Hello, all.
Let me begin by first apologizing for the length of this post. But considering that, by default, all of you are full-length book readers, I know that you'll be easily able to digest my somewhat verbose post without taxing your attention spans (or hopefully, your patience).
I've been a lurker here for a couple of years. My forum nickname was going to be "
little atomic bomb", but I think that that nick was too long for the forum software to process. Thus, I am merely Atomic Bomb. Anyways, I just stumbled across this thread.
I live in LA and used to patronize Baroque Books in the late '80s/early '90s. Back in those halcyon days, Bukowski received
very little respect from the mainstream literary types. Buk may be popular now, dare I say
trendy in some circles, but back when Bukowski was still alive he really
was considered an outsider by most readers and bookstores. And as such, his books were quite often
hard to find.
Mainstream bookstores didn't carry his work. Your chances of finding a Bukowski book at Crown Books, Barnes and Noble, etc, were virtually
zero (and I know, I actually worked in some of those stores). And
this was before the internet. You couldn't easily surf over to Amazon.com to find any book you wanted. Back in those days, finding a rare book meant getting into a car and driving around looking for it. It required
work.
A female drinking partner/sex object turned me on to Bukowski. I read
Love is a Dog from Hell while she slept beside me, burning off a hangover. I was a long-time reader of "the classics", but Bukowski was something totally new to me, something fresh, honest, pithy, and invigorating - in short, I got hooked.
I remember quite vividly waltzing into various bookstores in my initial search for books by Bukowski, only to be scolded in the most dismissive and flamboyant manner possible that
we don't carry HIS kind of books here..! - as if to imply that any decent, self-respecting book store would
never trade in Bukowski's despicable brand of filth-ridden smut. You'd get treated like you had just walked into the Library of Congress and requested a copy of
Hustler - with everything but the pictures cut out.
Bukowski published a lot of short stories in porn magazines, and to the effete kind of snobs that usually work in bookstores, that essentially meant that Bukowski
was pornography.
So to find any decent amount (six or seven titles) of Bukowski's work, you generally had to peruse independent or "artsy" bookstores. One of the first I found was the long-gone
Paperback Shack in North Hollywood - though the clerk still treated me as if I had requested a copy of
The Beginner's Guide to Molesting Children when I brought every copy of Bukowski up to the register to purchase them.
One day I was slumming around Hollywood Blvd on foot when I decided to stop by the newsstand that sat on the corner of Hollywood and Las Palmas. As I was doing so, I spied a bookstore down Las Palmas, and made my way down there to check it out.
It was, of course, Baroque Books. I walked in, Red was behind the counter. I remember seeing some kind of framed photograph or clipping of Bukowski and thinking "well, THIS is the place!"
To be frank, Baroque Books may just as well have been called
Bukowski Books. I may be misremembering this, but it seemed to as though 75% of the books in Baroque were Bukowski titles. I felt like I'd found heaven! I grabbed as many of the Bukowski titles I could afford and rushed them to the register.
Baroque obviously became my go-to place for buying Bukowski. In time, I got to know Red, though not on any intensely personal level, more like a "regular customer" level.
I have to say, despite the fact that so many people seem to have had unpleasant interactions with Red, he was never less than a perfect gentleman to me.
Gruff, yes, but always pleasant. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I saw him being (needlessly) rude to other people on several occasions.
(I perhaps should note that I was something roughly equivalent to a "punk rocker" at this period in my life, and my hair color changed to a different color of the rainbow on a near-weekly basis - if this bothered Red in any way, he never gave me any indication of it.)
After a fashion, Red started engaging in conversations about Bukowski with me. Again, this was before the internet, so most Bukowski readers knew very little about the man, other than that last-page mini-biography that would always appear at the end of every Bukowski book. Sadly, I don't remember the content of any of those conversations, but I do recall that I relished them at the time.
One day, I walked into Baroque and Red exclaimed "You JUST missed Bukowski!" Apparently, Buk had been in Baroque for a visit just minutes before.
Red told me that Bukowski said that he was headed over to
Boardner's (a bar a block away) for a beer or two, and that if I went there, I'd probably catch him.
I actually started heading over to Boardner's when I stopped and remembered HOW MANY poems I'd read in which Bukowski complained about being annoyed by fans. I was planning on quickly picking up a six-pack and bringing it to Bukowski as a gift - I remembered the many poems where Buk would express his dismay at receiving admirers, unless they possessed boobs or beer - but at the last moment I thought to myself: "Oh, for chrissakes, if you've learned
anything from his books, it's that you should just
leave the guy alone" - and in a move I still question to this day, I decided
not to join the annoying chorus of Bukowski stalkers, and let Buk have his drinks in peace. Of course, I never again had the chance to meet him.
So that's my story of Baroque Books and Red. Here's hoping I didn't bore you too much with it.
