and he made this manuscript as good as anybody possibly could.
Habent sua fata libelli – books have their own fate. This edition ends a long journey. Of course, I’d love to quote here Black Sparrow’s rejection letter, as these letters tend to be pretty funny - at least, if you read them years later. (Trust me on this, I’m an expert. My second novel, for example, was rejected by 17 major German publishing houses, until it was finally picked up by a smaller one, garnered a prestigious German Mystery Award and was optioned by the inevitable producer.)
Unfortunately, I can’t quote such a rejection letter, as I never got one from Black Sparrow. Later, a 2000-word-excerpt from the book won the 2nd prize for feature articles in the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. And Buzz Magazine, once well-paying, but now defunct, published an almost identical excerpt. No book publisher, however, would take the little book.
Somewhere along the road, I translated the manuscript into German and sold it within days. In 1996, “‘That’s it.’ A Last Visit With Charles Bukowski” became “‘Das war’s.’ Letzte Worte mit Charles Bukowski”, a colorful coffeetable book with many of Michael Montfort’s best BukShots.
This electronic edition cannot include Michael’s pictures - or Gary’s beautiful BukShot gravures. I can only hope that some of the following words will succeed in making the account of my last meeting with Charles Bukowski as unforgettable for the reader as it has been for me.
Gundolf S. Freyermuth
Canyon Creek Ranch, AZ
Summer 2000
For Leon Who Was Born the Year Hank Died
I
Open Casket.
- Prologue -
“Death cancels everything but truth;
and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue.
It is a sort of natural canonization.
It makes the meanest of us sacred -
it installs the poet in his immortality,
and lifts him to the skies.”
William Hazlitt
(on Lord Byron’s death)
“It doesn’t matter what happened.
What I write is what happened.
And guess what? I’m always the hero.”
Charles Bukowski
“Charles Bukowski, the prolific writer and poet laureate of Los Angeles low life, whose rough-hewn autobiographical poems, short stories, novels and 1987 film ‘Barfly’ chronicled his hard-bitten alcoholic youth, died Wednesday. He was 73,” the “Los Angeles Times” reported on March 10, 1994.
Three days later, on a Sunday evening, Linda Lee Bukowski said, “Let’s go and visit Hank.”
Shortly before nine o’clock two cars, a beige Jaguar and a silver-gray Toyota, rolled up the wide driveway of the Green Hills Memorial Park in Palos Verdes. Linda Bukowski was accompanied by three men around fifty. They all were friends of her late husband: Dick Ellis, a physician and great storyteller, whose company the poet enjoyed in his last months; Michael Montfort, Bukowski’s favorite photographer; Carl Weissner, his German agent and translator.
The sun had set some time ago, and the air had cooled down quickly. The cemetery lies in a quiet residential neighborhood high above San Pedro. Its green hills command a clear view of downtown and the harbor with its cranes and tanks. When the mourners arrived, the main building of the mortuary was glowing neon bright in the dark. Inside, the expensive carpeting deadened most sounds.
The elegant lady sitting at the reception desk called for somebody to take them to the viewing room. While they were waiting, Linda Bukowski’s eyes fell on double doors at the other side of the lobby. They lead to a huge showroom that was dominated by a solid brass casket for thirty-five thousand dollars. Upon entering a few days ago, Linda Bukowski had learned that only four such caskets had been sold in the past ten years, all of them to Asian customers. She had settled for a plain coffin made of poplar.
“The veneer was so smooth,” she explains to me when I meet her half a year later, “and the grain in the wood was ... absolutely beautiful. But not ostentatious. It was sort of just right for Hank.”
Eventually their guide appeared. He walked the group down the lobby and into a long hallway lined by doors. Hidden loudspeakers provided a constant stream of classical music. The first door on the left was open. A coffin was on display in the room. An extended Mexican family had gathered around it, almost a dozen people, young and old. Beyond that room, there was another small one occupied by two older women. They were sitting on a couch staring silently at the open casket in front of them.
“It was very quiet,” Linda Bukowski says, “quiet and peaceful.”
She and her escorts followed their guide towards a closed door at the end of the hallway.
“I don’t remember where my thoughts had wandered,” Michael Montfort recalls over the phone, “however, somehow I didn’t realize beforehand how soon we were going to see Hank ...”
The room behind the door was large, much larger than the other viewing rooms, and it was barely furnished. Two couches, some easy chairs, and two or three coffee tables with flowers and arrangements were lost under the very high ceiling. The muted lighting focused onto that part of the room where the open casket was set out.
“And there was Hank,” Linda Bukowski says. “I had visited him before, so I already knew what to expect.”
A few steps behind her, Michael Montfort entered the room. Linda Bukowski could feel his tension and reluctance.
“Oh, my god ...,” he uttered recognizing his dead friend.
Michael Montfort, almost shaken, crumbled on to the nearest couch. His perception was very different from Linda Bukowski’s. This evening he had seen - and was still seeing - scenes more damaged and shabby, cheaper and sadder. The reality he was suffering from had just as much to do with life and death in Charles Bukowski’s short stories as with the poet’s real life and death.
In this bleak world the mortuary was a semi-industrial building. Its long corridors resembled the hallways of hospitals. Absent was only the antiseptic smell, a byproduct of a fight against disease and death that in here had been given up. Muzak covered the soft noises, but every now and then a loud laugh or sob reverberated through the music mash. The doors lining the corridor were open. In each room was a coffin; white, brown, black ones. They rested on spindle-legged stands with their upper parts taken off. Small crowds of mourners were having fun. More Spanish than English was spoken. Boom boxes played softly, Pepsi cans and pizza boxes were spread all over. Everybody seemed to be in a sort of elated party mood. Toasts were made to the dead. And at the end of the nightmare, there was Hank in an open casket.
“They had stuffed him well,” Michael Montfort says. “His cheeks were full, and he seemed to smile; more than he ever smiled when he was still alive.”
“Hank’s cheeks weren’t full,” Linda Bukowski says. “And he was not smiling.
