Living on Luck

by Charles Bukowski

  sometimes I get in here, writing, writing, lounging, in trancestate; a couple of days go by and I realize that I haven’t even been outside, and there I go—fresh air! sunshine! walking down the sidewalk, and then, friend, that first human face…[***]

  The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills was published on December 30, 1969.

  [To John Martin]

  [? March-April 1970]

  [***] I slipped off again, a week or so ago, but it was not nearly the agony trip that mid-January launch-out was. And each time I come back down, I am stronger again. These 2 good paintings today are an indication that the old Bukowski is coming back. Sardonic, easy—fucked-up but basically steering the wreckage. You won’t be able to laugh at me over the phone any more as my voice quavers. Hitler is back. Thank God and the angels and the collected works of Turgenev!

  The nurses are coming in now and I look at their legs and their asses and I love them. I am back at the old window. [***]

  Yes, the Cal State thing. Felt shitty reading. I don’t like it. It is just a survival sort of thing that must be done. But the guy who set it up said he had never heard such a good crowd reaction since…anybody. Well good, so I was lucky. And I did have the Sparrow brochures which I walked around handing out laughing, saying, “Buy this, mothers…” If you have any ads left, ship me another bundle. Giving a small reading up at a rich dentist’s place, booze and broads, lambs turning on spits in the fire, all that shit. But I will keep them off my soul, which is mine and mine only, next Sunday, but if you have any ads I will jam it to them. I am worried that you might have published too many copies of Days and I want to help you hustle them off. Right on, right on…Hey, I see where they called out the National Guard to protect my archives at the Un. of Santa B[arbara]. Good stout lads all!

  [To John Martin]

  [? April 1970]

  meant to get these off yesterday, but 2 young guys by, and so there went a whole afternoon. they didn’t like Henry Miller, they didn’t like Pound, they liked Celine. then one of them handed me one of his things. I didn’t like it.

  so I’m coming in late with the work, but everything has its meaning. with these 2, I learned, mainly, there isn’t any competition. one of them claimed you had to have connections to get published. I said that 2 things helped—talent and talent, the connections would take care of themselves. when I was young and it came back I threw it away. everybody thinks they are a genius; that’s why they aren’t.

  when they left, after drinking my beer, or as they left, I said, “I have Henry Miller’s address if you want to drop by there.”

  “that’s an insult,” they said.

  with these young guys it’s always a pleasure to cut down the giants but the best way to cut them down is with your own work and I don’t mean the work of your jaws. if Henry Miller had walked into the room, they would have shit and fawned all over him. the only reason they come to me is that I am the Image of the Loser, the Man who doesn’t care, the Man who didn’t quite make it, the man who will drink a beer with a bum. what they don’t realize is that I do care, would like to do my work, and have the kindness or the cowardice not to cuss them and send them on their way. unfortunately, people like something in me, they can’t let it go. I will simply have to work around it all and still do my work. my old theory while working ten to 12 hour nights and days in the factories and in the post office has always been, save what you can, don’t give in. the theory stands now; whether my work holds up depends upon what is left of me.

  and so that’s kind of a bitch but that’s o.k. because I know when I am bitching I am all right. [***]

  [To Neeli Cherry]

  May 10, 1970

  little here. I am hanging on. just came off 2 weeks at the track, got way ahead, then gave it all back. I’ve made up my mind that I don’t know anything about horses.

  action in U.S.: student strikes at universities. Nix moved into Cambodia. National Guard fired on students at Kent State. wounded many, killed 4. then at Univ. of New Mexico, where I’m supposed to read this Friday night, the National Guard bayonetted ten. Prob. later in month I’m going to read at 2 colleges in Washington. I’m not like you. I hate to read. but no money coming in right now. the bank account is sagging. [***]

  nurse pushing an old woman by in a wheelchair. it’s sad, sad. I’ll never get that old, something will kill me first. or maybe I’ll bury you, spit on your grave from my head of white hair, rotten Andernach teeth grinning in the sun, rolling a cigarette and farting.

  before the horse bit, wrote 50 new poems in 3 weeks, most of them quite good, maybe not from your viewpoint but from mine. and that’s the one I go by. now I’ll be in all the littles again just when they thought they had buried me. Blazek’s gonna shit. there goes the old woman again. I’m running out of magazines to send to. even Evergreen took a poem; also lucked into Stony-brook—Creeley-land—with quite a number. there’s little doubt that getting out of the post office has given me more time and energy. it’s good, though it’s hard sometimes facing my own mind 24 hours on 24. a job keeps you from thinking. [***]

  p.s.—Martin going to publish novel. the Germans also want it. 3 companies interested. so I’m going to get up typescripts for each and take the highest bidder. I feel like Hemingway. gotta get a shotgun. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  [May 10, 1970]

  sad letter. the system fell apart and I gave them their damned money back. worse was all the time wasted. well, that’s out of my system anyhow. now back to playing the literary game. [***]

  I can’t agree with you on the dictionary idea for the novel [Post Office], but if you insist, we’ll go ahead. keep writing down words. I think though that most of the terms are obvious, even to an outsider. but I’m glad enough that you are probably going to do the novel, so I’ll compromise if nec. I do think the dictionary has a cheapening and commercial effect, however. Think it over a while. [***]

  Lafayette Young had sent Bukowski a small gift of money. Niki is his daughter. Carson McCullers (b. 1917) was not the daughter of Kay Boyle (b. 1903), whose story, “Rest Cure,” was first published in The First Lover and Other Stories (New York, 1933).

