[To John Martin]
October 17, 1977
[***] word from Carl: the blue book has gone into 53,000 copies. word from publisher: by the end of the year they will have 70,000 copies out. to me, those are astonishing figures, and so much of it is due to Weissner, his translation of the works and his getting it in front of people.
I write things because it is some kind of disease but once that’s over I think it’s all right if some other people get caught on the same sickness, you know? [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
October 27, 1977
you sound down. it’s probably all those big mouths down there—up there—proclaiming their greatness. the longer I know of the poets the more sick I believe they really are—asking for decency and love and understanding from the world in their poems and, in person, being exactly the opposite of what they ask for. there’s a speech for you. ah.
things here are fairly quiet. have more or less settled with a good woman, Linda Lee, after running through quite a number. getting fucked by many is not so important; it’s a settling for an easy clarity that I think helps the nights, the days, the months. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
November 2, 1977
[***] get on the white wine, A.D. beer is fattening, the hard stuff eats the gut, the liver, and it’s hard to type under the hard stuff. good white wine, German, can be had for around 3.50 a bottle. 2 bottles of this can make a nice evening and you won’t wake up feeling like you’ve been swallowing wet cat turds all night. also, before you start to drink take a tablespoonful of metamucil or one of maalox. if all this sounds chickenshit to you or rails against the spirit, don’t do it. the way I see it, I’m 57 and I’ve proved I can drink as long and as hard as the next. I think the time comes when the long-ignored body asks for a bit of kindness. it has waited around a long time on the doorstep….
the poets? well, I prefer the fishermen and the corner newsboys. I don’t know where people ever got the idea that poets and poetry was (is) the holy thing. I think the only time poetry gets any good is when it forgets its holiness, and that’s very seldom. take Ezra Pound—Pound as good as he was with the language he made that place a temple and a sanctuary. any man down on skid row would have preferred a can of beans. I’m not saying the poet owes anything to the masses; I find the masses both disgusting and interesting. it still might be good if they found us the same way? Whitman said that to have great poetry we must have great audiences. I think he had it backwards.
yes, Linda Lee is a good woman. I was due for some luck. she is a stayer with a gentle courage and doesn’t play man against man as if she were some golden cow. I’ve had some bad ones, many bad ones. the percentages have come around and I am able to accept them. [***]
Martin says Women out in June. o.k. you’re going to know many of the people in this one. I may get killed for this one. it’s written as some type of high-low comedy and I look worse than anybody but they’re only going to think about how I painted them. it’s a jolly roaring blast, I think, and when I re-read it I realize that I must have been crazy from 1970 to 1977. like Thomas Wolfe, after this one, I can’t go home again. it was quite easy to write and it didn’t take too much guts on 3 bottles of white wine a night. oh, ah, oh…
Martin has been good to me, I am one of the few wild cards in his deck. If your stuff comes back, realize that he sticks fairly close to poetry as craft, the well-honed line, rather like voices speaking out from behind wallpaper, the sublime traditionalism: Douglas Woolf, Reznikoff, Eshleman, Corman, Creeley, Loewinsohn.
For my money, Micheline, Richmond, Winans are closer to the blood-source, but then I’m not an editor or a publisher, and Martin has been good to me, he picked me up early and gave me a chance to get out of the post office when nobody else was listening. I can’t forget this and I won’t. he’s my publisher. I’ve got the hound-dog loyalty and I don’t mind; it feels good. but it is hard for me to read or agree with who he does print. all right, I type on. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
November 9, 1977
[***] yes, I’m down to one woman now. after re-reading Women I decided I needed a rest. some aren’t going to believe that novel. I can’t blame them, but there’s very little fiction to it.
you seem to know a lot of women who have passed into the vapor. I mean death. Linda King phoned from Arizona not too long ago. She claims she’s now a lush & she’s pregnant. she sounded quite sad. she gave me a hard row. after we split I met two other women named Linda. I meet a lot of Lindas and lot of Joans and Joannas—mostly names that end in “a”. it’s curious. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
November 13, 1977
Could you tear up the poem “a very serious fellow”? I don’t think Steve [Richmond] could handle it. there are many reasons why I don’t think he can handle it but don’t want to number them here. just trust me and rip up the poem. I am asking Martin to destroy the same. I think the poem is accurate but I knew Steve pretty well personally and I just don’t want to have him go under the damage….
o.k.?
