Random Thoughts that relate to Bukowski in some way (2 Viewers)

Have you ever had something you want to share and you scroll up and down and try to find a thread that fits with your thought but you can't find one? Has this happened to you friend? Well now you don't have to worry about that problem any more because here is a thread that deals with random thoughts. However your thought must in some way relate to Mr. Charles Bukowski.

My first random thought is that I do a lot of yard work and over the years I have stumbled upon inch worms. I stop and pick the little buggers up and let them crawl around on my fingers, hands, forearms. I look at the little critters and totally dig the way they do that very specific inch worm walk. After a while I place the little dude back on it's way.

While reading some Buk a few days ago he himself said on page 362 of "Betting on the Muse" that, "nobody talks of books, of paintings, of the stock market or the life of the inch worm." The poem is called "floss, brush and flush."

So this is why I am writing this post. I want Hank to know and I want others to be aware that I DO in fact sometimes ponder the life of the inch worm. I have not yet seen one this summer but I bet it is only a matter of time that I will be able to view one of these little buggers up close. If I would have been at Hank's party I would have been able tell him so.
 
Same here. I work at landscaping and regularly cut grass and have a look at the lawn before I leave. The beautiful smell of grass , clean shaven. I always think of Hank Sr. telling me that it is not good enough. What a prick! He lives on, in our minds.
 
As a 50 year old who suffers from chronic pain few things bring me joy these days but one thing that does is when I glance out my front door to see if there is a package out there and there is, I get fired up. I just got "Absence of the Hero", and on skiroomalum's recommendation, "Locked in the Arms of a crazy life", which is by Howard Sounes. There is a picture in there of Jane Cooney Baker when she is 17 and she is cute. There are a lot of really good pictures in this book. Thanks for the Reco skiroomalum.
 
I'm not a neatness freak, but one thing I can't stand (in myself) are untrimmed fingernails. Typing is uncomfortable and playing the guitar is out-of-the question. I trim those fuckers as close to the pink as I can stand it. And if I start to feel a little OCD about it all, I just recall Linda saying the same thing about Buk. He insisted on clipping his nails frequently too. Funny, how the mundane and everyday things can trigger Bukowski associations.
 
Sitting in 95+ Brooklyn heat and smoking a cigar on my stoop. I'm there #6. Can't fret or pick unless I'm right up to the skin. Re-reading Alone at Times this morning and waiting for my kids to return from a week away.
 
I have bever seen the Jane Cooney Baker when she is 17 photo?!?! Does anyone have a scan?
I sometimes think of Buk when tying up my shoes before a jog -that lace breaking thing.
Cool thread
 
jane.jpg
 
No one has uncovered another photo of Jane, no.

But if they do, Howard Sounes will probably feel entitled to claim copyright on it. Because he owns all Bukowski photos. According to his lawyers, anyway.
 
Just to clarify, what Mr. Phillips meant to say is that he supports the inalienable and God-given right of any content creator to enforce copyright on their intellectual property, and furthermore he is proud to be an American, where such copyright laws came to wonderful fruition for the benefit of all mankind (including, but not limited to, the British), past, present and future.

Thank you.
 
I went to the library right after work today. The fire alarm sounded while I was in the bathroom. Then I discovered that the copy of Women was now listed as missing and Love is a Dog From Hell also appears to be gone...

So, in lieu of that, I decided to try reading the author that Bukowski once described as "the greatest in 2000 years." (or something like that.)
 
I always wondered about the name Jane Cooney Baker. Was her middle name Cooney? That would odd. So now I am currently reading "Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life" by this Sounes fellow. So I got to read the back story about Jane and how she was married to the Baker guy. So it looks like Jane may have been the first woman in America to say, "screw that crap, I'm not dropping my last name for you. I'm keeping my last name and so I'm gonna have two last names and there's nothing you can do about, see." She was married in the 1930's right? Who ever heard of a woman doing that all the way back then?

I also didn't know what the term bossed eye meant. Was the author saying she looked Bossy? Maybe I'm not too bright. I don't think I ever heard that term before. Well, when you look at her face you see that one eye was crossed. So I have concluded, due to my above average intelligence, that bossed eyed means you only have one cross eye. Who knew?

Many of you advanced fans of Mr. Bukowski already know this because it happened so long ago and I probably saw it when it happened but have no memory of it and that is Sean Penn's tribute to Buk at the end of his movie called, "The Crossing Guard." I am almost certain that Sean Penn mentions this in the,"Born Into This" documentary. So I rented the movie on Net Flix (my life blood) and I thought the movie was a bit slow and it jumped around too much. It stars Jack Nicholson so it would be hard for it to be a bad movie. Sean Penn wrote and directed it. About half way through it gets better and the ending is good. I don't want to ruin the ending for others who may not have seen it yet but it is emotionally charged. Sure enough at the end of the movie it says, "In Loving Memory of Henry Charles Bokowski Jr. I miss you. S.P." I hope to God I remembered that right. I should have wrote it down.
 
I just finished reading the Howard Sounes book, "Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life," and it is definitely the book with the most thorough amount of information on Buk, really thorough. I had numerous question bouncing around in my head over the years and this book answered about 90% of them. I wish someone knew the location of the bar that Buk drank in in Philly but that is the one bit of info that is not available. I even got on the phone today with this lady named Barbara Galloway (name of the street I grew up on) who took pictures for Sounes. She works for Temple University but she said they didn't dig that deep.

