Go climb a mountain (1 Viewer)

Read all of the biograpies and memiors?

JESUS..you people should be canonised...such dedication to one mans life...

I suggest you go ride a bike
climb a mountain
paint the house
or prepare some salom

don't waste your life
buring over the details
of someones else life
 
I suggest you go ride a bike
climb a mountain
paint the house
or prepare some salom

can't ride a bike, I have bad knees
won't climb a mountain, that just seems a bit too pointlessly macho for me
no need to paint the house, I have vinyl siding
I have no idea what "salom" is, but I'm probably allergic...
 
I think the general point was to DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE other than read book upon book of one mans life.
 
Your response to my initial post suggested you took it quite literally.
I felt the need to just make it a bit clearer. hehe. in

BIG RED CRAYON COLOUR WORDS!

I jest, i jest,
but my name isn't jess...
:cool:
 
Eh just out of curiousity = what is mjp to reconsider?:o

nothing, i, uh, must be hallucinating or something. hey olaf, don't you think it's possible to do both? i've read all the bio/memoirs i could find and i'm doing something with my life...i think..maybe?...:confused:
 
I think the general point was to DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE other than read book upon book of one mans life.
Olaf, what are you, 22 or something? Around that age?

I ask because at that age most of us were probably presumptuous little know-it-all twats too, just like you are now.

Having to put up with you is just karmic justice for us, but we can take some solace in knowing that twenty or thirty years from now, some little prick who still has his baby teeth is going to be telling you how you should be living, and you'll be thinking to yourself, "Who is this ridiculous little gnat, and why does he keep buzzing around my face?!"

Just like we are now.
 
well, mjp, I'm glad you reconsidered on this one...a little less forthright than the post you deleted, but the point is still clear...
 
WTF?

I was just making comment generally...I'm not a presumptuous little twat/

I'm utterly blown away by mjp comments.

:(

touchy touchy

honestly, i just think reading every text book on bukowski a little extreme and the fact that some folk have done it worthy of canonisation...i was joking of course...

I am 23. I you know little or nothing about me. I'm amazed mjp has made so many assumptions about me. I am quite the opposite to what you claim. I'm pretty stunned you feel so passionate about it.

mjp, why do you talk of 'we'? are you talking on behalf of everyone on the forum? I didn't realise i had made quite the negative impression on you all.

eh...

i know very little
which is a hell of a lot more
than you know ;)
 
nothing, i, uh, must be hallucinating or something. hey olaf, don't you think it's possible to do both? i've read all the bio/memoirs i could find and i'm doing something with my life...i think..maybe?...:confused:

Sure, you can do both, and my tone was very cocky i in two of my reponses, but considering the replies i generated, it wasn't that out of line.

I was generally taken aback just imaging some people reading every Bukowski Bio or I knew bukowski book....just to get a grip on the guy even more...I was truly overwhelmed and thought I was reply saying - god guys. go out and climb a mountain but don't waste your life re-reading bukowkis life in bio form.

i can see how arrogant this must be. but i didn't mean it in any know it all fashion. simply as a cheeky little observation. mjp, i concede my little obnixous ass, forgive me, i am only a baby...:)
 
I am 23. I you know little or nothing about me.
Well, I knew how old you were, so I suppose I do know something about you.

But that was an easy guess, because your attitude and outlook are common to people your age. I did say that most of us were probably the same way at that age. Did you miss that part?

You seem to be very hurt because you feel that you have been misunderstood. Yet in the same breath you would presume to tell the people in this forum - some of whom have accomplished and experienced much more than you ever will - to go out and do something with their lives? And you don't see how that is presumptuous? Come on, man.
 
I wasn't being that serious....I joked by saying...People who read all theb ios and such should be CANONISED. I wasn't being serious I was just genuinely awe struck by how much effort and dedication people would go to, to read that much, to understand the nuts and bolts of Bukowskis life.

My intital reaction was ligh-hearted laughter...I imagined someone reading ALL of Bukowskis work then preparing to troll through ALL of the Biographies and books on buk for buk to buk around buk near buk...and I just thought...This is beyond the call of duty.

I concede my tone was cocky and flippant. My humour was piss poor this time. I aplogise to Mr Gray for that. I feel no hurt - not in the slightest. I simply wasn't expecting such a vitriolic attack, but I understand where it came from...

By all means - read away, perhaps if I had made my comments in conversation they wouldn't have came across quite as prick like. It was a passing comment, nor a cheap dig.

I'm actually quite a mooncalf.
 
Well, just for clarity, these are the comments I was responding too in the orginal post reagrding 'poet friends, bios and memiors':

I'm with you David, read them all, decide for yourself.

I went on a mission to find and read them all.

Saying, do something of your life, was cheeky, but I was being flippant and for that I apologise, really I didn't mean that much by it. If this was a conversation in the house or in the street it would have been a passing joke...a rye poke...
 
Olaf, what are you, 22 or something? Around that age?

I ask because at that age most of us were probably presumptuous little know-it-all twats too, just like you are now.

Having to put up with you is just karmic justice for us, but we can take some solace in knowing that twenty or thirty years from now, some little prick who still has his baby teeth is going to be telling you how you should be living, and you'll be thinking to yourself, "Who is this ridiculous little gnat, and why does he keep buzzing around my face?!"

Just like we are now.


warning:
apparently
mjp is very sensitive regarding this issue
 
Read all of the biograpies and memiors?

...

don't waste your life
buring over the details
of someones else life

Hi Olaf,

I have similar feelings to yours and am no longer interested in elevating someone else's life far above my own, as pitiful as it may be that I never made it into the Immortal Writer's Hall of Fame. (Not that I'm a writer anyway).

