all right, unward, I mean onward and upward and out….
[To Lafayette Young]
Jan 6, 1971
[***] the book I guess will be out soon. I am playing with my little crayons. Look, pal, don’t expect a War and Peace. well, that’s lousy…I mean, don’t expect another Journey by Celine…no excuses, shit. I wrote it in 20 drunken nights and I mean drunken…just a flash of hell. a lifetime shot and nibbled at in a decaying room by a decaying man. I’m not a novelist; it’s too much WORK, and so it really isn’t a novel. oh, hell.
some girl in her twenties, just out of a madhouse, rather hanging around now and then. I find her quite sane, quite lovely…especially the color of the eye and the way it looks at me. she’s quite nice to me but most women are at the start…then they trap you in, and BOOM!!!…the wake-up…and you think, after all those others, you should have known better…men are too adventurous…esp. old men like me…whiskey, women, horses…same old song…then you’re in the cage, wondering what happened. [***]
Post Office was printed in January 1971 and officially published on February 8.
[To John Martin]
January 22, 1971
I sent the ad (flyer) on to NOLA and asked that they run it. I guess they will. It should swing some sales. Don’t forget to send copy of book to Ben Pleasants. There is a possibility he may review it in the Times, though we have no way of knowing. He has tried to run stuff on me before but they always cut it off. But there’s a chance. There’s definitely an anti-Bukowski thing going on, has been for years. For instance, I’m supposed to read at The Other Side Wednesday night (the 27th) but the dear old L.A. Free Press didn’t run it in their Calendar section, which means I’ll be reading to an empty house, which would be all right with me except the poet gets the entrance fee per head $1.25 minus ten percent. Los Angeles has always been the roughest town on me because I am basically an isolationist…well, enough bitching. so I’ll have to go through with it anyhow, so leave Wednesday out as a signing day. [***]
Now there’s something else going. I didn’t get all the names. Katz knows this publisher, so forth. all the letters I’ve written Jimmy [Pitts], Katz has them. they are locked up in a vault by Katz and no human eye sees them. JESUS! there’s your laugh for today. anyhow, the human eyes that have seen them think that they are pretty good, along with those I’ve written to Lafayette Young, and Katz wants this publisher to run them—The Letters of Charles Bukowski. I have an idea that the letters to Jimmy Pitts were not so excellent but those to Lafayette Young, I put something into. I don’t know if you ever met L. Y. but he’s one of the finest people I’ve ever met.
So I told Jimmy I’d have to check with John Martin and then he got a little unhappy. So what do you think about this book—proposed book—John, while you’re thinking of everything else? Do you have a moment to give me some thoughts on it? [***]
[To Gerald Locklin]
February 8, 1971
[***] Gerald, you can’t be an honest man and a book reviewer at the same time. Honest men are supposed to write books and salesmen are expected to review them. Of course, not many honest men write books, but you know what I mean. [***]
[To John Martin]
April 7, 1971
back in after battles and love and madness on 2 Arizona ranches…haven’t heard from Santa Barbara yet. perhaps the stuff is too dirty for them. we shoulda taken the 1500. a bird in the hand.
still trying to put together the book for Ferl[inghetti]. taking too long, I suppose. haven’t heard a word from him. heard from Weissner who says Meltzer willing to give $500 advance plus ten percent royalties for NOLA Express stories plus All the Assholes in the World and Mine. will have to check City Lights contract on foreign rights. the problem is getting the shit to these guys. I’ve been cutting out the Nola stories—slowly—and putting printer’s instructions on them. and I only have one copy of each paper. in fact, I even lost one copy with my best story in it—“The White Beard.” I don’t know what the hell. there aren’t enough hours in the day. and after mailing this, I’m going to drive over to Burbank to play around with this woman-woman. maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. it seems there has to be time to live, time to write and time to scrounge up materials and answer mail and so forth, type shit, or clip it out. I’m hardly bitching. for I’m still alive and the action is banging the walls, but—
Weissner sends a copy of twen (german mag) with reprint of Thurber story. W. says in the introduction to the story they say, “If we weren’t sure he would turn it down, we would recommend him for the Literary Nobel Prize.” See how the game goes? No wonder writers go to self-love, the way they powder them up. For me, it’s pure gamble every time I sit down to this typer. Nothing is ever easy. I never know if I can ever do it again. A man can never call himself a writer; a man is always an x-writer.