  [To Lafayette Young]

  May [?], 1970

  I just read stuff, very little of it at that, only what goes for me, and so I am not an educated man in many senses. Did I understand you properly—via Harper’s Bazaar, Nov. 1943, that Carson [McCullers] was the daughter of Kay Boyle? Too friggin’ much, if true. Kay was a beautiful woman. Her style was way ahead of her time. I used to see many of her short stories in Story, where I was first published, 1944, just before my mad ten year drunk that almost took me out. Wasn’t it Kay B. who wrote that short story, “Rest Cure,” about the death of D. H. Lawrence? It would be very miraculous if Carson were actually the daughter, I mean had been, of Kay Boyle. Anyhow, I remember “Rest Cure,” and if Kay Boyle didn’t write it, she should have. As per her novels, they were not as tight as the stories. And comparisons are hell and unkind, but I’m afraid Carson outwrote mama. I’m afraid Carson McCullers just about outwrote everybody. I used to read Carson McCullers in bed in cheap rooms while I was starving and drinking wine and it was holy—my skin shivered and crawled and I didn’t cry because I was too proud of her to cry.

  Don’t worry about alcoholism; it keeps us from committing suicide.

  As per Niki and her “The Lost Generation,” I hope she got it right. Those were interesting people, Gerty and Hem and Fitz and the gang. That gas station mechanic who called it the Lost Generation, though, was either an utter Romantic or he had nothing to compare it with. There can’t be any generation more LOST than our present one—being born into a war-after-war era, the Atomic Age, the Pollution Age, the Computer Age, all in one. They should be LOST, they know. There has never been another generation as knowing and as brave. They don’t even call themselves lost. rather, they say, hell, let’s straighten it out. Stay in there Niki. [***]

  Black Sparrow Press h
ad published Dorbin’s A Bibliography of Charles Bukowski in 1969. A videotape of the Bellevue reading mentioned below was published by Black Sparrow in 1988.

  [To Sanford Dorbin]

  A Monday in June? yeh. 1970

  Sandy fu Chris’ sake:

  [***] Took the train down to UNM and read there. drank there several days and threw off a drunken half-fuck. then back, and a plane up to Washington where I read at West. Wash. State College that night, got drunk, insulted the profs. got real sick drunk and was awakened in an upstairs bedroom at 8:30 the next morning and told we had a long ride to Bellevue for a reading at 11:30 a.m. good God Jesus. I kissed the prof’s wife goodbye and we got in the car. stopped for refills. meanwhile, no eating. as approached college started heaving out the window. no time to stop. heaved right up into the parking lot where I staggered out and into the building and started reading, dead sick, and the bastards put me on video tape, and I got a few drinks down as I was reading and managed to bring it off. away to this cabin and more drinking and more drinking at the airport—I missed my plane while sitting in the bar over an hour early—finally got in only to find a certain lady wanted to see me and I stayed with her 2 nights, or she stayed with me, I mean, and more drinking, no eating—food, that is—and I finally put her on a plane, and then back and trouble getting straight, coming down, and it’s easy for me to see why it killed Dylan Thomas, but I think if it ever happens again, I’ll go a little easier. The readings came at a good time, a money-lag time. the sex mags, everybody, hollering “tight money.” Even Norse lost 2 sponsors he’s had for years—tight money, they say, and the market. so, it’s a shitty time and the hustle is on. so understand, I am hanging to the branch; not with a rope, a thread…whatever, that means….

  on articles, well, yes, there’s my name and somebody’s done some work, but you know if I took the things seriously I would no longer know who I was—well, I don’t anyhow—but I think you know what I mean. I mean if I were to comment on certain aspects of the article I’d feel as if I were talking about my cockhairs, my snot, my eyeballs, my brain, my heart, my gut, and I don’t know anything about them. they operate me. I suppose I am not very clear today. I’ve been hav[ing] a 2 or 3 week battle with 12 or 14 Islanders who live in rotating shifts in the court in the center. we park on the front lawn. the landlord has lost control of this place, except to collect rent. the bastards keep blocking me in in hope to make me give up parking there so they can move in another one of their 6 or 7 cars. I am a bit outnumbered and they go to all means to block my car so I can’t get out, even to parking across the front of me by using the apartment house driveway next door. I go crazy over shit like that. I’ve mailed in for a 9 inch switchblade. this morning I got them out of bed and made them move a car that had me blocked. I came back and got blocked again by another car. mad. I stop them one by one as they walk by the door. “Hey, buddy, got a minute? I wanna have a little talk with you. What’s wrong with you guys? Now, I’m not a hard guy to get along with. But why in the fuck???…”

  there’s always some god damned thing. no women. or having a woman and having a lot of shit trouble with her. or hangover. or parking. or toothache. or money slipping away, or just the general stupidity and viciousness of the human race. I think I’m going to have to move the hell out of here. I can’t fight them all. [***]

