounds—A turkish joint upstairs next to the Daily Racing Form, people sitting on the floor, women dancing alone; then a dull American place, then a strip joint, and all the time Winski talking sex sex eyow sex sex sex sex—I’d like to chew on her gold panties all night etc., and there was my old woman down underneath, the grass already knitting the cuts of earth, the worms making their move, the son already half way back to Texas in his god damned Mercedes Benz after a quicky cut-rate funeral, and so passes a bad taste, and along with it the only real woman and real friend I could ever stand.
I don’t think that following up one death with another one is the answer. If I am wrong I am real wrong but once the razor goes through or the other leg swings out the window it’s too late daddieo…Any other profound statements of this nature will have to wait another letter.
Right now, a quiet beer. This quietness. And giving her the real homage. Jane Cooney Baker. deceased. but never gone.
[To John William Corrington]
May [?15], 1962
[***] the jon jazz bit not for me. I prefer the symphony—Shostakovitch 5th, Symphony in D by Franck, Stravinsky, the better parts of Mahler, etc., but don’t care for the symphony crowd. Stiff phoney crows, all this marble hall exaltation, this church-like holiness. They ought to play this stuff in the jukeboxes of beerhalls, bars. Think of trying to hold the price-line with a whore while listening to Beethoven. This would be life out of the stems of flowers. [***]
[To John William Corrington]
May 27, 1962
I received your letter in which you mentioned your father’s cancer, and that you feel more than lowly is understood. It is our own deaths that will be easiest to take; it is the other deaths, the coming of them, that we cannot bear. I have tried, in these cases, to apply history, the history of death, the fact of death; I have tried to think of Napoleon gone, Hitler, the bird, the cat, the movie star, the hero, the murderer, names of things, of things that once were…but it did not help. The mind cannot overcome the instinct. The mind is only a recent development; the instinct was there long before. When love burns to the ground do not be ashamed of your grief, or even your madness or bitterness.
My mother died of cancer. I took her the most beautiful rosary I could buy on Christmas Eve but when I arrived the door was locked. I was standing there twisting the knob when a nurse walked up and said, “She just died.” My old man died while trying to drink a glass of water. The water kept running and running and they heard it and when they came in he was dead on the kitchen floor. With Jane I stood there wiping away her guts as they ran out of her mouth. Death is eternally everywhere, I need not tell you that. The ways are hard whether they are God’s ways or simply ways. To say that I understand the machinery of it or accept it would be a lie, or to say anything to help you at this moment would also be a lie. You know as much as I.
I am lucky. For me, there is nothing else left to die, outside of C. Bukowski. They will find me through the sense of smell. By then, I will be stiff enough to slide down the stairs like a board.
I can see some landlady going through my stuff with one of her old biddy friends. “Say what’s all them magazines under the table? I never seen such funny-looking magazines…” And then everything into some bag for the Salvation Army. Farewell, C.B.
One of my last friends, a dishwasher, set himself on fire or anyhow somebody set him on fire and he walked up the steps, drunk, a black monster of himself, flakes of walking ashes, and he got to his room (the only home he knew) and fell on his rented bed and died. Farewell friend.
We go on with our little poems and we wait.
One god damned hell of a situation.
[To John William Corrington]
June [?25], 1962
[***] How are you going to lecture on the novel? How do you do it? Are you going to read them Finnegans Wake? Are you going to tell them that Faulkner’s novels are slick as onionskins and that you can fall right off the page because most of the time he is writing about nothing and he throws in all these pages of italics to show you something is going on, but really, nothing is going on at all, and because you really at first believe this and don’t want to, you finally figure that something profound is going on, else why all the pages this way? And so it is better to believe it is profound because they tell you it is than be the first to stick your neck out. Faulkner will never take the shotgun because he is too clever to let you believe that he has failed. Steinbeck was very good at one time when he had ideals but his ideals trailed off and he flattened out. I think Sartre’s 2 or 3 books around the war in France are some of the best writing I have seen done. Where these Frenchmen get drunk on wine in the church; the battle in the tower, from the tower, all the many things I have forgotten but that stick in me like threads of a good happening. I don’t do much reading anymore. I don’t read anymore. Maybe the Racing Form. The time comes to end reading. The time comes reading makes you sick. This is where some music and drink and love come in. Music and drink, anyhow.