like these poems enclosed, I feel that they do not quite shake loose. It’s been a bad year so far for my writing. April already. Maybe the juices will explode like mad marmalade? soon?
[To Carl Weissner]
April 10, 1971
have been back in frozen state—not getting any work done. wild hot love affair with beautiful 30 years old sculptress, been going on some months now. I don’t know what she wants with an old guy like me but since she’s around I give her plenty of ACTION. kind of like trying to hold onto the tail of a female tigress at times, though. she did 3 weeks in a madhouse some years back and she’s plenty unpredictable. She just came off a ten year marriage and looking for breathing room. I give her room. But afraid I’m hooked in—her delicious mind, body, et al., and the way she makes love…jesus. well. [***]
I’m on the wagon as much as possible because I have to fuck so much now, go down, so forth…[***] I was fucking during the earthquake, it simply added to it.
Bukowski, with John Martin’s help, had sold his first literary archive—consisting of manuscripts, magazine appearances, and letters to him—to the Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for $5,000.
[To John Martin]
April 19, 1971
[***] just 2 poems enclosed. since the luck with Santa Barbara I have decided to take the leisurely approach. the poem must work itself up without whip or bait. there won’t be as many but I feel that they will be better. the stories too will probably drift a bit away from the sex motif. for the first time I’ve felt I can take a breath. I think the writing will be of a higher order. well, we’ll see, won’t we?
I really feel that I can allow myself to feel good—for a while anyhow. it’s a matter of pace and tide and hidden elements. the boogie man is drunk and we have picked his pockets.
fly. why walk?
Charley the yea-sayer
[To Carl Weissner]
April 25, 1971
ass drag from giving shitty poetry readings [***] and also a battle with the tigress for acting like a silly vamp. she doesn’t fuck the boys but she just about tickles their balls in front of me. very highschoolgirl stuff, and I’m supposed to react to that by tickling some other gal’s cunt. cheap vengeance, you know. fuck, Carl, I been around too long to play children’s games. however, at this time, the tigress and I are still mating. for whatever it means. [***]
well, I don’t know how poetry does in Germany but Martin phoned that The Days Run Away is now going into a third printing, which I understand is some kind of record for Black Sparrow. so they do read poetry out here. [***]
Cherry was co-editor of Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns.
[To Neeli Cherry]
[mid 1971]
[***] I also enclose the subscription order from the University of Chicago Library. Don’t lose it down the envelope, somewhere. I hope you are taking care of these university subscriptions, Neeli! I am busting ass reading this garbage coming in and sending it back. It takes hours and there are more submissions each day.
This Univ. of Chicago thing is easier. They don’t ask for the quadruplicate shit. Do your job, kid.
>
Heard from Bennet who claims he sent a dollar and never got his copy. He was a bit nasty about it. Instead of mailing him a copy, I sent him a dollar and told him to roll it around his Hava-Havana and jam it. Also returned his work which was lousy except for one section. He’s the former editor of Vagabond, now lives in Frisco in a $175 pad while his wife works for him. He writes, “I’m never going to work again.” How do these guys do it? Where do these women come from? That support the halfass and incompetent Artist? ah, shit!!! [***]
[To John Martin]
June [?5], 1971
here it is early June and I’m still batting .189, but I figure if I hit .400 through the rest of the months, the damn things just gotta climb. I believe that slumps are somehow necessary. meanwhile, I look around and notice nobody else is hitting the ball either. [***]
my love life is eating at some of my time but for this you must forgive me. to make writing and life and people work all right is a full time job. luckily, there’s no post office. I absorb. I think it will make the writing better. trust my instincts, what the hell. I think about you quite a bit and must realize you think I am fucking off. I am always a student, John. I will die a student. it would be wonderful to continue to survive as I have. you have no idea how things have opened up. torrents rush all over me, man. everything will be there. you know what I mean. [***]
[To John Martin]
[ca. June 19, 1971]
things are difficult, of course. haven’t they always been?
