Charles Bukowski

by Howard Sounes

  He wrote that his father was a ‘monster who bastardized me upon this sad earth’, thus fostering the abiding myth he was illegitimate; and he invited his readers to call him ‘uncultured, drunken, whatever’ as if he were a Philistine. The message was that Bukowski had ‘crawled drunken in alleys from coast to coast’ and the poetry that came from these experiences was all the more powerful for it.

  ‘Being the age that I was, I had my mouth wide open and I was swallowing it all,’ says Blazek. Many of those who read the essay in Ole also took it as a true account of Bukowski’s life and wanted to know more about the poet who said he had shouldered carcasses in a slaughter house (in fact, he worked half a day in a slaughter house on one occasion during his supposed ten-year drunk).

  When he got back to De Longpre, after visiting the Webbs, Bukowski found he had fan mail and wrote Blazek on 17 April, 1965: ‘I get these letters on the essay I wrote for Ole 2 and they seem to think I said something; I am a fucking oracle (oriol?) for the LOST or something, is what they tell me. that’s nice. but I AM THE LOST.’

  Blazek went on to publish a Bukowski chapbook of a single prose piece, Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts, a portmanteau of nine short stories based on his childhood, adolescence and youth. It further promoted Bukowski as the hero of his own work, even though he used the device of a fictional first-person narrator. The name, Henry Chinaski, was noticeably similar to his own.

  ‘Confessions became a dry run for his first novel, Post Office, and from then on I think he duplicated himself,’ says Blazek. ‘Ham

  FAMILY HISTORY

  Bukowski’s maternal grandparents Nanatte and Wilhelm Fett (seated) celebrate their golden wedding anniversary with family and friends in Andernach, Germany, in 1943. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  Charles Bukowski’s paternal grandparents Emilie and Leonard Bukowski at their home in Pasadena, California. (courtesy of Katherine Wood)

  Bukowski’s parents lived in an apartment in this building in Andernach, Germany, when they were fi rst married and Bukowski was born here on 16 Aug, 1920. The window on the second fl oor under the cross is the room in which he was born. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  COMIGN TO AMERICA

  This is the postcard Bukowski’s mother sent to her parents from the docks at Bremerhaven, Germany, on 18 April, 1923, just before she and Henry Bukowski and their son sailed for America. It shows the SS President Fillmore, the ship which took them to Baltimore. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  In 1924 Bukowski’s mother sent this photograph of herself, her husband and their son from her mother-in law’s house in Pasadena, California, to her parents in Andernach, writing that Henry had won an argument about who should hold their son for the picture. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  The infant Bukowski looks thoroughly glum on a day out with his parents at Santa Monica beach, California. Kate Bukowski wrote to her parents in Germany that Henry wanted her to send photographs of them at the beach to prove he was showing them a good time in America. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  Henry and Kate’s goldschatz, their golden boy, in his new home town of Los Angeles in the mid-1920s. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  GROWING UP IN LA.

  The bungalow at 2122 Longwood Avenue, Los Angeles, as it was when the Bukowski family lived there in the 1930s. Bukowski was made to manicure the front lawn every Saturday and beaten if he missed a single blade. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  Bukowski and his father pose in the family model-T Ford in which they took trips out of Los Angeles into the orange groves of the surrounding countryside. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  When he was 16, suffering from terrible acne and attending Mount Vernon Junior High School, Bukowski posed for a class photograph. He is in the front row, fi fth from the left with his arms crossed. The fi rst boy in the front row, wearing an open-neck white shirt and grey trousers, is Bukowski’s friend William ‘Baldy’ Mullinax. (courtesy of Mount Vernon Junior High School)

  Bukowski (centre) looks older than 18 in his Los Angeles High School year book photograph for the graduating class of summer, 1939. (courtesy of Los Angeles High School)

  Sgt Henry Charles Bukowski Jnr in his ROTC uniform along with school friends; from left to right; Bloomer, Cavanaugh and Corbeil (courtesy of Los Angeles High School)

  Jane Cooney Baker, the great love of Bukowski’s life who inspired so much of his best work. This is the fi rst photograph of Jane ever published. It was taken for her High School year book in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1927 when she was 17 years old. (courtesy of Roswell High School)

  Taken at his parents’ Longwood Avenue home in July, 1947, this photograph shows a remarkably well-groomed Charles Bukowski, aged 27, at a time in his life when he later claimed to have been living as a bum. (courtesy of Karl Fett)

  LOST YEARS

  A rare glimpse of Bukowski, relaxing with his ‘magic dog’, taken in the early 1950s when he was living with Jane Cooney Baker. On the back of the picture Bukowski wrote this caption: ‘… long ago on a deserted beach with a fi ne and beautiful dog.’ Note: the marks on the picture are from the pressure of Bukowski’s handwriting on the back. (courtesy of Special Collections, The University of Arizona Library)

  This building at 603 N. 17th Street, Philadelphia, was a rooming house where Bukowski lived when he was in the city during his ten year drunk. (picture taken by Brenda Galloway for Howard Sounes)

