Christmas Sucks! (1 Viewer)
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Digney in Burnaby
donkeys live a long time
I can't think of any Bukowski lines, let alone poems or stories, that dealt with Xmas. Or any other major holiday for that matter. Probably just another day, another way, that people got on his nerves.
(I'm sure some Xmas lines from Bukowski must be sitting in front of my nose. I've come to realize I haven't reread a lot of the books I have, just reading the new releases as I get them. Now I'm knocking off the dust from the book shelf, and knocking the cobwebs from my brain as well.)
bp
(I'm sure some Xmas lines from Bukowski must be sitting in front of my nose. I've come to realize I haven't reread a lot of the books I have, just reading the new releases as I get them. Now I'm knocking off the dust from the book shelf, and knocking the cobwebs from my brain as well.)
bp
Digney in Burnaby
donkeys live a long time
I managed to put "Christmas" in the poem database search engine and came up with that and others. (My brain works slow, when working at all.) Wish I knew the melody to the hymn at the end of the Mockingbird Christmas poem about his daughter's Christmas pageant. At least I think it's a hymn.
the only good poet
One retreat after another without peace.
interesting to note in an interview marina said that she never saw her father drunk or raise his voice, that she could go to him with a problem and he would fix it.
just shows we're given a bad rep
because of a few lousy drunks.
:D
It also goes to show that Bukowski was instrumental in forging his own myth. John Martin has told me on many occasions that he RARELY saw Bukowski drunk! He points out, correctly, that someone as soused as he purported to be could never produce the thousands stories, poems and letters AND hold down a series of physically demanding jobs.
the only good poet
One retreat after another without peace.
Quote:someone as soused as he purported to be could never produce the thousands stories, poems and letters AND hold down a series of physically demanding jobs.
i can vouch for that! if you take the english writer jeffrey bernard, who was more a journalist than a creative writer, granted, but who also loved the booze, the horses, and carved a career out of being himself - he couldn't always manage to make the deadline for his weekly column "lowlife" in the spectator newspaper. the column would be replaced by the words, rather euphemistically, "jeffrey bernard is unwell." anyone familiar with his collected "lowlife" collumns?
i can vouch for that! if you take the english writer jeffrey bernard, who was more a journalist than a creative writer, granted, but who also loved the booze, the horses, and carved a career out of being himself - he couldn't always manage to make the deadline for his weekly column "lowlife" in the spectator newspaper. the column would be replaced by the words, rather euphemistically, "jeffrey bernard is unwell." anyone familiar with his collected "lowlife" collumns?
I'm surprised with that. Did she grow up with him???
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Maybe he didn't really drink at all:p
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A Personal Favorite
I am reminded that not every author covers the same subjects with equal interest, and my favorite Christmas horror story is not recounted by Charles Bukowski, but by Henry Miller in Nexus, Chapter 6. He's got the whole artificial holiday scene down to the letter. It's hilarious as he is compelled to return to the bosom of the family, to a mother who hates that he's a penniless writer, with his wife Mona and her lesbian girlfriend Stasia in tow. I read it once year as one of my holiday sanity rituals, for a laugh and to say yes to about everything he mentions on this day of dread; and the entire book can be legally downloaded through Olympia Press for a dollar.
Excerpt:
....To add to my distress, Christmas was almost upon us. It was the season of the year I not only loathed but dreaded. Since attaining manhood I had never known a good Christmas. No matter how I fought against it, Christmas day always found me in the bosom of the family"”the melancholy knight wrapped in his black armor, forced like every other idiot in Christendom to stuff his belly and listen to the utterly empty babble of his kin.
Though I had said nothing as yet about the coming event"”if only it were the celebration of the birth of a free spirit!"”I kept wondering under what circumstances, in what condition of mind and heart, the two of us would find ourselves on that festive doomsday...
As usual, [at his parent's home] I began by choking on my own saliva. A hangover from boyhood days. My mother sat opposite me, as she always did, carving knife in hand. On my right sat my father, whom I used to glance at out of the corner of my eye, apprehensive lest in his drunken state he would explode over one of my mother's sarcastic quips. He had been on the wagon now for many a year, but still I choked, even without a morsel of food in my mouth. Everything that was said had been said, and in exactly the same way, in exactly the same tone, a thousand times. My responses were the same as ever, too. I spoke as if I were twelve years old and had just learned to recite the catechism by heart. To be sure, I no longer mentioned, as I did when a boy, such horrendous names as Jack London, Karl Marx, Balzac or Eugene V. Debs. I was slightly nervous now because, though I myself knew all the taboos by heart, Mona and Stasia were still "free spirits" and who knows, they might behave as such. Who could say at what moment Stasia might come up with an outlandish name"”like Randinsky, Marc Chagall, Zadkine, Brancusi, or Lipschitz? Worse, she might even invoke such names as Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda or Gautama the Buddha. I prayed with all my heart that, even in her cups, she would not mention such names as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman or Prince Kropotkin.