Packard (N.Y. Quarterly) writes of the poem “A Well-Known Poet and Myself,” “Couldn’t possibly print this poem of yours as it would blow the whistle on too many of our leading poets.”
perhaps he is joking. however, I’ve often had the feeling that the whole game is jaked-up, jacked-off. o.k., I’m bitching.
listen, kid, who you got in my spot in left field? you know damn well he can’t hit a curve off his wrists. soon as they find that out he’s gonna go zero for 24 and I’ll trot back out there on the green, .287 maybe but good in the clutch, rbi, and when I get a hit it’s a hit, I can’t run anymore.
I can’t run anymore. The fight grows deep. That’s the way it should be.
hang in.
[To Carl Weissner]
June 22, 1971
have been backed up in a wake of shit and my own insanity…cops by the other night, 2 cops and a citizen carrying a shotgun. the tigress had busted loose but was gone, having left behind bits of glass and broken booze bottles everywhere. these scenes keep occurring, battle after battle and hell, I don’t know if it’s worth it. even a good piece of ass is only a piece of ass and when the price gets too high you don’t pay it. but like she sez, things are never dull when we get together.
[***] right now I’ve got to take out the garbage cans once a week and bring them back, also must drink with the landlord and landlady to hold rent down. what I do for the world of Art, nobody’s ever going to understand unless I talk right out and maybe give them a nosebleed on my deathbed. shit, I hope I end up with a bed to die in. [***]
[To John Martin]
July 1, 1971
[***] go easy on me and my gal friend. It’s painful, of course, but there are benefits. and don’t forget Scott had his Zelda.
“listen,” I tell her, “you’re not going to push my ass around because you’re 20 years younger.”
“and you’re not going to push my ass around because you’re a writer,” she tells me.
a writer, I think, so that’s it. I thot it wuz my good looks.
she’ll do a sculpture of you for $200, John. She’s pretty good.
I got my sculpture free.
(or so it says here.) [***]
[To Neeli Cherry]
July 12, 1971
for Christ’s sake, man, enclosed this order from Either/Or. we can get rid of 20 copies. also those ten on that other order—that’s 30 copies, that’s 18 dollars! that will give us close to 70 bucks and I’m having rough shit with $$$$$. this is REAL MONEY FOR US. WE CAN SPEND IT! think about it. [***]
Hank Malone is a poet living in Detroit.
[To Hank Malone]
July 13, 1971
answering yours NOW of May 4th, this year, which shows my mind-state. god, yes. well, I’ve always been…????? stacks of paper…dirty sheets…lost manuscripts…beer bottles and shorts under the bed, the blues, the deep down blues. peak of elation. such shit. age, age. the streets. the dirty clouds. well.
as per a “literary conspiracy” against me, I suppose that a great many do hate me—much of it caused by my writing style which is rather unpoetic. also in my drinking moments I have caused difficult feelings, I suppose. no excuses, man. also, in my own short stories I am often the bastard-villain of the pieces. I guess I am convincing. also I don’t mingle much with the literatti. literoti, eh?…. no New York City or North Beach up at Frisco, none of that. I am the loner. people come around here, I beer-up, and I have a tendency to run them out the door. all in all I suppose I have given off rays that I am a son of a bitch. they almost have me believing it myself.
