Great news! (1 Viewer)

[cirerita]

I'll receive copies of the correspondence from Bukowski to Caresse Crosby soon, and maybe a copy of the "Twenty Tanks" manuscript...

I'll keep you posted.

Hey, if any of you guys have any clue as to where the letters to Barbara Frye might be, that would be great. I cannot seem to find them anywhere at all, and they must be somewhere... unless Barbara burned them! There are a few letters from Barbara in the Crews collection, maybe they're interesting, who knows?

 

[Bukfan]

Wow - that really is great news! It would be interesting to see what he wrote to Caresse Crosby, his first editor (I think)...

 

[mjp]

Hey, if any of you guys have any clue as to where the letters to Barbara Frye might be, that would be great. I cannot seem to find them anywhere at all, and they must be somewhere...

Maybe Purple Stickpin knows.

Do you have reason to believe that she unloaded them at some point? I always assumed she held onto them and someone threw them into a dumpster when she died...

 

[cirerita]

no, no reason at all, I just remembered that Wayne P. apparently burned the drawings for Atomic Scribblings and maybe Barbara did something similar... I bet those letters -and probably poems and stories by B. from the 1955-1957 period- are somewhere in Texas... or with the eskimo family!

 

[mjp]

I guess whether they exist depends on who was around when she died, and how much value they placed on her stuff. It's pretty common - here in America, anyway - to chuck all of grandma's stuff into the trash when she dies, so they can hurry up and sell the house. And old correspondence --- man, if someone who has no grasp of its importance is going through your stuff the day after the funeral, they are not going to give it a second thought.

But again, it depends on so many factors. I hope it all survived. I've just seen and heard of so many things that should be treasured being sent to the landfill. It's disturbing.

 

[cirerita]

Ha! You were not thinking of that story by B where he goes to his parents house after his father dies and he lets the neighbors keep all the stuff, were you? ;)

I would PAY to read that letter where B. accepted to marry Barbara!

 

[mjp]

Ha! You were not thinking of that story by B where he goes to his parents house after his father dies and he lets the neighbors keep all the stuff, were you? ;)

No, but I think that passage is among the funniest things he's ever written. And his passive reaction to the neighbor's behavior is a classic Bukowski template. Or should I say, classic Chinaski.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Maybe Purple Stickpin knows.

Once again, I have no idea. ;)

 

[MULLINAX]

no, no reason at all, I just remembered that Wayne P. apparently burned the drawings for Atomic Scribblings and maybe Barbara did something similar... I bet those letters -and probably poems and stories by B. from the 1955-1957 period- are somewhere in Texas... or with the eskimo family!

Wasn't she decapitated in India by weirdo oddball religious cultists?

 

[bospress.net]

I know that she died in India and that her family declined to receive the body. I'm not sure if she was estranged or what. I always thought that was a strange story, but if her family did not even want her remains, I doubt they wanted letters from her ex-husband.

I had not heard that she was killed in India. Did I miss this somewhere? Sometimes (often) I read and then forget....

Bill

 

[MULLINAX]

I forget everything, but I seem to recall, from somewhere in my "Books about Bukowski" collection, that Barbara's daughter burned down a house and then the two traipsed off to an ashram (to get that 'deep spirituality' that is so absent in the West) with the daughter returning Stateside and Frye losing her head.

 

[Bukfan]

Barry Miles has this to say about Barbara's death:

"She later moved to Aniak, Alaska, where she married a Japanese fisherman called Hayakawa and had several children. In 1991 Hank heard that she had died in India where she was part of some religious sect but that nobody in her family wanted the body. One of her daughters commited suicide not long after."

I wonder if the Japanese fisherman might have some of Barbara's Buk letters - or maybe one of her children...

 

[cirerita]

That sounds suspiciously similar to what Sounes says in his bio re. Barbara and her daughter deaths.

 

[Bukfan]

Miles probably got it from Sounes. Sounes'book came first and has more info on Frye than Miles has, such as Frye wrote childrens books and claimed to be a psychic, and that one of her daughters had a drug problem and burned down the family home which was why Frye and the daughter travelled to India.
Miles book appear to have been a desk job contrary to Sounes who interviewed a lot of people etc.