Over the years, I've gathered enough "factual" details about B's anecdotal life to get the gist of it. But I *always* enjoy coming across new pictures of the old gent...any time, any place...love it! Otherwise, I'm not interested in every biographer's opinion about what B did with, let's say, the gd $ from the sale of his father's house, the father as the sulfurous Beelzebub of B's life.

Some biographers get in the way of the reader's perception of a man's life just as much as they elucidate it... It looks to me that after the sale of Beelzebub's house, B couldn't get rid of the money fast enough... And so I'm not convinced that B salted some of that money away like a good little civil servant. He probably blew it on the track just to get back at the old man and his stultifying conventional values. I would hope so... That's also the tone in one of the stories B wrote himself after the funeral: pure disgust and contempt for all that his father stood for. The rest to me is just opinion, and what a waste of time reading conjecture on some of these issues, above and beyond B's own words, whether he exaggerated for reasons of literary excess or not. I'd rather be out taking some gamble on my own. I learned it from him.

On the other hand, I appreciate those who are genuine Bukowski scholars and wish to know everything they can about the man for reasons of research or whatever. But it's still good to get out in the open and not glorify someone else at the expense of taking action ourselves, if the situation applies.

Now in a moment I'm going to turn off this bloodsucking computer on this beautiful day in Sedona and get a degenerate espresso at The Beelzebub Bakery and Bordello.

Bottom's up....Poptop
 
We love being paradoxical, don't we? ;)

Sometimes I just wish my English wasn't that stiff and I could reply the way I would in Spanish, I really miss the playfulness, the openness, the meandering(ness)... but, hey, mastering a language isn't that easy. You would think that once you've mastered the slang and the jargon then you should be done, but no, big mistake. Slang and jargon are kool, ain't that true? but they are not the key to truly mastering a language. You need that playfulness and openness I mentioned before...

anyway, back to the topic. I do believe that to really claim you're no longer blindly admiring someone the first thing you are supposed to do is to stop believing every single word that person utters, aren't you? I mean, how can I say: "You know, I no longer look up to B. as I used to do", and then just prove a point by using B.'s own reasonings??? That's just paradoxical. Yeah, I know, life's a paradox anyway.

just a final boring, scholarly note: money ALWAYS concerned B. If you had read all his unpublished letters, you would agree with me. He was always insecure, even in the 80's, when he was doing reasonably well. I bet he didn't gamble daddy's house money away...
 
I certainly agree with you cirerita. I've seen some of the published and unpublished letters BUK wrote to the Webbs and it's amazing sometimes the amount of detail and concern he would include with regards to his finances. I think being able to see through the myths an artist creates is certainly one of the benefits of scholarship and I certainly think BUK's *perceived* attitude toward money was one of those myths. However, on the other side of the coin, I suppose we are all here because we enjoy reading those myths that BUK made seem so real! So I can't really fault anyone for believing them, I'm just to much of a realist to go that way myself...

Returning to Olaf's original post though, I feel I really do have to mention that I think I do quite a bit to live "life", but still throughly enjoy collecting and learning all the various mundane details about BUK that he considers a "waste" of my life. That being said, I think there is a perspective here that Olaf may not have considered. For instance I do a fair amount of fishing, hiking, skiing, running(my first marathon is Sunday), etc. But when I come home, watching something on TV is not really important for me, nor is listening to music. Books are my TV if you will, and typically I like the "Bukowski Channel", although sometimes I change it to Melville or Whitman or whoever. I guess I don't really see living your life to the fullest and knowing the innate details of an authors life as being mutually exclusive. I suppose they can be, but I don't think they have to be.
 
I think cirerita is right too. From the published and unpublished letters we know for sure that money was always a big concern for Buk.

From Sounes Buk bio: "After he became famous, he claimed to have drunk and gambled away the inheritance, but he never revealed he had inherited $ 15,000, a substantiel amount in 1959, and it's unlikely he frittered it all away.
Freinds remembered him having thousands of dollars in savings within a few years of his fathers death, and the truth is that, from this point on, he became careful with money."

Sounes has a lot of sources for that paragraph, such as letters from the Fett family archive and unpublished letters to Corrington etc.
So I don't think that there can be any doubt that Buk saved a big part of the inheritance, even though he may have spend part of it on drink and gambling. Just my two cents...
 
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paint the house
or prepare some salom

Dear Olaf,

Are you referring to the fish 'Salom' or is this a cryptic reference to Saint Salom or Selyf (late 5th century), a Cornish saint, a King who probably succeeded his cousin, Mark, as King of Cornwall in the early 6th century and was a younger son of King Erbin of Dumnonia, married Saint Wenna, the daughter of an Irish Prince who had settled at Caer-Goch near St. David's?

Enquiring minds want to know,

SD
 
Salmon - My spelling can be quite the horrow show as you know.

But I like the accidental association with Saint Salom or Selyf...;)
 
how about this
looks like fun

Ostrichracing_l.jpg
 
Read all of the biograpies and memiors?

JESUS..you people should be canonised...such dedication to one mans life...

I suggest you go ride a bike
climb a mountain
paint the house
or prepare some salom

don't waste your life
buring over the details
of someones else life


Most people are afraid to waste their lives, isn't it? Kinda forbidden in the narrow Western world.

I can only speak for myself... to me: waste life = live life. Some are late bloomers you know...
Just try not to pressure yourself, you don't need to do anything, it's all for free.

Speaking about stiff language.....citeria.

I can delete my former stupid words or not. Ok, this time I just klick on Submit Reply, who cares.

Waste your life without blushing. What did they put in my tea today? (1:55 pm, European time)
 

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