The New York Times review of Hollywood (1 Viewer)

Ponder

"So fuck Doubleday Doran"
RIP
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/12/26/specials/bukowski-hollywood.html

and

LUCKY LATE BLOOMER

When Charles Bukowski gets angry, he writes books - and ''Hollywood,'' he says, is a novel of outrage.

''I guess I never believed Hollywood - I heard it's a horrible place - but when I went there, I found out how really horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible it was, black and cutthroat,'' Mr. Bukowski said in a telephone interview from his home in San Pedro, Calif.

''Somehow when you get it on paper, tell it, it gets it out of your mind. It keeps you from jumping out a window or slitting your throat.''

The hardest part about writing, Mr. Bukowski said, ''is sitting down in that chair in front of the typer. Once you do that, the movie begins, the show starts. Once I sit there, there's no planning, there's no effort, there's no labor. It's almost like the typer does it by itself. You get in a kind of a trancelike state.''

The words ''come out sometimes like blood and sometimes like wine,'' he said.
The 68-year-old writer believes that words and paragraphs should be short and to the point.
''Pace, rhythm, dance, quickness,'' he said, explaining his staccato style.
''This is the modern age. Atom bombs are hanging on trees like grapefruits. I like to say what I have to say and get out.''
Mr. Bukowski's first story was published when he was 24 years old, but most of his 45 books of poetry and prose were written after he was 40. For that, he said, he is thankful.

Writers who reach success early in their lives, the author said, ''live as writers, they don't live as creatures of the street, and soon they miss the point of what's going on in the factories and with people working 16-hour days.

I'm a late bloomer. I was lucky. It allowed me to live with all these bad ladies, have all these horrible jobs and all of these nightmarish adventures.''

-- PAMELA CYTRYNBAUM
 

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