when the last one staggered through the door, pale and shamed, Bukowski would rise with an invective, don his ragged cloak and stroll with anger and assurance into the night, down to Dick’s Liquor Store, and I conned him and forced him and squeezed him until he was dizzy; I would walk in in big anger, not beggary, and ask for what I wanted. Dick never knew whether I had any money or not. Sometimes I fooled him and had money. But most of the time I didn’t. But anyhow, he’d slap the bottles in front of me, bag them, and then I’d pick them up with an angry, “Put ’em on my tab!”
And then he’d start the old dance—but, jesus, u owe me such and such already, and you haven’t paid anything off in a month and—
And then came the ACT OF ART. I already had the bottles in my hand. It would be nothing to walk out. But I’d slap them down again in front of him, ripping them out of the bag and shoving them toward him, saying, “Here, you want these things! I’ll take my god damned business somewhere else!”
“No, no,” he’d say, “take them. It’s all right.”
And then he’d get out that sad slip of paper and add onto the total.
“Lemme see that,” I’d demand.
And then I’d say, “For Christ’s sake! I don’t owe you this much! What’s this item here?”
All this was to make him believe that I was going to pay someday. And then he’d try to con me back: “You’re a gentleman. You’re not like the others. I trust you.”
He finally got sick and sold his business, and when the next one came in I started a new tab . . .
And what happened? At eight o’clock one Sunday morning—EIGHT O’CLOCK!!! gd damn it—there was a knock on the door—and I opened it and there stood an editor. “Ah, I’m so and so, editor of so and so, we got your short story and thought it most unusual; we are going to use it in our Spring number.” “Well, come on in,” I’d had to say, “but don’t stumble over the bottles.” And then I sat there while he told me about his wife who thought a lot of him and about his short story that had once been published in The Atlantic Monthly, and you know how they talk on. He finally left, and a month or so later the hall phone rang and somebody wanted Bukowski, and this time it was a woman’s voice, “Mr. Bukowski, we think you have a very unusual short story and the group was discussing it the other night, but we think it has one weakness and we thought you might want to correct the weakness. It was this: WHY DID THE CENTRAL CHARACTER BEGIN TO DRINK IN THE FIRST PLACE?”
I said, “Forget the whole thing and send the story back,” and I hung up.
When I walked back in the Indian looked up over his drink and asked “Who was it?”
I said, “Nobody,” which was the most accurate answer I could give.
[To John William Corrington]
April 21, 1961
It is evident that many of our present day editors still go by thumb of rulebook on what has preceded them. The sanctuary of the rule means nothing to the pure creator. There is an excuse for poor creation if we are dithered by camouflage or wine come down through staring eyes, but there isn’t any excuse for a creation crippled by directives of school and fashion, or the valetudinarian prayer book that says: form, form, form!! put it in a cage!
Let’s allow ourselves space and error, hysteria and grief. Let’s not round the edge until we have a ball that rolls neatly away like a trick. Things happen—the priest is shot in the john; hornets blow heroin without arrest; they take down your number; your wife runs off with an idiot who’s never read Kafka; the crushed cat, its guts glueing its skull to the pavement, is passed by traffic for hours; flowers grow in the smoke; children die at 9 and 97; flies are smashed from screens . . . the history of form is evident. I am the last to say we can start with zero, but let’s get out of 8 or 9 and upward into 11. We may repeat—as we have been doing—about what is true, and have, I suppose, been doing it quite well. But I would like to see us scream a little more hysterically—if we are men enough—about the untrue also and the unformed and the never-to-be-formed. Really, we must let the candle burn—pour gasoline on it if necessary. The sense of the ordinary is always ordinary, but there are screams from windows too . . . an artistic hysteria engendered out of breathing in the necropolis . . . sometimes when the music stops and leaves us 4 walls of rubber or glass or stone, or worse—no walls at all—poor and freezing in the Atlanta of the heart. To concentrate on form and logic, “the turning of the phrase” seems imbecility in the midst of the madness.
I can not tell you how much the careful boys rip me naked with their planned and worked-over creations. Creation is our gift and we are ill with it. It has sloshed about my bones and awakened me to stare at 5 a.m. walls. And musing leads to madness like a dog with a rag doll in an empty house. Look, says a voice, into and beyond terror—Cape Canaveral, Cape Canaveral has nothing on us. hell, jack, this is wise-time: we must insist on camouflage, they taught us that—gods coughed alive through the indistinct smoke of verse. Look, says another voice, we must carve from fresh marble . . . What does it matter, says a third, what does it matter? the light yellow mamas are gone, the garter high on the leg; the charm of 18 is 80, and the kisses—snakes darting liquid silver—the kisses have stopped. no man lives the magic long . . . until one morning at 5 a.m. it catches you; you light a fire, pour a hasty drink as the psyche crawls like a mouse in an empty pantry. if you were Greco or even a watersnake, something could be done.
another drink. well, rub your hands and prove that you are alive. seriousness will not do. walk the floor.
this is the gift, this is the gift . . .
Certainly the charm in dying lies in the fact that nothing is lost.
[To Hilda Doolittle]
June 29, 1961
Have heard from Sheri M. that you are very ill. You are almost a legend with most of us. Have read your latest collected poems (Evergreen). I hope I will not sound foolish in wishing you well, and writing again.
Love,
[To Jon Webb]
Late July 1961
[ . . . ] Heard some of my poems read on the radio the other night. I wouldn’t have even known, but [Jory] Sherman who keeps up with such told me over the phone, so I got drunk and listened. Very odd to hear own words coming back through speaker of radio that has told you news reports, freeway jams, played Beethoven and professional football games. One poem, the first of 15 was the roses poem in Outsider. Also read parts of my letters regarding editors and poetry readings and critics or something like that, and had audience, at times, laughing, as did a couple of the poems, so I did not feel so bad, but when I got up to get another beer I stepped on a 3 inch piece of glass on the floor (my place a mess) and glass went straight up into heel, and I yanked it out and bled for a couple of hours. I limped around for a week and then one day woke up covered with sweat, burning hot, vomiting . . . for a while, thought it was a hangover, but after a while decided it was not, and drove down Hollywood Blvd. to some Dr. Landers and got a shot. Got back, opened a beer, and immediately stepped on another piece of glass.
Jesus, I read in Outsider
