Well, "expose" it here. It will help you to achieve your "personal goal."
Bukowski and work
- Thread starter 5:28am
- Start date
plus a literary society devoted to the man and his work.
jddougher
Founding member
After many years of being buried under too much work, I'm just about to have the time to start organizing my life of papers, and getting that interview out will be one of the many things I do. I'm not sure whether to sell the original interview or to release it under the PoetryCircle Press label, which I'm now getting off the ground with a few e-books (to start) from writers on PoetryCircle and PC Featured Writers. Publishing poetry e-books is challenging, though, from a formatting standpoint, since HTML, the technology behind e-books, strips out extra spaces unless you use workarounds, and even when you do get the lines to look right on one device, if you switch to something smaller, the lines won't work. That's another topic, though.
I like this forum a lot (and so wish I had started it myself--but in a way, after knowing about all the work that goes into maintaining a forum--I founded PhotoCamel--it's probably good that I didn't), and you all are a definite motivator for me to get that out soon. Today, in fact, I told myself I'd go dig those papers out. I also want to release the full, unabridged interview I did with Carl Weissner, Buk's long-time German translator. The version that appeared in print was cut down greatly. I interviewed that guy over many days and have cassette tapes full of sessions as a result.
Well, of course. What I meant was to offer publication options. Have you started Romanian Booze Press? :rolleyes:
mjp
Founding member
Work? What work?
Oh, maybe you mean things like the hundred different versions of different forum software and seven or eight server moves and database crashes and designing a beautiful monochromatic theme and painstakingly building a community and taking out (and keeping out) the trash and the thousands of dollars and thousands of hours that I could have been doing my nails...I guess if you look at it that way there is some amount of work involved. But not much.
I used to think that people started forums because they had a need and no one else was filling, but spending time in forums about forum software I've learned that there are a significant number of people out there who just start forums for no reason. Now those fuckers are weird.
yep. I got a donation that enabled me to do so.
jddougher
Founding member
Well, I recently sold a forum that grew to over 64,000 members. That thing was work, day and night work. It was like running a small city. I was everything from technical admin to relationship counselor. Thank goodness I found a company that was willing to grow the place rather than milk it by plastering ads all over the place. Yeah, a modest forum of 1,200 or so you can leave for a week and not worry--at least I can with PoetryCircle, thanks to the fine editors that really run the place--but get up into 40, 50 thousand users, and you've got work.
mjp
Founding member
Yeah, I've managed 30k+ user forums, and how much work it is depends on the quality of the people who help run it. That goes for a forum of any size though. There are only two moderators here (hank solo and hoochmonkey9) and they insulate me from a lot of things. They also keep the place even tempered, because if it was only up to me, just about everyone who comes through the door would be banned. And I'm only exaggerating a little bit there.
But if the moderators are just moderating as part of their (day) job, I find they are less helpful. It's all about personal interest and a hundred other personality traits. Good moderators are a rare and essential breed. They make these things tick.
But if the moderators are just moderating as part of their (day) job, I find they are less helpful. It's all about personal interest and a hundred other personality traits. Good moderators are a rare and essential breed. They make these things tick.
jddougher
Founding member
Yeah, if you're a hothead, you're probably not cut out for running anything on the internet that involves other people. In fact, it was overly aggressive moderators that led me to found what became one of the most popular photography forums on the net, and our working mantra there was "hands off of users," except in one very specific case (personal insults hurled from one to another). That worked well, as people generally don't want to be "moderated" online. No need to stick around in someone else's personal propriety party.
mjp
Founding member
I thought you said hophead, and I was going to agree.
One or two idiots can destroy any group (intentionally or not) if they aren't properly dealt with. That's just human nature and it's one of the reasons propaganda exists and why governments have historically found it effective to infiltrate enemy groups, to attempt to weaken or destroy them from within. Upset the balance, create chaos, overthrow. It's been going on since people figured out they could kill each other if their sticks were sharp on one end.
All I'm saying is that in an on line community, that delicate balance can't be maintained by one person, since a single person's biases would ultimately upset any chance for balance.
People don't want to be moderated anywhere. But no community, on line or off, can survive without some form of moderation, and maybe more importantly, the previously mentioned taking out of the trash (see: jails and prisons).
One or two idiots can destroy any group (intentionally or not) if they aren't properly dealt with. That's just human nature and it's one of the reasons propaganda exists and why governments have historically found it effective to infiltrate enemy groups, to attempt to weaken or destroy them from within. Upset the balance, create chaos, overthrow. It's been going on since people figured out they could kill each other if their sticks were sharp on one end.
All I'm saying is that in an on line community, that delicate balance can't be maintained by one person, since a single person's biases would ultimately upset any chance for balance.
It would be more of an achievement if it weren't the way Bukowski thought about everything. He also rejects the ideas of love, morals, heroism, and compassion.
brah, if i had a horse like that, a horse that wore a top hat and a smoked and shit i think i would ride it everywhere! lol! thats the coolest thing i've seen in like a month and a half!! HAMMER IT DOWN HORSE!! give that horse a brew yo!! lol!
Skygazer
And in the end...
No, he doesn't.
There's several different Bukowskis: There's the writer and the character in his stories, and for each of those, there's the mask (the way he presents himself), the way he thinks he really is, and the way he really is.
The mask of the character in the stories has no compassion for the women he screws unless they're exceptionally pretty, and pretends not to have compassion for men (when his editor threatens suicide, Bukowski says only that would make it hard to get his stories published). He ridicules soldiers for being suckers. The writer shows a world without compassion, and there may be co-dependency but there's no love. People use each other and that's all there is. If Bukowski has morals, what are they?
The puzzling thing is that if Bukowski the writer really rejected love and compassion, then how could he write stories that moved me?
So which Bukowski do you think doesn't reject those things, and why do you think it?
The mask of the character in the stories has no compassion for the women he screws unless they're exceptionally pretty, and pretends not to have compassion for men (when his editor threatens suicide, Bukowski says only that would make it hard to get his stories published). He ridicules soldiers for being suckers. The writer shows a world without compassion, and there may be co-dependency but there's no love. People use each other and that's all there is. If Bukowski has morals, what are they?
The puzzling thing is that if Bukowski the writer really rejected love and compassion, then how could he write stories that moved me?
So which Bukowski do you think doesn't reject those things, and why do you think it?
Skygazer
And in the end...
Hi there Bad Horse
Yes he could be sexist and comes across hostile (and a bit strutting and preening: the novel Women) but a lot of it was tongue in cheek. Yes he does portray some women as predatory and selfish, that’s because they do exist, equally he describes women who are independent and strong willed.
Nor do I get from his writing that he thought a woman’s place was in the home. He actively supported female writers, he offered to marry Frances Smith when she was pregnant, accepted her refusal, but acted as a responsible " co-parent ".
I’ll argue that he did love and admire women ( not just as sex objects).
I’ll take his crude honesty, over mealy mouthed closet misogynists any day of the week.
As for the rest of humanity; he wrote, how we all feel about it at times; so there is disillusion, despair and cynicism, but there is also pain, love and compassion, read more of his poetry and you will discover this.
Far more concerning to me is the prevailing misogyny displayed in contemporary music and culture, where women and young girls are being objectified. Bukowski is the least of it.
Here's a provocative article on work that is nice to read while your on the job:
http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
read his two posts again and think it over.