mjp
Founding member
Something that's always made me go, "What?!" is Martin's story of his first visit to Bukowski's apartment on DeLongpre in January of 1966, where he said he saw a two or three foot high stack of manuscripts in a closet.
I was reminded of this because I just read it again somewhere: "He had a whole closet full of unpublished poems. Literally, they were stacked up on the floor leaning against the wall two or three feet high. So I went through and picked out ones I thought were especially good..."
Now a ream of paper is about two inches thick, and that's 500 sheets. So a two foot high stack of paper would be 6,000 sheets, and a three foot high stack, 9,000 sheets. Let's assume that typing on the paper makes it slightly thicker, what with the indentations from the typewriter keys and whatnot. And let's say it was a two foot stack, staying on the conservative side of Martin's claim.
A two foot stack, even if we increase the thickness of the pages due to being typed on, is still 5,000 sheets. And that two inches, by the way, is for modern 20# bond. Bukowski used typing paper that was thinner than 20# bond, but let's not think about that.
From his very first magazine publication in 1944 through the year 1999 - a 55 year span - Bukowski published 1,973 pieces. We know of 4,314 titles, and there are probably another 500 we don't know about, so let's just round up and say 5,000 unique poems and stories written during his lifetime. Probably half of those are more than one page, etc., etc.
Well this is even boring me now, and I'm typing it. Anyway, what it all boils down to is Martin is asking you to believe that Bukowski had about 25 to 40 years worth of work in that closet.
In 1966.
Seems...unlikely.
I was reminded of this because I just read it again somewhere: "He had a whole closet full of unpublished poems. Literally, they were stacked up on the floor leaning against the wall two or three feet high. So I went through and picked out ones I thought were especially good..."
Now a ream of paper is about two inches thick, and that's 500 sheets. So a two foot high stack of paper would be 6,000 sheets, and a three foot high stack, 9,000 sheets. Let's assume that typing on the paper makes it slightly thicker, what with the indentations from the typewriter keys and whatnot. And let's say it was a two foot stack, staying on the conservative side of Martin's claim.
A two foot stack, even if we increase the thickness of the pages due to being typed on, is still 5,000 sheets. And that two inches, by the way, is for modern 20# bond. Bukowski used typing paper that was thinner than 20# bond, but let's not think about that.
From his very first magazine publication in 1944 through the year 1999 - a 55 year span - Bukowski published 1,973 pieces. We know of 4,314 titles, and there are probably another 500 we don't know about, so let's just round up and say 5,000 unique poems and stories written during his lifetime. Probably half of those are more than one page, etc., etc.
Well this is even boring me now, and I'm typing it. Anyway, what it all boils down to is Martin is asking you to believe that Bukowski had about 25 to 40 years worth of work in that closet.
In 1966.
Seems...unlikely.
