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Buk's bio of himself 1946 from 20 Tanks (1 Viewer)

zoom man

Founding member
I just got this in the mail today,
And loving it.
Got it from e-bay,
And thought I should share the Buk blurb about himself.....
It makes me think of those dumb interviews,
Where they ask,
"Ok, if you could have 5 people to dinner,
Living or Dead, who would they be...."

Man, I'd love to talk to him....
scanpicofbio.gif


Thus The Holy Grail (Write) remains......
 
Thanks Cirerita, I just couldn't find it here,
And was too excited to post mine.

Man, this does get the old Antiques Road Show mentality glowing again.....

Write is out there!
 
Hi,
Not to start this thread again, but if it is found it will be quite an event. If you think about it, Linda Bukowski does not have one, John Martin does not have one, Dorbin and Fogel NEVER saw or heard of anyone even seeing one. It would be interesting as it would be the first poem in print in a magazine.

Enough of my stating the obvious. Someone will find one in a bargain bin for $.50, i'm sure.

Of course, part of me says that it does not exist and that it could have been an error on Black Sun's or Buk's part.

Bill
 
I don't think it was an error on B's part. He mentions Write in a letter as well, saying he published there a couple of poems and a story.
 
If the magazine was Quercus or something equally as unusual, it would have been found. I think that because if the vagueness of the magazine title, it is hiding. Does anyone even know where it was supposed to have been published from? For example, if it was published in Philly, there is the best chance that it will show up in that area...

Bill
 
I'll tell you my secret method of finding an impossibly rare book. You have to believe that you WILL find it, against all odds, and then start looking and never stop. This worked for me with another favorite author. I found a book that only 10 or 11 copies are known to exist, in the whole world. And I got it dirt cheap. So if we all start looking for that issue of WRITE, someone will find it. I've added it to my mental list.
 
Hi David,
I have heard the great story of your find but maybe they would be interested in how you picked up a book worth easily $15,000 at a minimum for $5....

Bill
 
bospress.net said:
Does anyone even know where it was supposed to have been published from? For example, if it was published in Philly, there is the best chance that it will show up in that area...

Bill, check the "WRITE magazine" thread in the Books, Mags, Pubs section. I did quite a bit of research on this missing link and all of my findings are posted there.
 
Rekrab said:
You have to believe that you WILL find it, against all odds, and then start looking and never stop.

That is the EXACT method I used to obtain my 1/50 copy of POST OFFICE all those years ago. To date, it has not worked quite as well for WRITE, but part of the strategy is to never lose hope.
 
Write is out there. I think people didn't really know to look for it for a long time since it wasn't in Dorbin. At least that's what I'm telling myself. I think we will live to see a copy. ;)

Unless --- knowing the way the small literary zines work, Write may have sent Bukowski an acceptance letter but never actually published the work, or folded before they had a chance. Bukowski could have assumed it was published but he just never received a copy. It's a possibility.
 
bospress.net said:
I have heard the great story of your find but maybe they would be interested in how you picked up a book worth easily $15,000 at a minimum for $5....

I don't know the story.....
Please tell.
$15,000! book for $5?!?!?!
That's more than a helluva find....
 
