Buk is my favorite transgressive writer who, in the course and sometimes eloquent street language of Los Angeles, wrote sympathetically of the marginalized, desperate lives of drunks, prostitutes, addicts, poor working people, and petty criminals. He endured alcoholism, poverty, and rejection from the literary establishment, but never stopped writing. I’m also a big fan of poet, singer/songwriter Tom Waits and crime writer James Ellroy, who both wrote provocative tales about the social and cultural underbelly of L.A. in poems, songs, short stories and novels. And of course I treasure John Fante’s Ask the Dust. As for me, I’m an unpublished, old age poet trying to create a chapbook or zine with the help of a lady friend and my son, both artists.
Buk, Waits, and Ellroy
- Thread starter Thin Man Elroy
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Let's not say Bukowski "endured alcoholism" in the sense that it was some kind of limitation. When it comes to Bukowski and alcohol, endurance means the ability to be an alcoholic while holding a full-time job and never giving up on being a full-time writer.
"Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can't be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs."
"Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can't be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs."
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You could be right but I meant it in the sense of his amazing, mind-blowing power of withstanding hardship or stress and becoming a great writer in the process and in his own defiant way. But I could have phrased it better.
No argument there. I've never heard of James Ellroy, thanks for dropping the name.
Hi and welcome! I'm a big fan of Tom Waits too. I recently found out that Waits and Bukowski had both published poems in two of the same issues of Long Shot magazine. Here are pictures of the Waits and Kathleen Brennan poems in Long Shot vol 3 (1984). Waits recited the Heartbreak Hotel poem when performing the intro to "Burma Shave" live at Austin City Limits in 1978.
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