• If you start a thread here you have permission to edit the thread and your posts indefinitely. So if the status of your sale or auction changes, please come back and update the thread.

I have a couple letters up on eBay, 1970s (1 Viewer)

very nice looking letters, David. I hope they fetch a handsome price, I'm dure they will.
 
Thanks, hoochmonkey. Hope you're right about the price.

Just noticed the "9" on your ID. Are there 8 other hoochmonkeys?
 
god, I hope not.
when I was first creating an email for myself years ago, I confused the user name field with the password field. I'm a bit of a tech twit.
but I liked the sound of it, and now it's my default for any user names that I create on the internet. sort of a reminder of my stupidity; keeps me humble (HA!).
 
Oh, that is brutal to see the chopped up letter.

I will be watching your auction, as I have a letter I may be unloading soon myself. Don't know what the market is like these days...it changes so frequently now.
 
The cut up letter reflects, to some degree, I think, the fact that we had no idea back then that Bukowski would get as huge a reputation as he now has. He was big to us, his devoted fans and readers, but we were a cultish minority. The masses had no idea of who he was until, maybe, the Barfly film. We didn't give much thought to buying up material when it was dirt cheap, to preserving things. I've kicked myself a thousand times for not buying a few cassette tapes and recording Bukowski when I was around him. Took no photos. Didn't even keep notes on what he said and did. Only a decade later, in the early 80s, did I start writing down what I still remembered. In that context, cutting up one of Buk's letters was no big deal to Leo. But now, of course, it's horrifying. I guess having the other, intact letter, kind of salvages the mutilated letter from being completely worthless. The one authenticates the other, I suppose. That's why I listed them together. I doubt anyone would even bid on the cut up letter alone.

Yeah, I wonder myself what the market is these days for letters. Guess I'll find out.
 
I'm not a manuscript collector, could use the money, and someone else who specializes in Buk manuscripts should probably have these anyway. For me, the important thing is to have copies of all of his books -- at least the ones I can afford.

David, I think I'm 'mentally' where you are with my collection, I've been collecting nearly 20 years, it's a LARGE collection, but 'today' I need/want the money. I am also keeping the BASICS (all BSP items, plus a few signed items...), the rest of it is going... I start looking at a signed ITALIAN version of HOLLYWOOD asking what does this mean to me anymore...?
6 months from now I'll be kicking myself, begging for my signed NYG's back! :)
or maybe not...

Anyone remotely interested in BUK foreign editions, I'm going to post a ton of GERMAN/FRENCH/CHINESE/ITALIAN, etc.. editions, some of the GERMAN versions are really nice, anyone seen WESTERN AVENUE? Great production, nice slip case...(I'm a big fan of the slip case! :))
 
Anyone remotely interested in BUK foreign editions, I'm going to post a ton of GERMAN/FRENCH/CHINESE/ITALIAN, etc.. editions, some of the GERMAN versions are really nice, anyone seen WESTERN AVENUE? Great production, nice slip case...(I'm a big fan of the slip case! :)

Any Dutch editions?
 
theeffects:

Right. For me it's not a sacrifice giving up the letters. Sure, they are incredible to see, to handle, but I'm keeping copies I can read later. Selling off my BSP paperback reprint of POST OFFICE, however, would be very much a sacrifice. And like I said, I sure could use the money.
 
Last week my best friend ( a lady ) asked me; "Do you ever want a signed Buk-book?". I responded something like, "gimme the money of the signed book so I can buy his books I don't have yet".
 
I noticed something interesting on one of the Buk letters I have up for auction. It was used as a backing sheet for typing another letter (done, I seem to recall, to protect the patten, or roller, on the typer) and there is a latent image of the previous letter on this letter -- indented letters without ink. I can make out a few words and might be able to figure out the entire latent letter if I studied it. That gave me the idea that someone could study all of Buk's typed manuscripts (a big project) and possibly discover many lost letters, poems, pages of prose. He was careless with his manuscripts (in the early days), didn't keep carbons, and no doubt some works have been lost. This may be a way to recover those lost texts. Okay, when THAT book comes out, I want credit.
 
You can see that 'undertyping' on every typed manuscript and letter that I've had my hands on, and Martin craftily mimicked the effect on a few of the pages of Terror Street using blind embossing.

If you lightly rub the edge of a soft pencil over a page like that you can bring out the bind typing, but you really wouldn't want to do that to a letter, obviously. Maybe there are other techniques...strong light at an angle? I'll have to try that with some to see what I get. Problem is the typing over the blind typing wipes a lot of it out.
 
Sounds like the beginings of "The Bukowski Code" to me - a best selling book by David Barker that uncovers lost letters by one Charles Bukowski that show he was a direct decendant of Jesus Christ....


...only a much better writer


:)
 
mjp: That was my thought: strong light at a severe angle, to exaggerate the shadows, and then digital processing to really bring out the latent images. They're done some amazing recoveries of ancient scolls dug up from the city near Pompeii, Herculaneum, that were charred black and resembled charcoal logs. Using some kind of satellite imagery technology, the original texts are being recovered. These typewriter backup sheets would be a peice of cake with that kind of technology. If Buk did this a lot -- and it sounds like he did -- it could be a good source of unknown texts.
 
Astute of you. I noticed a difference in clarity but just figured he had put in a new ribbon.

I took another look at the letter with the ghostly image of a second letter on it (from having been used as a backup sheet.) It's not clear enough for me to make out more than a few random words like "Hello," "poem" and "will." I still think someone doing serious scientific analysis on Buk's typescripts could recover some of the hidden texts. It would be a fascinating project, and might turn up some important lost work.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top