  Bukowski lived with Jane at this apartment court at 268 S. Coronado Street in downtown Los Angeles. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  Barbara Frye’s physical deformity is clear in this photograph taken at the Frye Ranch in Wheeler, Texas, in 1954 - the year before she met and married Bukowski. She was born with two vertebra missing from her neck giving the impression she was permanently hunching her shoulders. (courtesy of Leah Belle Wilson)

  Bukowski and his fi rst wife, Barbara Frye, pose together in December, 1956, just over a year after they married. This is the fi rst picture of the couple ever to be published. (courtesy of Leah Belle Wilson)

  EAST HOLYWOOD

  The former premises of The Phillips Hotel in Hollywood. Jane Cooney Baker lived in one of the rooms facing onto Vermont Avenue and died a couple of days after suffering a hemorrhage here in 1962. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  Bukowski at the N. Mariposa rooming house in the early 1960s. Note the acne scars on his face and the way the wallpaper behind his left elbow is held together with sticky tape. (courtesy of Special Collections, The University of Arizona Library)

  The rooming house at 1623 N. Mariposa Avenue, Los Angeles, where Bukowski moved in 1958 after he split with his fi rst wife and where he wrote some of his best early work. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  Working in his room at N. Mariposa on the typing table his parents bought for him when he was a teenager. Copies of the Webbs’ Outsider magazine are on the table beside the typewriter. (courtesy of ‘Gypsy Lou’ Webb)

  The bungalow on De Longpre Avenue in East Hollywood where Bukowski moved in 1964 with FrancEyE, ‘the mother of my child’. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  Bukowski’s landlords at De Longpre Avenue: Francis Crotty (left with hat) and Grace Crotty (middle with cat). On the right holding the pumpkin is neighbor and friend, Sina Taylor. (courtesy of Sina Taylor)

  Bukowski in his crummy bungalow on De Longpre Avenue, East Hollywood. (courtesy of Liza Williams)

  FrancEyE and Bukowski were man and wife in all but name and she was the mother of his only child. Here FrancEyE is seen with their daughter, Marina, who was born in 1964. They all lived together at De Longpre Avenue. (courtesy of FrancEyE)

  The Terminal Annex building in downtown LA where Bukowski worked for many years as a mail clerk and which he described so vividly in his seminal novel, Post Offi ce. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  FRIENDS

  Writer and small press publisher Douglas Blazek who published early breakthrough prose work by Bukowski in Ole magazine. (courtesy of Douglas Blazek)
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  Writer Jory Sherman, a friend of Bukowski’s when he lived at N. Mariposa Avenue. (courtesy of Jory Sherman/photo credit: J. Jones)

  Poet Steve Richmond, a close friend for many years who thought Bukowski’s attitude to drugs hypocritical. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  John Bennett, small press publisher and friend of Bukowski’s. (courtesy of John Bennett/photo credit: Jane Orleman)

  The writer and academic John William Corrington (far right) who had a long and warm correspondence with Bukowski until they met at the home of Jon and ‘Gypsy Lou’ Webb in New Orleans and fell out. On the left is Miller Williams who was also at the meeting. (courtesy of Joyce Corrington)

  Beat poet and gay writer Harold Norse who controversially claims Bukowski fl ashed his penis at him and asked to see Norse’s penis in return. (picture taken by Howard Sounes)

  German-born photographer Michael Montfort who accompanied Linda Lee and Bukowski on their fi rst trip to Europe in 1978. (taken by Howard Sounes)

  Bukowski with his publisher and friend Jon Webb. (courtesy of ‘Gypsy Lou’ Webb)

  Bukowski and ‘Gypsy Lou’ Webb at Bukowski’s bungalow in Hollywood in August, 1964, when the Webbs came to check him out. (courtesy of ‘Gypsy Lou’ Webb)

  Bukowski wanted to be photographed in a tough guy pose for his 1969 book, The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills, so photographer friend Sam Cherry took this picture of Bukowski clinging onto a boxcar in downtown LA. Bukowski was so fat and lacking in agility he almost fell off. (courtesy of Sam Cherry)

  on Rye, all of that, was regurgitated. All his previous stuff was just a dry run for the more substantial works that John Martin published at Black Sparrow Press.’

  It is true that many of the stories that later became significant parts of his novels first appeared in these short stories. For example, Bukowski first wrote about Jane Cooney Baker in Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts. He introduced her as K:

  K. was an ex-showgirl and she used to show me the clippings and photos. She’d almost won a Miss America contest. I met her in an Alvarado St. bar, which is about as close to getting to Skid Row as you can get. She had put on weight and age but there was still some sign of a figure, some class, but just a hint and little more. We’d both had it. Neither of us worked and how we made it I’ll never know …

  Ten years later he wrote about her in his novel, Factotum, but it was essentially the same thing:

  I found myself on Alvarado Street. I walked along until I came to an inviting bar and went in. It was crowded. There was only one seat left at the bar. I sat in it. I ordered a scotch and water. To my right sat a rather dark blonde, gone a bit to fat, neck and cheeks now flabby, obviously a drunk; but there was a certain lingering beauty to her features, and her body still looked firm and young and well-shaped. In fact, her legs were long and lovely.