I seem to be surviving, which means writing dirty stories, being lucky and giving a few poetry readings. I don’t ask the universities to read, I wait on them, and although I have gotten quite a number of readings I suppose I could get more ??? if I pushed. but I am the bullhead, and so there you go. Univ. of Arkansas made me a recent $300 offer (total) but shit you put in plane fare round trip and all I have left is a used pork chop bone. so I’m waiting for some Univ. near Arkansas to toddle along and make me an offer, which prob. won’t happen. I cry the blues, haha.
guy over other night claims this woman is pissed at me. She wrote me from Univ. of Wisconsin offering a year’s professorship, claims I didn’t even bother to answer her letter. Truth is, I never got the lady’s letter and I told the guy I thought it was bullshit and the guy said, she doesn’t bullshit, you want her address and I said, no. I just feel it’s bullshit. or maybe I want the death-shroud. my god, what’s wrong with me?
well, I guess the game will end soon enough. meanwhile I sit by the typer here writing Malone in Detroit, so all hail, and luck, may the power stay on. it is a fight in hell. but not just for the writer. but maybe for the writer it is worse because he keeps the light on, keeps studying the embankments and the snakes and the dogs and the whores and the snails and the people and the streets, and it’s all bound to cut in and take a bite now and then, mostly now, and what a game, it’s like getting knocked down in the first round, the lights whirling, and there are sounds and you swing, and you’re brave and you’re a coward, and it’s the sound of the typer against everything, and everything’s much, and you know this, so hang in, then, hang tough.
[To Carl Weissner]
July 13, 1971
[***] the tigress is in the other room writing a poem, typing a poem about the night both of us went ape-shit. I have two editors and a professor pissed at me. standard procedure. have only made it with one prof, been drunk with him and his wife 3 or 4 times, real easy nights, good talk—one Bix Blaufuss. Also one other prof, one Andre Sedricks, but he was too good a guy—Univ. of Kansas, they let him go, last I heard he was working in a bean factory. [***]
Saw Norse the other night, afternoon. Took tigress over and Norse and tigress talked about Spooks, Visions, Dreams, the Astral Dome of Revelation, man, I was OUT of it, but it was interesting enough. plus I have more or less been on the wagon and I have to learn how to TALK ALL OVER AGAIN WHEN I AM SOBER. I am like a baby trying to find its speech. well, learn learn, you know, that’s what keeps the pecker hard.
I read at a poetry benefit for Patchen who lives in Palo Alto. Bad back, sure, yes I know. o.k. but I sat and listened to the poetry and that was bad back too, you know. had to fall off the wagon to maintain sanity. rich guy’s house in hills. after the reading was over I served the folk from behind the bar. each drink I served I poured one for myself. don’t remember getting on in. but here I am, several days later, looking out the
window at DeLongpre…tomorrow I take out the garbage cans to help hold down the rent. next day I haul them in. ah, the life of the Poet, sweet Jesus, but it’s too late for anything else, I’m too ugly now, too insane, too old, I am just going to have to luck it. and the best luck is to keep this typewriter HOT. yes. [***]
we are hanging in here, we are going to make that siffed-up Papa Death work a bit to get us in the corner. Why not? That fucking coward has been picking on people, animals, flies, buildings, streetcars, stockings, shoelaces and mattresses and birds and flowers and fleas and streets long enough…
[To John Martin]
August 2, 1971
damn, I can’t think of a title or titles of proposed book. my head is empty air (smog-filled). I suppose they’ll come along. a little list. but sometimes I wonder how you’re surviving. all these people who knock on my door are out of jobs. and I sit here playing at being writer. it’s very odd. sometimes it feels like a movie I’m watching. girls, booze, phone ringing…hours of madness…hours of luxury…hours to wrestle with like an octopus in a tank. of course, it’s going to be defeat, finally. but it’s much nicer to be defeated on my grounds than on theirs. very important. almost magic. the magic defeat. meanwhile, the war is still on and here’s a couple more poems, old boy.
Living on Luck Page 12