Down for the Count With Charles Bukowski (1 Viewer)

[Rekrab]

I have a new book out. Well, an eBook. I wanted to do it as an Amazon print-on-demand trade paperback, but their Word file template for formatting the text for printing is broken for some users, and so far, Amazon has ignored the problem. So, for now, it's an eBook, with a print edition in the future.

The book is a collection of some of my writings about Bukowski. With the exception of my much-maligned/never-should-have-written-it short memoir "Charles Bukowski Spit in My Face," none of the pieces were ever reprinted after their initial appearance in a small press chapbook or magazine decades ago.

The book is titled Down for the Count With Charles Bukowski, and you can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Count-Charles-Bukowski-David-Barker-ebook/dp/B0C81R8M8C/ Or, you can just go there to read my long-winded description of each piece.

My justification for inflicting this thing on the world is that most of these pieces are being translated into German by a German publisher. I revised them for that publisher, and I want the revised text of the memoir especially to be available in English as well. Thanks for looking.

 

[d gray]

my much-maligned/never-should-have-written-it short memoir "Charles Bukowski Spit in My Face,"

why do you say that? i remember really enjoying it. i need to read it again.

 

[Rekrab]

Thanks, d gray. It's just my way of showing that I'm not bragging about having written it, not proud. More confessing the fact, owning up to it. Publishing that short memoir literally changed the course of my life. It sorted out a lot of stuff. I piss and moan about that in the three damned prefaces to the memoir, too much, I think. I'd like to boil it down to a tolerable amount of complaining. Probably the biggest mistake I made was in giving it a sensationalistic title. People assumed the chapbook was an attack on Buk. Really, it was the opposite. It was bowing down before the god. They took it the wrong way. I'm smarter than to make such a mistake now...

 

[Purple Stickpin]

It seems that people aren't just looking for a reason to be offended these days, but have long been. I have two copies of that chapbook; a first edition/printing and a first printing of the third edition w/ art. I found it to be a relatively innocuous account of an event that probably had some considerable significance for you, but nothing in it came across as derogatory or anything close to that.

 

[Rekrab]

Thanks for that rational view of it. Yeah, it's all "knives out" in the literary world. And some, if they don't have a reason to attack you, will invent one.

 

[Rekrab]

From my Facebook page:

About my book "Down for the Count with Charles Bukowski." In college I became involved in the local small press poetry scene in Long Beach, CA. One of my profs happened to be friends with underground literary legend Charles Bukowski, and a bunch of us student poets got to hang out in Bukowski's presence before and after readings, at bars and literary parties, etc. It was great, for a while, and then it wasn't. Beer, egos, what could go wrong? In the 80s and 90s, I wrote dozens of pieces about Bukowski, almost none of which have ever been reprinted after their initial appearances in little magazines and chapbooks. This little book gathers some of them together for the first time. Here's a better image of the eBook cover. The drawing is me having a bad moment with Bukowski in the 49rs bar one night after a poetry reading.

 

[Black Swan]

Please let us know when it will come out. I will definitely get a copy.

 

[Rekrab]

I'm working on the print edition now and it should be available soon. I'll announce it here when it's ready.

 

[Rekrab]

The print edition will be published very soon. I'll announce it here when it's available.

 

[Rekrab]

Well, I'll announce it on the Forum, but in a new thread so it doesn't get buried under the eBook comments. And that will happen today.