[To John Martin]
November 15, 1977
[***] listen, on the poem about Richmond “a very serious fellow”—please never print it in book form. I’ve written to Winans who accepted it and have asked him to tear it. Steve can’t handle it. he’s hooked into something besides poetry which makes him weak against almost everything of this sort. I can’t say any more about it. just tear the poem or don’t publish it. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
November 16, 1977
slow in answering, my ass deep into horses and white wine…[***]
I do wish to hell, though, that there were some way we could get Women going over there. it’s the ultimate novel blast of blasts, it should cause riots in the streets. mostly because they will be confused by my viewpoint, which I am also confused about. and now and then I do much leg-pulling and they’ll never know when I am pulling the leg or jacking-off the truth or writing it as it is, or was. John says we gotta wait until June. I do wish he could get a copy to you, to see if you might care to translate it. right now it’s not in final draft. I would like to see it again and maybe take out a few wrinkles. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
December 3, 1977
[***] I’m still writing poems and fighting with Linda Lee. Since she’s 34 I’m giving away 23 years but I’m right on in there. Interview of me, with me, in present German Playboy but since I can’t speak the language I don’t know what I said; besides, I was drunk and so was the guy who flew over here. The whole interview was a two day drunk and they layed $650 on me for it. Jesus, me and Rod McKuen…. Some day I’ll be writing you, “A.D., me and Rod Mc and James Dickey are going fishing in the Catskills…” then you can attack me and I’ll understand.
Bukowski very rarely went to movies. Here he reports on one directed by François Truffaut.
[To John Martin]
December 12, 1977
here’s more poems.
by the way, I went to see the movie The Man Who Loved Women thinking it might be something like our novel Women. excuse me, but there’s nothing to worry about: ours is more humorous, more insane and more tragic and—the devil knows—more realistic.
got the checks, ah. yes, I should have kept book this year but I had no idea…will begin on the first of Jan. I phoned Calif. Fed. Savings because I had torn up my earlier pass books and have no records but the lady informed me that they had no records either and…I said, “Suppose I were the income tax people and I asked to examine some of your books?” and she answered, “Well, if they subpoenaed us we’d let them see them.” which leaves me nowhere.
I know what your salary to me was, that’s fine. and City Lights always sends me a statement of earnings. But the Germans? Christ, I have no idea. I could write them and ask for statements but such things are slow and maybe even impossible. to top that they’d send me total earnings before your cut and Carl’s cut. now, here�
�s the biggy!: do you have any idea of what I got from them? I’d appreciate a breakdown (looks like I’m having one). I’d never implicate you in any tax investigation but a set of figures from you would really help this damned muddle. also, didn’t I receive something from Playboy-New Visions? and not to be greedy, ugg, but wasn’t there a second payment due Oct. 15 or Jan. 15 or something? I guess I’ve spoiled your day but I lay a lot of this shit on you because I need help with this and I feel that our relationship while straight on an editor-publisher writer relationship is straight, I ask you to perhaps help me with this on more of a friendship basis. next year I’ll be totally competent and professional about the whole thing for my interests and everybody else’s.
now that was one hell of a poem, wasn’t it?, and not the kind I’m fond of writing.
[To Carl Weissner]
December 15, 1977
[***] good checks from Germany arriving through Martin via you and the publishers. you are our beloved hit-man. and the money is lovely; I drink better wine, eat out now and then; even bought two new pairs of pants and some shirts the other day, 2 new tires for my car. I can go to the track and lose 30 dollars without having a nightmare, and I’m going to phone my dentist tomorrow. sounds pretty fucking civilized but it’s a good change and I have written around 200 poems since Sept., most of them pretty fair. [***]
Now I gotta worry about income tax. this life gets wilder and wilder, but the main thing I go on is whether this typewriter is working well or not.
