I am yet to meet anybody who ever heard of Bukowski. (1 Viewer)

In '97 I drove around San Pedro looking for his burial spot, and out of dozen people, nobody but one knew that they had a famous poet in town. He, didn't know Bukowski name but he gave me directions to Green Hills where "poet" was buried.

At the cemetery very friendly folks knew who I was looking for they gave me a marked map that led to the spot. Interestingly, he noted, Bukowski gets mostly foreign visitors.


No wonder, I am yet to meet anybody who ever heard of Bukowski.
 
I think 1,781 buk.net members may disagree with you -- and that's just one small corner of the world wide web we're counting.

CarversDog I am talking about 'in real life person contact. In Vegas, his books had to be specially ordered from the bookstores in the eighties. Only some-time after his death you could buy them at the Tower-records or Good Guys or something like that?!

Just couple of weeks ago I met a fellow from San Pedro, and I was surprised he never heard of him. He was a musician with the band from L.A.

However, some years ago I saw a young airman with fresh purchased copy of Ham on Rye in his plastic bag. I smiled and said: There is a hope:)
 
would you be happier if oprah featured buk on her book club and every dumb housewife in the usa went around quoting him? i know i wouldn't. as long as i know what's good that's all that matters to me :)
 
james has made the Mt. Everest of points.

At least from my perspective. I guess it might mean that Bukowski is a bit of a ....what ....an outsider.;)
 
I put fake names on my desk at work, to see who there really knows my name & who doesn't...so, when some newbie walks in & says "Hello Holden--can you help me find a file?" I know 1) he doesn't know me & 2) he hasn't read that book. I had Henry Chinaksi up not too long ago & a guy stopped, immediately got the fake name thing & we had a good chat about Buk's writing.

He's popular enough to have a following & obscure enough to allow us all to feel like we're in on some great secret! It's a perfect fit, I think.
 
when i was going to visit his grave last fall/autumn, i experienced, that not only the bus-driver To San Pedro had No idea, where the local cemetry was, but also at the LOCAL HOSPITAL they didn't know Who this Bukowski-person was!
wasn't he there at the time he died? okay - it's some time away, but still ... - i was surprised.
 
Well, it has been 14 years since he died. We have short memories here.

But not being known as BUKOWSKI THE FAMOUS AUTHOR is one of the reasons he liked living in San Pedro. If you've been there you know it is not exactly a literary joint, or a place that puts anyone up on a pedestal. It is still a rough around the edges port town, as much as developers would wish otherwise.
 
Yep. I don't know a living soul in actual real life who knows Bukowski.. only people from this damn website >.> And I've met others from the internet. But nobody I've actually known from before.

People miss out on things.
 
I've met lots of people, both when I was living in MA and now in OR too. But most of them are into poetry, not just "on the street" people.
 
At one time, I hung with a few people who wrote poetry and short stories. I've moved along from that, but the only person I've really known who read Buk is the guy in Connecticut who introduced him to me. That happened to be in a men's room at our work place in 1987. He had the book open to a poem as we were pissing. That damned poem about wandering through Sears, looking at tools and things he wasn't interested in and jamming popcorn kernels into his mouth and feeling like a total asshole. It's from Dangling in the Tournefortia. I was hooked.

Anyway, the only other person I know who knows Buk is my wife (other than you all, but I don't know you all), and that's only because I insisted that she read some. I've also read some of his poems aloud, because we both love the word.

Happy with that. Yes.
 
I've actually met a few people that had heard of bukowski, but most of them had comments like "I heard he was really depressing" or something ignorantly simular. I've enlightened a number of family members at least to his worth as a serious writer,( I had to do this because they couldn't help but notice an entire book case filled with nothing but bukowski's, and they wanted to be assured that I hadn't started following some sort of warped religious cult leader) My x-wife learned to appreaciate him and my youngest daughter really gets it, so I feel good about that.
 
it's probably because most people could give a goddamn about poetry anyway. I can see where they're coming from most of the time. i bet a hell of a lot of people dont know who Robert Frost is. Or Whitman.
 
I seriously hang with a different group of people, I
guess. Everyone I meet knows of Bukowski.

They don't know about me, very few people do,
I'm a very private person, but they know of
Charles Bukowski.

Of course I don't live in Bukowski's home town, so
maybe that's it.
 
