The Act of Art: Bukowski in Harper's (July 2015) (1 Viewer)

cirerita

Founding member
It'd be great to know what Bukowski would make of this. As he said over and over and again, he unsuccessfully tried Harper's in the 1940s, when he was a completely unknown writer. Over the years, he also tried The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry and other major periodicals, but his work was always turned down -- the exception being Poetry, where he had three poems published shortly before he passed away.

http://harpers.org/archive/2015/07/the-act-of-art/
 
It'd be great to know how many people here will pay $7 (or $46) to read an article behind a pay wall when you don't give any clue as to what it could possibly be about. I would guess zero, but I'm always surprised by people.
 
From a March 1961 letter sent by Charles Bukowski to Jon Webb, the editor of The Outsider and an early champion of Bukowski’s work

It's an excerpt from On Writing. No need to buy that issue of Harper's, that was not the point.
 
that was not the point.
Au contraire, Pierre, that was the only point. You asked "what Bukowski would make of this," and linked to an article. If your point was, "What would Bukowski have thought of a collection of his letters being excerpted in a magazine that consistently rejected his submissions," that doesn't exactly come across (as evidenced by more than 100 people reading it and no one commenting).

But there, I fixed it for you.

We've always made a great team. Like Laurel and Hardy. Imagine if we made films together. We could rule the box office, man. If you're interested have your people call my people. We'll do lunch and talk development.
 
It'd be great to know what Bukowski would make of this. As he said over and over and again, he unsuccessfully tried Harper's in the 1940s, when he was a completely unknown writer. Over the years, he also tried The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry and other major periodicals, but his work was always turned down -- the exception being Poetry, where he had three poems published shortly before he passed away.

the answer is on page 112 of King of the Underground :wb:

"[Bukowski] said most editors were idiots; they published names, not poems. They looked for the names before they read the poems."
 
captain unforthcoming strikes again!

the "readings" section in harper's is always fun. that's cool that he made it in there.
 
bukharp-001a.jpg
 
"the autheor of six novels, and several poetry and short-story collections." Ha! Several? What an understatement. I think many writers would be happy to have published "several" poetry & short-story collections.
 

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