· 1978 ·
[To John Martin]
January 6, 1978
[***] I can’t help now and then feeling good about Women, though, it’s going to be an a-bomb in the novel wars when there has been so much nullity and so much peace. forgive me for saying so, but this one is going to ring down some walls and the bitter counter-attackers will at last have something to do.
[To Carl Weissner]
January 22, 1978
[***] oh, you tell your wife that almost all the teeth I have left are in the front. I used to live on one candy bar a day while writing my short stories; candy bar and cheap wine, then the old ten year drunk, and the years of starvation. I used to reach into my mouth with my fingers and pull my teeth out. I would just wiggle a loose tooth for a while and it would work out. or I had teeth that I just picked away at, breaking off chunks. it was interesting and not at all fearful. it really wasn’t until 1970 that I started eating better and drinking better. I even went to a dentist a few years back and he looked at the x-rays and said, “I don’t understand this. It looked like your teeth gave up and suddenly they decided not to give up.”
I haven’t heard a thing from the French publisher who suggested the Paris trip. Maybe my letter scared him off. I asked not to be placed into a slick hotel but into a place where the common people lived, the French ordinary, without the American tourist. I also asked not to be fucked with too much. I don’t know. Maybe I scared him off. Maybe I can still make Germany. I can afford it but jesus you’d think some of those publishers would kick in a bit; I might do a few tricks for them to help sales—a few, not too many. and maybe a reading to help expenses. but I can make it without aid. we’ll see. I hope your back is better by then so we can lift a few together. Linda Lee says hello. she’s high on you. when I get drunk I brag on you. but don’t worry, I still have the old German reserve; I won’t slobber all over you when—if—I arrive.
and Carl, I know that Paris, go or not, is pretty much shit and pretty much hard but so is almost everyplace else, and that type of thing I am used to. the Left Bank means as much to me as east Greenwich Village, and Munich or wherever the hell else would be the same—people and streets and the moil. still it might be nice to have a look—a small yellow notebook to write down streets and places—New York city or New Orleans, Mannheim or Andernach, it’s shit in the sewer, cunts, cocks, police, betrayal, madness, joy and something to drink.
the horses are going very well for me. I have devised a system that entails 5 numbers—I will rate each horse in 5 categories and he will have numbers say like this: 2, 7, 4, 3, 6. each contains a meaning, a compilation: on the final odds of the horse, the first number must be lower than the odds, the center 3 less than the odds, and the last number near or below the odds, all depending upon the first flash of the toteboard and the last. it’s quite quite interesting. and it gets me out of this god damned place and away from the typewriter so I don’t have to play professional writer. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
February 22, 1978
[***] Renate Derschau brought by a couple of copies of Stern. Poor Linda Lee Beighle…billed as Linda King. she reacted and sent a cable to Stern…I can’t blame her. forgive me, but she’s a much better soul than Linda King, and such things cut. the photos were good, though. o.k.
I’m still writing nothing but poems. I don’t understand it. they are all around me here, dozens of them. I have to go with the tide. the poems are all around me here. at night I type them while drinking wine and now I’ve got to type them up without the wine stains and errors and get them out of here. I shouldn’t complain; it’s better than having everything shut off. it fits my battle plan of typing the last poem in the deathbed or wherever it might happen…
Linda Lee and I will be leaving L.A. May 9th [i.e. 8th] at 8:15 p.m. and will arrive at Frankfurt May 9th at 3:20 p.m. [***] we’ll stay 3 weeks [***] I think one reading is enough. Linda Lee says she looks forward to meeting you. there are some changes. we are off the beer, just drink wine, German, mostly white and only eat fish and poultry, no red meat. I have come down from 223 pounds to 196 but drink more than ever. we should try to slow down just a bit in Germany, though. got to face the judge tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. jesus, what an hour to face a drunk driving rap. but I’ve stood before that man many times. I hope he’s a nice old fellow. oh yeah.
we may make Paris in September if the Frenchies come through with one round trip ticket. I don’t mind spending dollars to see the Fatherland but the Frogs are going to have to dance a little before I do the Paris journey.
well, listen, friend, I have to get typing some of these fucking poems up. and I must thank you again and forever, Carl, for translating my stuff so that they like it so much and for pushing Charlie Bukowski and for collecting bills and knocking down doors. you are the miracle man.