  Both versions show how much he manipulated the facts of Jane’s life to make a story.

  Even though FrancEyE wanted him to do things with her and Marina, Bukowski’s weekends were still mostly taken up with drinking. He stumbled around the bars, getting into fights and sometimes getting himself locked up. When he stayed home, he emptied beer bottles by the half dozen, clanging empties into the garbage until neighbors yelled for him to shut up, or singing songs from Oklahoma! with Francis and Grace Crotty at the back of the court. Alcohol was so much a part of daily life that the first word Marina learned to read was ‘liquor’ and she came to know Ned’s liquor store as ‘Hank’s Store’ because her father spent so much time there.

  One night around Thanksgiving, 1965, Bukowski came home from the post office, got a beer from the refrigerator, and told FrancEyE it wasn’t working.

  ‘You have to get out of here,’ he said.

  He promised to help her find a place where she could live with Marina, and said he would continue to support them. ‘He hated having an unhappy woman around, and he knew how unhappy I was,’ says FrancEyE, who had been thinking of moving out anyway.

  Marina believes she is lucky the split came before she knew any other life. ‘I didn’t have any unhappy memories of that and, obviously, if it had been a year or two later I would have been at least initially miserable,’ she says. ‘How my father raised me and how my mother raised me was pretty unconventional, just the fact that they weren’t together was one piece of the puzzle, but I always felt a really strong connection to him. He let me know both by his actions and his words that he loved me more than anything, so I always took that for granted as a child. It is something that is so basic and so important and it just made everything in the world OK.’

  Despite his many problems, and his drinking, FrancEyE found she could rely on Bukowski even after they split. ‘I could never handle money,’ she says. ‘My money would run out and we would be out of food. Whenever I called Hank, and said, “Can we come over and eat?” Or, we need this or that, he was always right there.’

  But when she had time to reflect on their relationship as a couple, FrancEyE did not come to an entirely positive conclusion. She was especially hurt when some of Bukowski’s letters were published in the early 1990s, revealing how little he had understood her, and how he often belittled her in correspondence with his friends.

  In response, FrancEyE wrote the poem, ‘Christ I feel shitty’:

  At least it’s clear now

  He hated me

  for being somebody I never was.

  Maybe I loved him

  for the same reason.

  I thought he would want to hear amazing stories

  when all he wanted was somebody to clean up the kitchen,

  just like he said all along.

  6

  BLACK SPARROW, AND THE SIXTIES

  It is one of the ironies of Bukowski’s career that his eventual success was largely due to the hard work of a Christian Scientist who drinks nothing stronger than iced tea. John Martin was the manager of an office supply company when he first read Bukowski’s poetry, and it literally changed his life. He decided Bukowski was a great genius, ‘the Walt Whitman of our day’, and set out to become his publisher.

  First he read all the books that were available. He bought It Catches my Heart in Its Hands and, through Jon Webb, got an inscribed copy of Crucifix in a Deathhand. Then, in October, 1965, he wrote to Bukowski asking to buy signed copies of the early chapbooks, adding that he thought Bukowski was ‘a most important and marvellous poet’. Bukowski sent him a copy of Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts, and Martin wrote again ten days later, saying he wanted to invite him to lunch, adding: ‘I’ve never had the pleasure of talking to a really fine poet.’ Bukowski postponed the meeting while he found a place for FrancEyE and Marina to live, but invited Martin over to De Longpre after he wrote again in January saying he’d been given bottles of liquor for Christmas, but didn’t drink, and wondered if Bukowski wanted them.

  Bukowski was drinking beer when he looked up and saw a smartly dressed gentleman on his porch. His visitor had wisps of reddish hair around a mostly bald head, although he was still young, and was grinning broadly.

  ‘I’ve always been a great admirer of your work,’ said John Martin, introducing himself. ‘I’d like to come in.’

  ‘Oh well, come on in. Want a beer?’

  Martin declined, reminding Bukowski that he didn’t drink. ‘That kind of put me off right there: this guy’s inhuman, he doesn’t drink beer!’ said Bukowski, recalling the meeting.

  For his part, Martin was taken aback by Bukowski’s scruffy appearance and the filthy conditions he was living in, now FrancEyE had left. ‘He had this absolutely destroyed room,’ he says. There were rusty razor blades round the sink, the toilet didn’t flush properly and the work surfaces were covered dust and bits of food.

  Martin asked if he had any writing he could look at, and Bukowski told him to look in the closet.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Martin, looking at a stack of paper that reached up almost to hi
s waist.

  ‘Writing,’ replied Bukowski.

  ‘No kidding?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How long it take you to write this?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, three or four months.’

  ‘Oh, this is astonishing. You mind if I read it?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Bukowski cracked open another beer while his visitor began wading through the mass of paper. There were countless poems and short stories, and most of it had never been published. It was such a treasure trove Martin could barely contain his excitement.

  ‘Oh this is very good!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is great!’ Another gem revealed itself. ‘This is an immortal poem!’