evil doings!
Hey, thanks for such quick responses. I'm going to think about this topic a bit more and get back to you with more thoughts. But in answer to "what stories I was thinking of" I finished Hot Water Music recently and almost every story seemed to stretch or break reality, more so than any of his other work, and wondered if he was influenced by fantasy or surreal fiction at any point.
Funny, that's
exactly the book I was thinking of. His imaginative powers just soar and the writing is so utterly relaxed, playful and masterful. I love those stories. But other examples can be found elsewhere, such as The Devil is Hot, from
South of No North:
Excerpt:
It was then I noticed a roaring sound coming from a nearby building. A tape or record, no doubt. There was a barker out front: "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Inside, Inside here . . . we actually have captured the devil! He is on display to see with your own eyes! Think, just for a quarter, twenty-five cents, you can actually see the devil . . . the biggest loser of all time! The loser of the only revolution ever attempted in Heaven!" [end]
The devil gets loose, shags his girlfriend, and the protagonist has to find a way to get rid of the son-of-a-bitch.
Also, I watched Return of the King for the first time today and wanted to know what Buk would think of good vs evil presented in such fantastic and out there ways. Hence the topic.
He talks about good and evil at one of his live poetry readings on
Hostage. He said something to the effect that he believed in evil because evil was different than the goodness of "accepted beauty" - giving the impression that he felt that what most people call "evil" was unlimited and "good" was more limited and contained.
On the Bukowski Tapes he also talks about the evil of such men as Hitler and Idi Amin, the former military dictator and president of Uganda. But keep in mind that he has his own particular slant on such things as evil, and genius, because he's talking about their particular kind of "genius" from the viewpoint of his
own particular genius. Mine are not literal transcriptions of his words, so consult the sources themselves if you're that interested.
It's hard to say how Bukowski might have felt about The Return of the Kings because he had died 9 years earlier than the release of the film. He wasn't much of a film goer and I doubt that he would have watched it anyway. But he talks about the relationship of good and evil elsewhere, and some of his short stories are about the truly dark side of human nature, such as murder and rape. So he was acutely aware of evil and got into the head of some of these dangerous losers. The stories can be quite disturbing, such 'The Killers' and 'Break In' from
South of No North. There's pure, unregenerate evil, because the killers are brutal and get away with the murders. Bukowski spares the readers from
none of the callous brutality, and I find them particularly unsettingly.
One more thing. I'd really like to know what he thought of Star Wars. He had to have seen it or at least heard about it. It was HUGE in his times. (that's what she said) Thanks again!
Good question! Wouldn't know about that one.
Best wishes, Poptop