[To John Martin]
March 9, 1978
[***] The trip to Germany will be low-profile, easy and I intend to avoid the hale guzzlers. I drink for my pleasure, not my image, or their image of me. My health is better now than it has been for 40 years. I have no intention of tossing it away.
Women is going to land like an H-bomb into all this literary serenity. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
March 12, 1978 within the dwindling yeers
after the death of the sun leeving only
the father under der Holy Ghost…
Hello Carl—
Perhaps a little too much white wine tonight. Linda Lee in bed re-reading A Pavilion of Women* and me out here (3:11 a.m.) smoking and sipping and lucking upon some Mozart upon the radio. And I get worried about coming to Germany but then I think, fuck it, I’ll let it slide. And I remember when you came over here I was terrified to meet you at the airport because I’d never been to one and I didn’t know how and I was afraid I couldn’t do it. Now I’ve been in and out of dozens of airports (quite suddenly) and anyhow—thanks for sending magazines such as Stern and etc. as they come out Bukowskivana. What I’m writing about, however, is I intend to enclose $2 and if Stern ever comes out with an apology-retraction for the Linda King Linda Lee fuck-up (as demanded by cable), please mail said copy, much thanks. We have a German bookstore here but they drag-ass about 2 months behind time. For instance, as of this date, they are only stocked up on and up to Stern #3. So, if they ever come out with their thing, please mail, o.k.? Letter from Unc. Heinrich, has been in hospital for months, heart trouble, now out, he will be 90 years old this March 1
5. I hope he lasts until I can say hello to him. I hope I last until…
Linda Lee says that we will “defile” you. I tell her that you are already that way. She says, maybe so in a German way but that we shall defile you in the American way. I hope so. Actually, both she and myself prefer a quiet and easy and gentle visit. Hello to your son and your wife. Tell your son I come to shake his hand in warmth as one German boy grown old to another German boy to carry on.
[To Hank Malone]
March 13, 1978
All right, you’re my literary shrink. like, you know, living in east Hollywood is pretty damned splendid because all that messes with one are the hookers, cops, crazies—black, white and yellow, and there are poets around but only those who haven’t made it and when they make it they move up to Frisco. as per the door-knockers I have lessened them and the phone has become unlisted. the problem with the door-knockers is that they are all quite similar, they say almost the same words as the phone-ringers, and it gets strange and fearful as if they had all been sent by the same Central Parrot Society. I was never one for mixing socially and maybe now that I’ve had some luck with the writing, that hasn’t changed, although some may think my disdain for them is related to the luck I’ve had with the writing lately. but if I acted the way they wanted me to I’d be them and I’d be knocking on doors.
Finished a novel, Women, I guess I told you…finished it last Sept. Martin says not until June 1978. he can’t keep up with me. since then I’ve been on the poem-kick and have probably written a couple hundred. when Women comes out I might get shot like Larry Flynt (of Hustler). I’m off the beer, have switched to good white wine, drink plenty of that and only eat fish and poultry; my other habits are about the same, only I’m down to one woman now, much less travail, but, of course, I still get pretty low-down now and then; I guess the mechanism is set that way. have come down from 223 pounds and I now weigh in at 193—from a 44 waist to a 37. there are lots of fighting years ahead; working on the left hook and the counter-punch. going to take a hop to Germany in May. intend to return. they caught me drunk driving on the Harbor Freeway last month. I now go to the Drunk Driver’s Improvement School. what a turnip patch that is. the instructor talks about the problems he has with his wife. last week he drew a diagram of the female sexual mechanism upon the blackboard and gave lessons on how to eat pussy, although most of his students already seemed well-versed in the art of.
Living on Luck Page 22