One and Only

Do you have ideal conditions under which you write? Do you write most days?
The ideal conditions are between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Bottle of wine, smokes, radio on to classical music. I write 2 or 3 nights a week. It's the best show in town.

It's well known that you like classical music, who is your favourite, any particular reasons? Sibelius. The long deep tonality. And a passion that knocks your lights out.

Beat Scene/Transit Magazine interview
Interview by Kevin Ring

(“The life of a writer is unbearable … starving writers live worse than skid row bums”) and the harsh desperation of life on the margins of Los Angeles.

Bukowski believed that pride “has no right in things upright and mechanical”, that primal feeling trumped intellect in any race of the body or mind, and that a thousand scarlet sunsets bleeding into the Pacific Ocean were no match for a woman’s beauty. But beauty, Bukowski instructs, “would not be beautiful without flaws.”

• Stonecloud #1 - 1972

• Stonecloud #1 - 1972 

INTERVIEW

STONECLOUD: Did you ever meet anybody interesting at the race track?

BUKOWSKI: Hardly. Men, women or otherwise. They're kind of drab creatures. Likeecker players or bowlers or people who go to wrestling matches. I got a saying, "people chose to go to the race track are the lowest of the breed." And Linda looks up and says, "What are we doing here?" I say "Hell, I don't know."

STONECLOUD: Do you find that there are any similarities between horses and women?

BUKOWSKI: Yeah. You can ride 'em, but you don't know who's gonna be riding 'em the next race. They switch around on their jockeys. And then you can't bet on them, they change form, and they're unpredictable. Only thing is, horses sometimes break their legs; women break men.

the lucky ones

stuck in the rain on the freeway, 6:15 p.m.,
these are the lucky ones, these are the
dutifully employed, most with their radios on as loud
as possible as they try not to think or remember.

this is our new civilization: as men
once lived in trees and caves now they live
in their automobiles and on freeways as

the local news is heard again and again while
we shift from first gear to second and back to first.

there's a poor fellow stalled in the fast lane ahead, hood
up, he's standing against the freeway fence
a newspaper over his head in the rain.

the other cars force their way around his car, pull out into
the next lane in front of cars determined to shut them off.

in the lane to my right a driver is being followed by a
police car with blinking red and blue lights - he surely
can't be speeding as

suddenly the rain comes down in a giant wash and all the
cars stop and

even with the windows up I can smell somebody's clutch
burning.

I just hope it's not mine as

the wall of water diminishes and we go back into first
gear; we are all still
a long way from home as I memorize
the silhouette of the car in front of me and the shape of the

driver's head or
what
I can see of it above the headrest while
his bumper sticker asks me
HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR KID TODAY?

suddenly I have an urge to scream
as another wall of water comes down and the
man on the radio announces that there will be a 70 percent
chance of showers tomorrow night 

letter in the later days to a dear friend

A long 2-page letter, dated 1-2-79, to Lou Webb. Bukowski is catching up with Louise Webb, discussing his own issues as well. Also, with two original black and white photos of Charles Bukowski and his future wife, Linda Lee, at the beach, both captioned in ink on the versos, one dated July 1977 and other July 1978, laid in. Includes the original mailing envelope. Letter measures 11x8½".

Note: The woman in the photo on the right in the main image is Bukowski's daughter Marina Louise Bukowski; she was named Louise in honor of Gypsy Lou Webb.

fountains of blood

In 1955, at the age of 35, Bukowski was rushed to the charity ward of the Los Angeles County hospital, hemorrhaging at the bright red climax to a ten-year drinking bout. He was “dying, hemorrhaging out of my mouth and ass continually … all that cheap wine and hard living coming through and out – fountains of blood.”

 

After receiving 13 pints of blood and glucose at the charity ward, Bukowski embarked on a new life: “I found a place on Kingsley Drive, got a job driving a truck and bought an old typewriter. And each night after work I’d get drunk. I wouldn’t eat, just knock out eight or ten poems … I was writing poems but I didn’t know why.”