[***] Answering yr bit. I was a Catholic. As a kid. Just got past the catechism bit. We had to memorize it. We were on the front porch, Frank Sullivan and I. “God has bodily eyes.” And Frank put his fists to his eyes: “You mean like this? Like milk bottles?” And we laughed and then we got scared. At 13, 14, 15, I stopped going and there wasn’t much my mother could do and the old man didn’t care. I don’t like to hit on the subject because it is a puzzler. Jane was C. Slept with rosary under pillow. Well, hell. [***]
[To John William Corrington]
October 8, 1962
[***] Yes, the giants are gone and it makes it a little tougher when you stare down at the white paper. Before the death of the giants you used to think, well, they don’t expect anything from me anyhow. Now there is this hole and the hole must be filled and we don’t know how it will be done or who will do it. But writing is entirely different now. I mean we are raw again. We are beginning again. And it is good this way. Facing the raw. This is what the thing was meant to be. Only it’s no longer Left Bank Paris or Carmel or Taos, it is all of us; and some of us, a few of us, will come through. This will be done through force, energy, magic, belief, and a way of living. But it may be, perhaps, that the age of giants is over. This is hard to believe. I’d rather not believe it. [***]
[To John William Corrington]
October [?9], 1962
[***] It might amuse you to know that “Home from a Room Below the Plains” was written out of an experience I had when I was a mailman one time. Terrible hangover, stupor. I had some letters for this church. Was new on route. Couldn’t find mailbox. Wandered into church and down some steps. Dark. I saw a switch on the wall, one of those handle things by a black box. All the lights in the church came on and probably some of the candles too. And
there was the priest’s cassock and stuff laid out on the table. Very holy looking. I threw the switch back off and wandered around some more. Found a can and took a crap. And almost took a shower. All this time I have this mail sack, dragging it around. Finally came out of there and found the mailbox in the parish house next door. It was one god damned odd experience of many odd experiences and it came out as a poem some years later. So you see, you cannot always tell what a man is writing about, but if you put it down as true as it seems to you, they are apt to take it anyhow. [***]
[To John William Corrington]
October 10, 1962
[***] you mentioned something in your letter that has been rattling in the dry leaves of my brain—which is, the death-thing which is due me & the fact of your letters being there, which should be seen—someday—by somebody, some people, some something besides myself. And if I go at 1623 or wherever I am, chances are they will simply hustle everything out of here and burn it in order to make room for the next drunken roomer. My only living relatives, an aunt and uncle, have disowned me and I do not leave their address around and since their name is different than mine, they will not be bothered finding a hole for a dead body they detest. This brings us to the letters, and I want to get them out of here before something happens. I was thinking of mailing them to Cuscaden, but somehow, I don’t know, something warns me not to. I think I will mail them back to you—if this will not keep you from hanging more sheets in your typer directed to 1623. So, soon you will get a package or 2, and I will be able to die in peace, as they say, will be able to die without picture-aftershadows of pokers and flames punching your good letters to pieces. This is all pretty dark, but it has been hanging over me. Look for them back then. I am going over them again Sunday, and then back to Baton Rouge. I wish I could be yr Boswell but my age, my heath, my drinking, all against me. [***]
Yes, you are right. They are putting a lot of light on me right now, and it is the test. There is little doubt that obscurity and aloneness and failure are the agents and angels of the good Art, and I am being tested here, even, in this 1623 place: there are bangs on the door where formerly there were almost none, but just as before, I don’t like to answer. Only now they intend to call me “snob” where before they called me “nuts.” What they call matters little. I like to think I have been cleaved enough to come through. I should stop writing for 10 more years like I did the other time, but I don’t have these kinds of tens left anymore. [***]
[To John William Corrington]
October 28, 1962
[***] Well, I had a quote from Pascal written on a piece of paper which I was going to write down here. But now I have lost the little piece of paper which is not as bad as losing a good piece of ass but what I mean is that you would understand the quote but not need it. [***] Anyhow, to put the Pascal into my own words—: Only things done in quietude secure and holy, without direct aim at fame or applause, are worth more than the applesauce shit of a turkey.
[To John William Corrington]
November [?15], 1962
WE KEEP GETTING BACK at this argument about the novel. It is like being married. There is this thing that is always hanging there, and, BANG!, you’ve always got an argument about the same thing.
You keep telling me that (in essence) a great writer makes a great novel and we don’t want to knock the thing because so many people fail with it. BUT I WILL TRY ONCE MORE. god damn. What I am saying is that this is not the TIME for the novel. Now, I don’t want to bring in the bomb. It’s there. But let’s forget most of about the bomb. Yet it is this and it is something else. It is in the air. IT IS NOW WRONG somehow to write a novel. Don’t ask for proof. Don’t ask for reason. I am, let’s say, an old whammy woman in a tar shack killing chickens and drinking their blood or whatever and sticking the feathers in my ears. I only sense that this ass-time 1962 is simply not the time. DON’T SHORT-CHANGE ME. I KNOW THAT ART TAKES PRECEDENCE. I know that a lion can be gorging a good man’s balls and that he can go right ahead while he’s still living and paint that madonna or whatever is bothering him with ice cream and taffy. This is not the point. The point is that this is not the time. For the novel. Do not ask me how I know this or why or how. I cannot tell you.
bill bailey, won’t you please come home?