I've run into quite a number of people who know who Bukowski was and many of them have read him. His books have been available in the bookstores here as long as I've been in Oregon. From my perpective, he stopped being a "secret" enjoyed only by a few insiders sometime around 1980.
 
I've met a few people who have heard of Bukowski. Their opinions range from "he was OK" to "he was an American great". In many arts/poetry conversations I get into, his name rings very few bells, but when they do, I know I've met a soulmate - guaranteed.
 
seems like many many people i know know who he is also. even the ones who don't write.

it also seems as though writers always either love him or hate him.
 
I have my own great postman!
He knows of Bukowski because I paint Bukowski.
Wants to knows when I'll paint him too.
He spots old stuff in the garbage, brings it to my junk shop for beer money.
We are a team!:)
 
I meet many people who claim they have heard his name, but can't tell what he writes let alone name a book by him. I usually drop it as a subject after saying he sometimes writes about the seamy side of life. The typical response is, "Oh!", then we move on to other things.
Am I the only one who wants to tell them he sneers at people like us? ;)
 
I am a librarian so I run across people who know him, but almost nobody who likes him. When they find out he's one of my favorites, they start to wonder about ME, so I've become more careful about who I mention it to. When I've recommended him to people who haven't read him, they're giving me the skunk eye next time they see me. I run a book discussion at work, and, let me tell you, I sure don't pick Buk for that. I wish I could but it would not fly, and I wouldn't try David Sedaris either, even though that would be equally enjoyable to me.
 
I am a librarian so I run across people who know him, but almost nobody who likes him. When they find out he's one of my favorites, they start to wonder about ME, so I've become more careful about who I mention it to. When I've recommended him to people who haven't read him, they're giving me the skunk eye next time they see me. I run a book discussion at work, and, let me tell you, I sure don't pick Buk for that. I wish I could but it would not fly, and I wouldn't try David Sedaris either, even though that would be equally enjoyable to me.

Really?
So people must really be stupid then. Just as I suspected. :p

the funny thing about bukowski is that his characters are fun to read about, but if it ever came to things, you wouldn't want to be hit on at a bar by some mangy, ugly, scar-faced drunk.
 
anna101 said:
the funny thing about bukowski is that his characters are fun to read about, but if it ever came to things, you wouldn't want to be hit on at a bar by some mangy, ugly, scar-faced drunk.

true.
I only want to be hit on by pretty drunks.
know any?
I'll be here all night, by the bar. just let me know. I'll be the handsome bastard trying not to vomit into his G&T. take me home.
in the morning i'll be twice as handsome. promise.

;)
 
I'll tell ya one thing, granted, I was the first person I knew to know of him, but EVERYONE I've introduced him to has liked something about him. Gals and Guys alike. Particularly his poems, my exgf even memorized and recited one for a class! and she didn't agree with his views but knew recognized his talent. Also, if you ever want to give a girl a Buk book, Women is the one. They all love (to hate) it! Don't ya ladies... But really, everyone I've shown him to say he's FUNNY, DIRTY, and BEAUTIFUL. I don't know where I'm going with this, I guess just always carry a copy of your favorite poem of his around to give to people. They can't deny his truth...for too long :)
 
Chit, no wonder I never got lucky in all those coffee houses and bistros. Instead of Andre Gide, I should have pretended I was reading Buk.
 
OMG you were fucking reading GIDE????
WHAT WHAT
are you talking about that guy who had a thing for oscar wilde or something??

true.
I only want to be hit on by pretty drunks.
know any?
I'll be here all night, by the bar. just let me know. I'll be the handsome bastard trying not to vomit into his G&T. take me home.
in the morning i'll be twice as handsome. promise.

;)

lets make it a date, baby ;)
 
anna, it was the era of the "New Age Sensitive Man", reading Gide in a bistro was supposed to be chick bait. You're too young to remember that bygone time.:D
 
lol! wow.
well, now its bukowski era, baby. the era of the roughed up drunk.

hey.. if reading a specific kind of literature can get you chicks, i need to consider reading bukowski at my university. just at the cafe or library. anywhere where theres people. maybe a kindred spirit will suddenly reveal himself and say hi to me. ive been searching all around for buk fans. i even put my email in buk library books. :( all to no avail, thus far.
 
where were you when I was in university? well, not you because you were born when I was in second year, but someone like you? you know, more age appropriate?
 
haha.
i was in the womb, already thinking about bukowski =)

where are people like YOU in my university? all i can find is effeminate little boys who like to read milton or chaucer.
 

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