Fortunately, my sister was busy reeling off the names of news commentators, broadcasters, crooners, musical comedy stars, neighbors and relatives, the whole roll call connected and interconnected with a spate of catastrophes which invariably caused her to weep, drool, dribble, sniffle and snuffle.
She's doing very well, our dear Stasia, I thought to myself. Excellent table manners too. For how long?
...et cetera, et cetera...
--
Anyway, the best to everyone during this diabolical time of year... I'm luckier than most because I actually come from a family that mostly likes and respects each other, and accepts me for the bohemian that I am; but they're conservative people and conventional. Will be in CA for a pleasant week. "”Poptop.
I am reminded that not every author covers the same subjects with equal interest, and my favorite Christmas horror story is not recounted by Charles Bukowski, but by Henry Miller in Nexus, Chapter 6. He's got the whole artificial holiday scene down to the letter. It's hilarious as he is compelled to return to the bosom of the family, to a mother who hates that he's a penniless writer, with his wife Mona and her lesbian girlfriend Stasia in tow. I read it once year as one of my holiday sanity rituals, for a laugh and to say yes to about everything he mentions on this day of dread; and the entire book can be legally downloaded through Olympia Press for a dollar.
Excerpt:
....To add to my distress, Christmas was almost upon us. It was the season of the year I not only loathed but dreaded. Since attaining manhood I had never known a good Christmas. No matter how I fought against it, Christmas day always found me in the bosom of the family"”the melancholy knight wrapped in his black armor, forced like every other idiot in Christendom to stuff his belly and listen to the utterly empty babble of his kin.
Though I had said nothing as yet about the coming event"”if only it were the celebration of the birth of a free spirit!"”I kept wondering under what circumstances, in what condition of mind and heart, the two of us would find ourselves on that festive doomsday...
As usual, [at his parent's home] I began by choking on my own saliva. A hangover from boyhood days. My mother sat opposite me, as she always did, carving knife in hand. On my right sat my father, whom I used to glance at out of the corner of my eye, apprehensive lest in his drunken state he would explode over one of my mother's sarcastic quips. He had been on the wagon now for many a year, but still I choked, even without a morsel of food in my mouth. Everything that was said had been said, and in exactly the same way, in exactly the same tone, a thousand times. My responses were the same as ever, too. I spoke as if I were twelve years old and had just learned to recite the catechism by heart. To be sure, I no longer mentioned, as I did when a boy, such horrendous names as Jack London, Karl Marx, Balzac or Eugene V. Debs. I was slightly nervous now because, though I myself knew all the taboos by heart, Mona and Stasia were still "free spirits" and who knows, they might behave as such. Who could say at what moment Stasia might come up with an outlandish name"”like Randinsky, Marc Chagall, Zadkine, Brancusi, or Lipschitz? Worse, she might even invoke such names as Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda or Gautama the Buddha. I prayed with all my heart that, even in her cups, she would not mention such names as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman or Prince Kropotkin.
Fortunately, my sister was busy reeling off the names of news commentators, broadcasters, crooners, musical comedy stars, neighbors and relatives, the whole roll call connected and interconnected with a spate of catastrophes which invariably caused her to weep, drool, dribble, sniffle and snuffle.
She's doing very well, our dear Stasia, I thought to myself. Excellent table manners too. For how long?
...et cetera, et cetera...
--
Anyway, the best to everyone during this diabolical time of year... I'm luckier than most because I actually come from a family that mostly likes and respects each other, and accepts me for the bohemian that I am; but they're conservative people and conventional. Will be in CA for a pleasant week. "”Poptop.
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the only good poet
One retreat after another without peace.
i think not. marina and her mother had moved out within the first year of her life, although she often stayed at his later on.
sounes says in his bio, about the time francEyE and marina lives with b:
"When he stayed home, he emptied beer bottles by the half dozen, clanging empties into the garbage until neighbours yelled for him to shut up(...)"
"Alcohol was so much a part of daily life that the first word Marina learned to read was 'liquor' (...)" p76
but maybe this is the neat, compartmentalization of a biographer, having read the works...
"enigma" springs to mind. :confused:
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onTopic&by the way:
Letter from buk to carlWeissner,25.2.1992(2years prior to his death),Screams from the balcony:
"..it was smart from you, that you took off with mike over the holidays to arizona.
...i only remember that i pushed over the christmass tree.
And, without success, tried to set it on fire.
..."
i really like this guy,psychotic and full of moxy till the end.
Letter from buk to carlWeissner,25.2.1992(2years prior to his death),Screams from the balcony:
"..it was smart from you, that you took off with mike over the holidays to arizona.
...i only remember that i pushed over the christmass tree.
And, without success, tried to set it on fire.
..."
i really like this guy,psychotic and full of moxy till the end.
