On Cats (2 Viewers)

he tried to paint a cat again only it came out as a dog
:D
Maybe he had been drawing cats all the time:

Dog 1.jpg
Dog 2.jpg
 
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If they ever decide to publish a Buk book on drinking and women it will have to be in several volumes. :p
 
I think an On Writing collection is fine. There is plenty of precedent for that: Hemingway On Writing, Henry Miller on Writing, etc. But cats? Love? I dunno...
 
Did anyone notice the review of Diane Seuss poetry with the quick Buk mention in the link above? Looks interesting...maybe.
 
It's here, all 118 pages of it (110 without the end notes). The slimmest Bukowski book ever from a major publisher.

To be fair, Play the Piano Drunk and The Continual Condition aren't much longer, but they're longer. And they don't have photographs of cats in them.

I haven't read any of it yet.

The binding smells like...like you might expect a book full of cats to smell.
 
It's here, all 118 pages of it (110 without the end notes). The slimmest Bukowski book ever from a major publisher.

To be fair, Play the Piano Drunk and The Continual Condition aren't much longer, but they're longer.

Well, for those who care about stats, here's the actual word count for the slimmest Bukowski books:

At Terror Street: 9,300
Continual: 10,745
Play: 12,500
On Cats: 13,500
Mockingbird: 21,000
On Love: 21,900

On Cats could have been longer, but it would have been full of repetitions.

As to the longest collections by actual word count (excluding index, TOC, front matter and back matter):

Septuagenarian: 69,080 (including short stories)
Betting: 49,370 (including short stories).
Open All Night: 45,610
What Matters: 43,360
Sifting: 41,790
Last Night: 37,500

Pleasures is longer, but it's an anthology.
 
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I wasn't counting Terror Street but there you go.

The fact that it isn't the shortest Bukowski book ever when you count the words doesn't change the skimpy, unnecessary feel of the thing. I'm not surprised it was published December 1st, it seems purpose-built for holiday giving.

I just can't come down on the side of "any 'new' Bukowski is good" when they are sold like this. A 110 page book about cats is really inexcusable when there is so much uncollected work out there that's just as good - or much better - than this stuff. Of course "good" is subjective, but trivial stuff like this just reinforces the fallacy that "all the good Bukowski work has been collected," or that he somehow lost his talent at the end of his career.

I would call it disrespect, but I don't think it's intentional. It seems more like a situation where they have Bukowski, but they just don't know what to do with him. They clearly don't understand what makes him attractive to the people who read him. Which could also be said of his previous publisher.
 
When I had my first look at it, I felt like that too. A little thin and a little unnecessary.
A German publisher who had it for consideration had asked me about my opinion and I said, I would rather see this as a coffeetable-book (for cat-lovers) if properly crafted, than a book for the regular Bukowski-fan. Of course it was clear from the beginning, that all three theme-books would be sold in one packet, so if a publisher was interested in 'Writing' and 'Love', he'd have to take that one also.

At the end of the day, it was KiWi (Kiepenheuer & Witsch) who bought the books for Germany.
 
Roni,

I'm not so sure about the package thing. In Spain OW was bought by Anagrama (a big publisher) and OC was bought by Visor (the main publisher of poetry in Spanish). No idea about OL, but I think it will probably end on Visor's lap.
 
In Germany there was a sort of 'blind bidding' for each title, so technically there has been the possibility that the books could end up in different hands, but I think it was obvious here for the publishers involved, that they'd deal with the whole package.
 
I finished On Cats. I actually enjoyed Bukowski's early writing about cats (first third of the book). It helped me understand where he was coming from. But when he gets older and moves to San Pedro, the old meanings seem to get replaced by much more sentimental feelings -- he admits as much. But if the damn cats helped him live longer, more power to them I guess.

Having said that, an entire book on cats was way too much for me. Just like an entire book on playing the horses would be too much.

No matter what your take, forum members will definitely like reading Abel's intro to the sources section of the book.
 
forum members will definitely like reading Abel's intro to the sources section of the book.
I haven't read the book yet, but I picked it up to read that intro, and it's good to have the "editing" called out, in an Ecco title no less.

The fact that anyone is talking about it at all - anywhere - is good, regardless of where someone stands on its destructiveness.

It's biblical, you know. ;) Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
 

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