Me too!
I still have'nt read "Beerspit.." from cover to cover, only a little bit here and there. I think it's due to Martinelli's weird writing (sunshine=zunzhine, and=&, you=yew, wd=would, is=iz, etc.etc.). It somehow turns me off.
It really sucks the first time. I was also somehow disappointed about B.'s letter-style there. So very different from all the others, seemingly trying to match up Martinelli ... but the more I've read it, the more fascinating it got.
There is a own Beerspit-thread somewhere, so I don't want to write any essays here, but if you give it a close reading (maybe excluding the Martinelli-letters at first) it shows a side of B. which is never expressed that way anywhere else. Accentuating and cultivating a sort of well-read, cultivated, artist-side of his persona interspersed with the sort of genuine
Bukowskisms (like the title of the book is one) that later and in parallel letters to the Webbs, Corrington etc. is the accent
there. Don't know if I'm able to make clear what I want to say :) ... but this kind of fascinates me. It shows the ambivalence and many many dimensions of his personality.
You get the feeling, that he had immense respect for Martinelli and at the same time he didn't gave one bit of ground to all her views and demands, playing her quite cool and skilled, through all the posing and flirting and keeping-him-interesting that might be there.
While Martinelli on the other side, though the artsy-fartsy-beat-flavor of her writing-style sucks nowadays,
was an unconventional extraordinary kind of woman, as far as one can tell from here. And she recognized the energy, power and originality of the B.-force right away and responded to it as he did to her and hers.
It's a very interesting correspondence in many ways, but very different from all the others too, so you have to kind of read yourself into it. But it's worth it, imho.
