Bukowski Never Went Postal

Don't blame Bukowski for bad poetry

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The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? An automobile on monthly payments? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did? Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds. Now in industry, there are vast layoffs steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place.

They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: I could see all this.

Doing this from memory , "I don't know. But Bukowski was honest, "It was a newspaper headline. If it happened in front of me I'd probably feel different about it. He had very few boundaries as to how far his honesty could go.

He never wrote about his daughter after she reached a certain age. That's about the only boundary I can find. Every other writer has so many things they can't write about: That's why they make stuff up. No other writer before or since has done that.

6 Things I Learned From Charles Bukowski

For a particular example, see his novel, Women which detailed every sexual nuance of every woman who dared to sleep with him after he achieved some success. Most of these women were horrified after the book came out. I try as hard as possible to remove all boundaries. But it's a challenge with each post I do. Bukowski got two stories published when he was young 24 and 26 years old but almost all of his stories were rejected by publishers.

So he quit writing for ten years. Then, in the mid s he started up again. He submitted tons of poems and stories everywhere he could. It took him years to get published.

It took him even more years to get really noticed. And it finally took him about 15 years of writing every day and writing thousands of poems and stories before he finally started making a living as a writer.

He wrote his first novel at the age of 49 and it was financially successful. After 25 years of plugging away at it he was finally a successful writer. Most people give up much earlier, much younger. Both my grandfather and father wanted to be musicians, for instance. Both gave up in their 20s and 30s and took what they thought was the safer route. The safer route being, in my opinion, what ultimately killed both of them. And this persistence was while he was going through three marriages, dozens of jobs, and non-stop alcoholism.

Some of this is documented poorly in the move Barfly but I think a better movie about Bukowski is the indie that Matt Dillon did about his novel, Factotum which details the 10 years he was going from job to job, woman to woman, just trying to survive as an alcoholic in a world that kept beating him down. He wrote his first novel in 19 days.

Michael Hemmingson, whom I write about below, wrote me and said Bukowski had to finish that novel so fast because he was desperately afraid he was going to be a failure at being a successful writer and didn't want to disappoint John Martin, who had essentially given him an advance for the novel. When I think "constant alcoholic," I usually equate that with being a homeless bum. Bukowski, at some deep level, realized that he needed to survive.

He couldn't just be a homeless bum and kill himself, no matter how many disappointments he had. He worked countless factory jobs the basis of the non-fiction novel, Factotun but even that wasn't stable enough for him.

See a Problem?

Finally, he took a job working for the US government you can't get more stable working in the post office for 11 years. He didn't miss child support payments although he constantly wrote about how ugly the mother of his child was , and as far as I know he was never homeless or totally down and out from his early 30s 'til the time he started having success as a writer.

And despite writing about the overwhelming poverty he had, he did have a small inheritance from his father, a savings account he built up, and a steady paycheck. The post office job is documented, in full, in his first "novel" called, appropriately, Post Office. Many people think that's his best novel but I put it third or fourth behind Ham on Rye and Factotum and possibly Women. He also wrote a novel, Hollywood , about the blow-by-blow experience of doing the movie Barfly.

All the names are changed hence its claim to be fiction but once you figure out who everyone is, its totally non-fiction.

Post Office

Like many creatives today, Bukowski also found himself stifled by working for the man. In , the year before his 50 th birthday, he was still working as a mail man, and pulling some gigs here and there on some small underground magazines. And it was from this position Bukowski found himself faced with the challenge we set out at the start of this article: While many creatives might dither here, adding up the costs of bills and thinking perhaps even of pensions; Bukowski was in no doubt about his decision.

He took the chance gladly, and just two years later, Black Sparrow Press published his first novel, titled — appropriately — Post Office. It was an opportunity Bukowski did not forget — although it did take him time to remember to thank his early champion; writing to Martin some 17 years later to express his gratitude.

Belated the letter of thanks may be; but it nonetheless remains beautiful, and incredibly poignant today. Thanks for the good letter. You know the places where I came from. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye.

6 Things I Learned From Charles Bukowski | HuffPost

The voice becomes ugly. As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions.

What do they do it for? An automobile on monthly payments? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did? Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: Now in industry, there are vast layoffs steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place.

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