Someone would have to go city hall and dig through very old records to find the locations of bar that existed back then. Could you imagine if one of the bars that are open now is the place that Buk drank at. They could hang a plack there and we could all go there and drink too much. Good times.

When Buk got a lot of attention from the Barfly he appeared in People magazine! Is that not too funny? Hank in People magazine. He bought the magazine and took it home to Linda and they sat there laughing.
 
Random thoughts. You know the way Buk always talked about what happened to other writers when they died or after they died. He always had some kind of summation. Some of the summations were not to kind. Well I've come up with a summation for Buk. I actually think he may not of disliked it too much. It's not unkind. Or he spoke about what they did in the latter years of their lives.

BUKOWSKI: He went to the cats.
 
Danny Mac RULES!
You made my day skiroomalum! The last time someone Danny Mac RULES, I was a drummer dude in a good band in 1989. It's been a long time brother.

Thanks to Gary Eisenberg too. That is one trippy picture you got there.

I just tried to read a poem in the book, Absence of the Hero, and the poem was, "manifesto, a call for our own critics. He was busting on the academics but check out these words he used. nosography, purlieu, heuristic force, claustral intent, transelementation, steatoygous and hierophants. To quote Tina Fey, "what the what."

I am a pretty smart dude and I know a lot of big words but I don't know what ANY of these words mean. I think this may be proof that Hank was way smarter then he was letting on.
 
A few thoughts:

1. The piece to which you refer is certainly not a poem, but more of a brief essay.
2. I don't think that Buk was letting on anything, or not letting on anything - with regard to his intelligence or his anything else. He just was what he was and wrote. That's the end the analysis on my end anyway.
3. I'm betting that he looked those words up in an effort to make his crap-fest on the academics more punctilious in one of them-thar more ironical ways.
 
Finally started reading Women.

Wanted to buy a copy of Love is a Dog From Hell but couldn't find it anywhere. Also, I checked both the new and used book stores but couldn't find anything by Celine. Guess I'll have to go back to the library for him.

I can't help but wonder if the library's missing Bukowski titles have been given counterfeit signatures and are now listed on ebay for $400.
 
My favorite Céline's is Death on the Installment Plan, which let you know a lot about his childhood. It is fiction but it does reveal a lot about his upbringing, his parents' values and his apprenticeship. I would compare it to Bukowski's Ham of Rye, gone weird. I love that book.
 
I saw a bluebird today-first one I have ever seen. I saw it while riding my bike along the grand river trail system up her in Canada. Pretty cool bird just sitting on the path. I stopped the bike and thought. I have to write this on that random thought thread...and now I have.
 
Agreed. The people in it seem so shallow and superficial, whichever woman he happened to be with at the time, both he and the woman seemed to have one eye open in case someone/thing better came along.

I know it was meant to be a bit of a cynical sexual romp but it didn't work for me, it was like "Confessions of a Faintly Surprised Middle-Aged Writer on Becoming a Babe Magnet". However I was glad that he got all that after the shitty adolescence and young adulthood, what saves it is the self deprecation.It's ridiculous but my favourite line from the whole book is away at the start, he is on a plane going to a reading: "The flight captain announced himself, if I heard correctly, as Captain Winehead. When the stewardess came by I ordered another drink..." I burst out laughing at that, it still makes me laugh, I love his dry sense of humour.But yes, not my favourite book.
 
I know it was meant to be a bit of a cynical sexual romp...
It was?

If you find the characters "shallow and superficial," you must have the same complaint about every one of his novels and short stories. I don't believe that was accidental, or lack of writing skill. The detachment is necessary to much of the work.

And far from cynicism, I think what he was going for in Women was absurdity (like much of his humor), and he achieved it.
 
It was?

If you find the characters "shallow and superficial," you must have the same complaint about every one of his novels and short stories.
No, I don't, I didn't find that in Ham on Rye about his childhood (my favourite) or in Post Office about work.
I do think he is very cynical about women in the book and with good reason, but he is like a kid let loose in a sweet shop, there's the episodes when he is sneaking off to meet Nicole telling 'Lydia' he's away to the supermarket etc. It's just one long conveyor belt of opportunism on both sides that's why, I refer to it as a cynical sex romp and a bit empty. perhaps he thought all the new found attention a bit empty too. In the intro to the book he is quoted in a letter to his friend A.D Winans "I may get killed on this one.It's written as some type of high-low comedy and I look worse than anybody, but they're only going to think about how I painted them" (some cynicism there?) "However it's a jolly roaring blast". I love his self deprecating humour and his ability to point out the absurd, but I just didn't love this book, that's all.
 
I don't believe that was accidental, or lack of writing skill. The detachment is necessary to much of the work.

That's why Factotum is so fascinating.

Chinaski's inner existence isn't exposed to us. We have to infer what's going on inside of him. A great example is when he's drinking port wine and it tastes so awful he imagines himself watching a movie about a woman's legs. It's a very funny scene but it also raises a deeper question of why Chinaski feels compelled to keep drinking.

Chinaski became emotional a few times in Women. It didn't seem to fit his character or the overall story.
 
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It's a different Chinaski in Women though. His whole situation has changed due to his relative fame and popularity. I find it more realistic, not less, that he behaves differently to the guy in Post Office and Factotum (not to mention Ham on Rye). Having said that, I prefer all of those novels to Women. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the latter. It still beats the shit out of most of the competition.
 
Women reminds me of the better comic writings of Philip Roth. Very straightforward with no one spared humiliation. Women is in every way a 1970's novel for better or worse. Feels a bit dated to me in a way that none of other novels do but is still a great laugh.
 

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