  [To Neeli Cherry]

  June 4, 1970

  drinking beer, waiting for Marina to come over.

  fridge shot. things getting tough. Knight-Adam hollering backlog. Out in Evergreen for a week now but no check from them. read within 2 weeks at Univ. of New Mexico, West. Wash. State College and Bellevue Community College. 660 total, no 600, but no travel expenses, and drinks, airflight, drinks, taxi, drinks in the airport, buying drinks for parties, almost lost on the deal. got laid a few times by sweet young things, tho. long drunken sweaty fucks. now back, still trying to get sober. bankroll diminishing. it looked so good for a while. I might have known. if you ever come back, look for me on skid row. this time you won’t have to drive me down there. [***]

  I can’t beat the horses any more. I must stay away. I wish I were back in the post office. at least they dulled my mind and tired my body. now everything comes at me with knives out, there’s no rest, no relenting. it’s balls away. I’m on the cross.

  In fact, I’m tired of writing. what’s the use?

  [To Neeli Cherry]

  June [?18], 1970

  fighting a battle with 14 Islanders who have suddenly possessed a court in the center. have sent in 3 bucks for a 9 inch stiletto. I may go but before I do, they will know that I have been here. And I’m not talking about poetry.

  yes, I’ve had 2 or 3 good young fucks lately—the poetry con, you know—but now that it’s over I hardly feel any different. it just doesn’t work, and the strange idea has crossed my mind that a man may be able to exist quite nicely without sex at all. I like the color of their dresses, the way they walk, handle their buttocks, but I wonder if all the rest is needed? the sweating, the farts, the agony, the come, the declarations? the dirty sheets, the stink and the closeness?

  the most beautiful woman is the one who walks past your window and then she is gone. [***]

  ate at Norm’s the other day, sirloin special dinner $1.35. found a seat at the counter, at the end, fine, nobody in the next seat, then just after I ordered here came this fag in and he sat next to me, ordered a coffee and he made that coffee last all through my meal. then he kept looking at me. I thought, next time he looks at me, I’m going to straighten him good. he looked again and I turned to look back, I was going to say, “What the fuck you looking at?”, but when I turned he looked straight ahead, quickly. then he jumped up and left. but I was finished eating. the mother had ruined my meal. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  June 22, 1970

  [***] the boys are bad-mouthing you for publishing Forrest. one phoned and said he was on KPFK, unbelievably bad, and Cynthia fawned all over him. I said, “oh yes, is that so?” somehow these poets seem to think that I am supposed to defend Black Sparrow, and I feel like doing so since you have done and are doing some good things for me. but, basically, you have a right to publish anybody you want to. I think of something John Thomas told me one night, “No matter what you do, a certain number of people are going to dislike it, others will like it, and the vast majority will not give a damn one way or the other.” Once you understand this, the snipers will not make so much difference. [***]

  Gerald Locklin had published Sunset Beach, a book of poems from Hors Commerce Press, Torrance, California, in 1967. He has since published many further volumes.

  [To Gerald Locklin]

  July 4, 1970

  Hello G. Locklin:

  yes, I was a bit pissed on your non-arrival [for a reading at The Bridge], having built you to the mob. I don’t often step out to recommend a poet, but had seen your stuff in Wormwood and recognized a new tick and flare, a decent originality. for my money, which ain’t much, but anyhow, for my money there are only 4 poets around doing it now—you, Ron Koertge, Bix Blaufus and, er, Bukowski. there may be others—I hope there are—but I haven’t seen their work. and I get sent many magazines full of listless and stupid pages. so I’m glad you’re there, anyhow, even if you get your dates mixed up. I have a prejudice against teachers, but if the work is strong enough, fuck it. Bix is going to teach somewhere in Oregon in a few months, and he’s as real as catshit.

  [***]

  [To Carl Weissner]

  July 5, 1970

  [***] all in all, I seem to be surviving; of course, your getting Meltzer to come through was a big spiritual boost, the shot I needed and I sat down and rapped out 3 or 4 dirty stories, immortal, and some other shit. there’s energy coming from somewhere because, for the time being, the days and the nights are mine, and if I fuck them up it’s not nearly so bad as somebody else fucking them up for me with a time clock, you know.

  this is a shitcan letter, it’s so hot, fan on
my ass, but it’s not all bad, even got laid a few times lately. the ladies come by and knock on the door, and that’s rather nice you know? even when I strike out I get a few grabs.

  like I say, this is a shitcan letter but wanted you to know I think about you, you’ve done some good things for me, Carl, and all I do for you is holler and moan my troubles. so this is basically to let you know it’s not all that bad. there’s always PANIC especially when I hit the streets and look around or go into a barbershop or a supermarket. but that has always been there. I’ve learned more to live with my panic like a man sometimes learns to live with a bad woman. of course, now and then it gets too much, it can’t be helped and one simply drinks until the pleasure of unconsciousness. you learn how to do that too.