The impossibly rare book that I found is the first, self-published book by Opal S. Whiteley. She was a child prodigy, a nature mystic, and a literary genius. She died in a mental hospital in London in 1992, where she had been locked up since 1948 for being paranoid schitzophrenic. Also possibly the first hippie in Eugene, Oregon. Her childhood diary, THE STORY OF OPAL; THE JOURNAL OF AN UNDERSTANDING HEART, was a best seller in 1920, for a few months, anyway. The circumstances of the book's writing are shroud in mystery and controversy. Shortly after publication, it was claimed that she wrote the diary as an adult, not a child, and it was branded a hoax. Personally, I feel it was written as a child and embellished as an adult. That's all a long story. Anyway, in 1918, before the diary was published, she self-published her first book, THE FAIRYLAND AROUND US. It's a compilation of short stories, essays, diary excerpts and poems on the subject of nature. It was meant to be used in educating children. She couldn't afford to have the many color plates of animals and plants printed so she bought up old plates that were left over from other books and hand-wrote captions on them. The book is heavily illustrated, so this involved a huge amount of labor by her. She also included a few of what I call "picture poems" -- nature prints on which she has hand-written her own poetry. These are beautiful works of art. There were somewhere between 100 and 300 copies printed. It's believed the printer may have destroyed some of those copies. Her diary is world famous, but FAIRYLAND is practically unknown. The text is available online, but as far as I know it's never been reprinted. I wanted a copy of the actual book because I plan to reprint at least some of it, and I was disatisfied with the web version. There were about 10 or 11 copies known before I found mine, mostly in libraries. Because it's rare and valuable, access to those copies is limited. I doubt they'd let anyone throw it on a copy machine or scanner. I set out to find my own copy of FAIRYLAND about 1995. I really believed I would find it and searched regularly. If I went into a used bookstore, I'd always look for it. I did a lot of searching online as well. Early one morning in 2005, I found it offered for sale on a website for a mere $6. I won't say exactly what website (it's a great source for me and I'm keeping it a secret), but it wasn't eBay. It's a place where you wouldn't expect to find a rare book at a low price, and therefore it seems nobody else had noticed it before I came across it that morning. Obsviously, the seller was clueless. It was incorrectly described as being only a few pages long. No image, no details. I bought it instantly. I thought maybe I was buying the book's prospectus, which is also very rare, and I'd be happy to have that, although I wanted the book more. It took two weeks to arrive by media mail, during which I almost went insane with anticipation. Finally it came, and it was the real thing, in decent condition, with her handwriting in Inda ink on all of the prints, the captions and picture poems. A miracle, and yet it happened. I don't think it was luck alone. I think I put out a homing signal for the thing and it more or less crawled through time and space towards me. This method has worked for me with a couple other very rare books, but Opal's FAIRYLAND is the best example. It sounds like woo-woo, the idea that I somehow "willed" it to come to me, but if you dip into Quantuum theory, you'll find that -- in fact -- it's quite likely that's how the universe actually works. You can draw good things to you if your intentions are pure. Here's a spooky aspect. I found the book only a couple weeks after my mother died. I was writing a letter to a close friend, telling him about her death, and decided to write it on some paper that had the name of the book across the top of each otherwise blank sheet. I was in a highly emotional state when I wrote the letter, and wasn't sure why I wanted to use that paper. A week later, I found the book. Weird, huh? By the way, Opal is an author Buk would surely have hated. He'd have had no patience for her convoluted baroque style and her sentimentalism. Her third (and last) published book was a collection of poems, FLOWER OF STARS (1923), self-published. It's almost universally disparaged, although I think some of the poems are good, some are even excellent. I'm looking for a copy. I'll find it. The manuscript of her complete diary (only a fraction of which was published) was sadly lost by the publisher. I have a feeling it'll turn up someday. FAIRYLAND would bring, I'm guessing, $5,000 to $10,000 on eBay, possibly more. I don't plan to sell it. It's not about the money; that's not why I wanted the book. Bringing this back to Bukowski, I think WRITE can be found, but it will be very tough because of the title. "Write" is a very common word, making computer searching unproductive, and the fact that it's labelled as amature writing means most copies will have been tossed out over the years as junk. But a few may be hiding in basements or attics. Let's just hope that whoever comes across a copy recognizes Bukowski's name and saves it from destruction. The films may help there.

David
 
Bukefan:

Here's some links to the online version of THE FAIRYLAND AROUND US, her diary, and a page of info on Opal Whiteley:

http://www.efn.org/~caruso/fairyland/

http://intersect.uoregon.edu/opal/default.html

http://www.efn.org/~opal/

While it's good to have the FAIRYLAND text available online, the way the site is set up is very nonlinear and you get no sense of the order and flow of the original book. Also, the online version doesn't show her handwritten picture poems -- well only one, and that's a black and white photoreproduction (as in the book) of a pciture poem. She's a strange case. If anyone's intrigued, I suggest reading the diary first. It's unique, amazing. The FAIRYLAND is quirky, bizarre at times, sometimes dull, sometimes great. She self-edited and it has a crude, amaturish feel to it. But if you're into Opal, it's the Holy Grail. How strange discussing her on a Buk Forum...the very last place I would have imagined doing so. Life is full of surprises.

David
 
Thank you for the links, David! I can see that the sites are very extensive so I?ll have to find the time to take a thorough look at them. They look exstremely interesting! In the last link it's said that FAIRYLAND is worth 3-500 $ and that only 5 copies are known. That must be old figures for such a rare book must be worth a considerable amount of money. Just thought I would mention it...
 
Bukefan said:
In the last link it's said that FAIRYLAND is worth 3-500 $ and that only 5 copies are known. That must be old figures for such a rare book must be worth a considerable amount of money. Just thought I would mention it...

I noticed that myself. It would be a screaming deal at $500. Might be old information. I'm basing my higher estimated value of FAIRYLAND on the fact that Opal Whiteley's third book, FLOWER OF STARS, is much more common than FAIRYLAND AROUND US, and there's less interest in it/respect for it among her diehard fans, and yet when a copy comes on the market (once or twice a year), there's intense competition and it sells for $200 and up. The last one I saw was on eBay, a shabby copy that looked -- honest to God -- like it had been rained on, the cover all spotted and buckled, and although it was inscribed, that page was all bleeding and faded from being wet. I think someone left it out in bad weather. Anyway, there were plenty of bidders and they ran it up to $500 or $600. FAIRYLAND is much rarer, never comes on the market, is more alluring as her first, hand-assembled and self-published book, and more sought after than FLOWER OF STARS. So I'm figuring it would do much better at auction, and get at least $2,000. There's a lot of interest in Opal. A couple biographies have come out in the last few years, and there's been talk of films. If properly listed on eBay, a copy would go nuts, I think. Or maybe I'm dreaming? The $300 to $500 estimate may also be an example of someone getting a hell of a bargain. I know I'd buy a second copy for $300 sight unseen, in a heartbeat. But I'm obsessed. As for the number of copies, I've done some digging and have a rough list of 10 or 11 copies known, plus mine. I should write to the web master and ask about the statement. My guess is that it's outdated info that's been there for years.

David
 

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