The Continual Condition (pre-publication) (1 Viewer)

[BANZSI]

continual condition proof

i bought an proof edition and i am an little bit disapointed.
because the book is so thin, only 124 pages.
there could be more poems into it.

 

[bospress.net]

I'm sure that someone here will buy it if you are not happy with it. It is thin, but there were a few other volumes that were as thin (Play the piano drunk comes to mind).

Bill

 

[bogdan]

Well, to be honest, most posthumous collections are not very good to begin with. There are great poems here and there but, as collections, I find them weak. I did not even finish The People Look Like Flowers At Last... and that's the only B. book I have not read from A to Z. I was very busy at the time, and I thought that was the reason of leaving the book unfinished. But then I realized that I had read many B. books on busy times as well, and I couldn't put them down. So either I've grown up or the posthumous collections are below average.

You've grown up :)
During the last month or so I've read 4 of the posthumous collections - "Slouching Toward Nirvana", "The People Look Like Flowers At Last", "Come On In" and "The Flash Of Lightning Behind The Mountain" and for me they worked really great, all of them. I especially liked the poems written in his last years, when he felt that the end is getting closer and there are plenty of such poems, many of them just brilliant. I think about death every day and I'm not that old, so maybe that's why I could relate to these poems. There are also fillers, no doubt about it, but overall I think the quality of these collections is decent. Then, of course, I'm not an authority in poetry and/or Bukowski, so it may be only my enthusiasm. Anyway, can't wait for "The Continual Condition" to be available.

 

[mjp]

The cover with the drawings is a bit of a quickie turd pile. If they have dumped the original design I suspect they couldn't get a high resolution scan of the desk picture. Or at least couldn't get one on their ridiculous schedule.

The second version reminds me of a Wormwood cover (no offense to WWR, Malone was working within technical limitations). It's just laziness and lack of giving a damn about this marginal little book of scrap poems. But I wouldn't expect any more from a big corporation. I'm sure someone in a cubicle somewhere has another someone yelling at them; "Just get it out the door! It's a book, not a god damn Picasso!"

 

[Hosh]

Except that they changed (typoed?) clotted to dotted in "I Saw a Tramp Last Night."

Making the official BoSP broadside highly collectible! You heard it hear--at the official Bukowski website--first, folks!

Ugh.

Sure a "cl" can look like a "d"--but dotted fur vs. clotted fur...that's just no damn good...

 

[marina del rey]

The cover with the drawings is a bit of a quickie turd pile... It's just laziness and lack of giving a damn about this marginal little book of scrap poems.

That was my impression as well.

 

[mjp]

i bought an proof edition and i am an little bit disapointed.

I'm sure that someone here will buy it if you are not happy with it.

Now that they have changed the cover, the proof will probably end up being more valuable than it otherwise would have.

There are zero copies on ABE or eBay at the moment, so I would hang on to it if I were you. Disappointed or not.

 

[conl]

I agree that the posthumous books aren't as good as the ones from his lifetime, but I can usually find at least one or two poems in them that work for me, and to get anything "new" from a man who's been dead so long is still pretty amazing.
Buk always gave the impression that he didn't care what Martin did with his stuff once he turned it in anyway, though, and you guys seem a bit catty on this subject.
Really, who cares what the words are wrapped in?
That's like bitching about the box a present came in instead of being thankful for the gift.

 

[cirerita]

...this marginal little book of scrap poems...

Save for a few poems, I have to agree with mjp here -and no, I'm not mellowing out ;) I read the book on the flight from Frisco to Tucson and it left me kind of cold. Most of the poems are about B sitting in his San Pedro room, reminiscing about things. Kinda of his Mariposa Ave. or DeLongpre poems as an "observer", but these observations are not that powerful. Ya know, in my opinion.

This is one of the very few books where it's kind of easy to spot the old poems (pre 1970 ones) as there are very few and they stand in stark contrast to the late ones.

 

[PBBUK]

Just received an e-mail from Amazon - my book has been shipped!

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Interesting; I didn't think this was due out until October.

 

[marina del rey]

Yeah, it's a little early.


(No complaints here.)

 

[bospress.net]

That's odd; City Lights doesn't even list it in their "Forthcoming Books" section.

Hi,
I think that he is talking about "The Continual Condition", from Ecco, not Christ W/ BBQ sauce, er, I mean Absence of the Hero by City Lights...

Still, it is a week early.

Bill

 

[1fsh2fsh]

damn man. My account says that I won't recieve it till Oct 2-oct 6. I ordered it months ago. I wonder if this is a case of first ordered first shipped? if thats the case it make me wonder how many pre-orders they recieved.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

I think that he is talking about "The Continual Condition", from Ecco, not Christ W/ BBQ sauce, er, I mean Absence of the Hero by City Lights...

Yeah; I edited that, but not before you copied it. But even so, it's fairly early. I should be able to find it at the local bookstore anyway.

 

[PBBUK]

I am talking about Continual Condition. Confirmed shipping on hardcover.

 

[Bukfan]

I just ordered it after having received an email from Amazon saying I could save $8.84 by pre-ordering. They said it would ship on the 29th, and estimated delivery would be October 9 - 22.

 

[cirerita]

1st review:

Copyright Booklist Publications Sep 15, 2009

Poetry The Continual Condition. By Charles Bukowski. Ed. by John Martin. Oct. 2009. I44p. Ecco, $25.99 (9780061771200). 811.

Poets don't come more sui generis than lumpen existentialist par excellence Bukowski (1920-94). So it's nice that Martin, whose Black Sparrow Press Buk's sales legendarily maintained, keeps finding more of the mangy master to publish. Nicer, the contents of even this eleventh collection of leavings is of a piece with the others. If anything, there is less sentimentality in it than in some previous posthumous volumes. These are poems about writing and drinking, the racetrack, women, and sniveling fans - a quite good one about one of those, who worries that bad stuff will no longer happen to the comfortable elderly Buk; Buk knows better. Damned if the longest ones aren't high among the best; for instance, the high-school epic episode "mountain of horror" and "heavy dogs in cement shoes," about suffering boring discussions of great "outsider writers" - Celine, Kerouac, and on down from there: Ginsberg, Mailer (Mailer!!? That's how Buk feels, too), Olson, Ferlinghetti, Poe, Saroyan . . . It's the same old roughneck intellectual rant - nonpareil entertainment. - Ray Olson

 

[Bukfan]

He seems to like it. I hope it's as good as he says.

- Lumpen existensialist par exellence? I never heard that one before. :D

 

[Purple Stickpin]

An Existentialist? That's a new one for sure. At least he didn't use beat.