...and was shocked when he said 'true geniuses like Idi Amin and Adolf Hitler will become less and less'..
I'll put it down to him being drunk as a lord, but still.
Stuff like this makes him an incredibly easy target. Despite the fact I think his writing is sublime, it will unfortunately always come secondary with a lot of people.
I think that Mr Bukowski had been an easy target most of his life.
He was certainly an easy target, and a captive one, for his Father. He talks
quite a bit about it. Then too, he was an easy target for the landed gentry,
which he was apart from. There is the scene in Barfly where he makes a little
money buying food for others, and certainly the scenes in Barfly where the
Bartender beats the blood out of him, and beats the blood out of him on more
than one occasion.
In his past, he talked Nazi propaganda, and not a few have made
controversy from this,
Was Bukowski a Nazi, you know.
My impression is that writing is a lonely life, or it can be, and writers
sometimes take liberties to entertain themselves at the expense of the truth.
Yes. There are certain risks involved in that. And, Hey? Life is too important
to be taken seriously, and all that, you know?
Another example you may run across is a short piece he wrote about raping a
small child. Was Bukowski a madman, a terrorist, a bloodthirsty, people eating,
baby-raping, anti-Semite? The facts show differently.
All in all, more grist for the Bukowski mill which brings fans together, and keeps
the less interested away more effectively than any no trespassing sign ever
could.
I think he would've liked that.