If mjp isn't sick of doing it (no offense, but he probably is), he may weigh in here, as he seems to have a better understanding than I do, but, in a nutshell, Martin apparently made some significant edits through the years...
Well I found the following diatribe I had typed up in response to this, but I held off adding it since I figured I've said enough about this. But I am enamored with myself and everything I type, so I think this is worth posting now. You know, after sober reflection and consideration. And I promise I will never say any of this again, so help me baby Jesus.
I think I keep coming back to this because I'm still, and forever will be, upset that Martin treated Bukowski's work with such indifference. It really
chaps my ass, as the kids say. But Martin is JESUS-come-to-visit for a lot of people, and they tend to walk on eggshells around his vaunted name, so we end up with only glowing testimony to his greatness.
If I have to repeat that I respect what he did, I will. Here:
I respect what John Martin did.
It was quite a feat, and I'm glad he did it. Maybe no one else would have done it (a big maybe, but a possibility). I'm pretty sure that no one else would have done it on the
scale that he did, anyway.
Having said that...
I think it's clear that Martin changed a lot of things. He'll never admit it, and even if he did, he wouldn't understand why anyone would care. Kind of like the poem selection. BSP was his business and his livelihood, but there are several examples of Martin taking Bukowski's work far less seriously than many of us here do.
So anyway - and finally, let's say - this is why I believe my testimony to be true in the eyes of the lord:
How did Bukowski/Martin work? Early on, Martin reprinted only poems that had been published in literary magazines and periodicals. Soon though, Bukowski was sending manuscript copies of everything he wrote directly to Martin. So I have to ask myself where in that process Bukowski even had a hand on the work to make these small alterations? The
Women episode would seem to indicate that he didn't sit down and meticulously read the proofs. So when did he make the small changes?
Bukowski reworked poems, we know that. And he would have sent the reworked manuscripts to Martin as well. But as
Women clearly demonstrates, the changes Martin made
degraded the writing. The changes to many of the poems are not changes that would have come from Bukowski. Writers have their own style, and Martin's idea of an "improvement" rarely dovetails with Bukowski's style. Quite the opposite, they stick out like sore thumbs, especially if you have read a good amount of Bukowski's work. Again, read the first printing of
Women and see if certain words and phrases don't just jump off the page and make you think, "
that sounds odd". Then go look at a later printing and you'll see the word or phrase that sounded odd is gone. Because the later printings removed Martin's changes.
Martin (according to Bukowski), trivialized his changes, saying that "the typist" made them. Really? The typist changed the author's work and, what? You just chuckled and carried on with your day? Martin must have thought Bukowski was an idiot to float a bullshit excuse like that.
So yes, blah blah blah. Who cares? Martin certainly doesn't. He giggles behind his blank elf face at ideas like these.
He doesn't give a shit. He sold enough office supplies - oh, sorry,
books - to retire and now he's shuffling around an empty house in his bathrobe somewhere watching
Wheel of Fortune reruns and saving his fingernail clippings in mayonnaise jars.
Martin was pivotal in making Bukowski famous, but he didn't do it single handedly. If that were the case, all the writers he published would be just as well known as Bukowski, and none of them are. Martin was not the ideal editor for Bukowski (in fact he wasn't an editor at all), but Bukowski was grateful for Martin's dedication, so the relationship was always lopsided. In the wrong direction. Bukowski's letters to Martin would seem to show that he felt like the employee in an employee/employer relationship, and if you've ever had a job you know that's a one way street.
Martin obviously enjoyed Bukowski's work. You can see it in his early letters to Bukowski. But that being said, he was also a crafty bastard, and he hitched his wagon to the right star. Nothing wrong with that. Most creative people are not crafty bastards, so unless they meet someone who is, they putter in obscurity. But being a crafty bastard doesn't entitle you to "fix" a creative person's writing or paintings or origami tableaus.