M
MULLINAX
Apologies if this has been covered in another thread. This site is so great and huge!
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"...UPDATE: I received email from Howard Sounes, author of two books about Bukowski; Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life and Bukowski in Pictures, scolding me for suggesting that Bukowski and Cooney Baker were married. I don't have the email anymore, so I can't quote from it, but basically he said that no one he talked to ever mentioned anything about Bukowski and Cooney Baker being married. Now Sounes has interviewed a lot of people and done a lot of research, and I enjoyed his books. But he did not interview Charles Bukowski or Jane Cooney Baker. They are, of course, both dead. But they are also the only two people who could definitively say that they were not ever married, so the truth about their marriage (or lack thereof) can never really be known. Telling the landlord of a rooming house that you are married so you can share a room is one thing, lying to the FBI is quite another. So what is the truth? Read the files and decide for yourself.
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But the truth can be KNOWN. Bukowski only claimed to have been married twice and we have the records for this. We can also scour the records of LA City Hall and see if there was indeed a record of Hank being married to Jane Cooney Baker. On an irrelevent side note, Baldy claimed to have "felt her up" and that she was "not intelligent and a bit fat".
As for the FBI files, the marriage information could have come from the landlords, who were indeed lied to by Buk and Jane.
I have decided for myself: Hank and Jane were NOT married.
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"...UPDATE: I received email from Howard Sounes, author of two books about Bukowski; Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life and Bukowski in Pictures, scolding me for suggesting that Bukowski and Cooney Baker were married. I don't have the email anymore, so I can't quote from it, but basically he said that no one he talked to ever mentioned anything about Bukowski and Cooney Baker being married. Now Sounes has interviewed a lot of people and done a lot of research, and I enjoyed his books. But he did not interview Charles Bukowski or Jane Cooney Baker. They are, of course, both dead. But they are also the only two people who could definitively say that they were not ever married, so the truth about their marriage (or lack thereof) can never really be known. Telling the landlord of a rooming house that you are married so you can share a room is one thing, lying to the FBI is quite another. So what is the truth? Read the files and decide for yourself.
***
But the truth can be KNOWN. Bukowski only claimed to have been married twice and we have the records for this. We can also scour the records of LA City Hall and see if there was indeed a record of Hank being married to Jane Cooney Baker. On an irrelevent side note, Baldy claimed to have "felt her up" and that she was "not intelligent and a bit fat".
As for the FBI files, the marriage information could have come from the landlords, who were indeed lied to by Buk and Jane.
I have decided for myself: Hank and Jane were NOT married.