If you can swing the thing with ROMAN BOOKS for our letters for $150 or $300 or for 50 cents, go ahead, swing. It has been a hard year. I am backed down to a hard-caked dirt. We’ve got plenty of time (maybe) to write more letters but the time for selling may be too late. Or maybe too soon. Then I don’t know if you are kidding or not. [***]
I am glad Nixon got pole-axed here in Calif. That man’s face has been bothering me for a long time. It is a face of power. It is a face that attempts to say one thing in order to get by and yet it means something else altogether, and if you are one of the boys you know what it means and you put your hand under the tablecloth and you got it made and fuck the rest. I’m glad he’s going back to lawyer. That’s where he belongs. Pal with the judge, and fooling his clients. If he ever comes into a place to eat where I am washing dishes, I will take his dishes and cups and saucers and break them with quiet languor and then have a gentle pull from the wine bottle. [***]
Jim Roman, a dealer in modern first editions, operated from Fort Lauderdale. He was to publish Corrington’s The Anatomy of Love in 1964.
[To John William Corrington]
November [?24], 1962
Well, your letters are enclosed in case you want to swing with Fort Lauderdale or however it’s spelled. Maybe a publisher might pick them up in this way. They are no less than great. There must be something about the letter-form that allows a man to become looser and freer. Perhaps in the poem we pack too much on-stage stuff.
I’m not sure all of them are here—the introductory ones aren’t. How was I to know? Anyhow, good stuff, you are wide of soul and lay down a pliable law.
I hope you write me some more. Viva Villa!
[In holograph with the preceding:]
I return herewith the letters of yours I could find. Maybe some day one of us gets famous and some fool wd pay $ for these, and since you and I did not do them for $, the laugh’s all on the swine and the readers. Even if they don’t ever “make it” anywhere they have made it
here
with me.
Guys like Roman go bugs over this stuff, mainly because he’s trying to beat lit. history before it happens—which is intriguing but dangerous. I would pretty much bet that Corso, Ginsberg, etc. will not be around after they are gone awhile. When you go up fast, you usually come down that way. I think it is the pleasurable simple workman (not Bukowski) who will hold his ground. But who gives a damn???
we are here now
(for what we know is a short time).
and here are your letters
gracious godly friend
kid,
they are good, very,
and your praise
and sticking stilts
under an old man
when hardly anyone wuz,
this was a nice gift,
and as I sit here tonight
mailing these letters back to you,
let me say
that
they were not
will not be
can never have been
wasted.
Corrington was to publish one of the first critical articles on Bukowski in Northwest Review, 1963.
[To John William Corrington]
November 29, 1962
[***] If you are going to article me, all right, but I don’t know what the poems mean, so maybe I better find out. And then, for all your work, tend to ignore it. What I mean is this. When I write the poem it is only fingers on typewriter, something smacking down. It is that moment then, the walls, the weather of that day, the toothache, the hangover, what I ate, the face I passed, maybe a night 20 years ago on a park bench, an itch on the neck, whatever, and you get a poem—maybe. I don’t know much what yo
u can say about these poems. “Old Man, Dead in a Room” is my future, “The Tragedy of the Leaves” is my past, and “The Priest and the Matador” is a dawdling in between. But I’d rather have it in your hands than anybody I know. You jab well, carry a good right, are younger than Archie for sure, and you can’t be bought for a tankjob. [***]
[To John William Corrington]
December 13, 1962
Dear South ribbon talking pure word:
Yes, it is terrible, this essence of spotlight. You carve a thing in a cobweb room maybe when you are not feeling so good and feeling a little crazy, spitting flecks of blood out through a broken tooth where somebody hammered you when you were too drunk to see it coming or too drunk to care…you carve a thing and then somebody sees it and runs down the hall with it and shows it to the other roomers. You are running behind him, you need a shave and a fresh pair of socks and 2 or 3 operations to get the tigers out from inside of you. And he is hollering, holding this thing you’ve done up in the air, he is hollering, “Hey! Hey! Looka this thing Smitty did! Who’da thunk Smitty’d do a THING like this? Jesus, jesus, looky, LOOKY!”
And, South, as you know, then, 9 times outa ten, no, more than that…you’re fucked. That night some old well preserved gal will tap on your door and give you the thing she has been saving for some ivory god. Little girls will slip notes under your door at night. The milkman will show you some thing he has carved out of wax on cold nights. The worshipers will sob and tremble for the hairs from your razor. You’re fucked. You sit down to scratch things on another brick with a can opener…and what is it? hmm…must be something wrong with the brick? Or maybe the opener’s dull?…Now, let’s see…HOW DID I DO THAT OTHER ONE? They SURE liked that OTHER ONE. Let’s see…I think I was thinking of birds with their feet frozen to phone wires in Texas, awakening in the morning, stuck there, slicing God’s air with wings, stuck, stuck, and then tired sick falling upside down, and frozen in the cold air that way…the end of a lunatic life. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking…and then I put in the eyes…and the nose…and…And then there’s a knock and a man with prince nez, princ nez?, he wants to know the color of the house you were born in. And then behind him stands the old gal with the thing for ivory gods again. And then…
Living on Luck Page 3