Timeline contributions (1 Viewer)

Do we have a thread dedicated to contributions for our timeline? I think we should.

Here's one:
July 2, 1976 he gave a reading in L.A. (place unspecified) according to the docu by Thomas Schmitt.
screenshots:

July2_1976_Buk-reading_b.jpg


edit:
I've just realized, that this actually IS in the timeline, only I had mistaken the 11 for a roman 2.
Sorry. Go ahead and delete this!
 
That's in the timeline but it's dated July 11 (I assume based on the picture of that marquee -- but the 11th looks like the show listed above it). Does the documentary specify the 2nd?
 
That one's on there roni.

1976 Troubadour, Los Angeles [7/11 opening for comedian Steve Martin, paid $1,000]

Are you reading 11 as II (Roman Numerals)?

Edit: mjp was faster.
 
okay, here's something real for the timeline:

Around the time, when he attended Virginia Road Elementary School he also lived on Virginia Road according to Neeli (who says this was just before they moved to Longwood Ave) and uncle Howie (who says that was 3 years after Trinity Street), so both of which point to 1927 without giving the exact date.
 
I'm not trying to disprove everything, but if you look at 4511 W 28th St., Los Angeles, CA 90016 on a map, it's one house away from Virginia Road. Practically on the corner. Maybe that's the address they are referring to...
 
small thing: for his Hamburg-reading in 1978 the timeline gives only the month May.
It was May 18.

(I'm going through some old material and sources at the moment, so whenever I stumble across something that could be missing in the timeline I'll have a quick check and let you know.)
 
I've seen the picture before but this is the first time
I notice on the poster it says Germany and not West-Germany.
The wall came down in 1989. Maybe Roni can clear this up.
 
I've seen the picture before but this is the first time
I notice on the poster it says Germany and not West-Germany.
The wall came down in 1989. Maybe Roni can clear this up.

I believe people in West Germany called their country Germany most of the time, or just the Bundesrepublik. It was probably just us non-Germans who called it West Germany most of the time, and when we called it Germany it was understood we meant West Germany since East Germany was a "closed country" we did'nt have much to do with, if anything at all. At least that's my take on it.
 
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Right what Bukfan said.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s and really NO ONE would ever have used the word 'West-Deutschland' at all, except for written correspondence with other countries.

It was clear, that WE were 'Deutschland' and that other land was 'die DDR' ('the GDR').
 
This may be only sophistry (or as I've just looked up: a persnicketiness), but despite his own claims, Hank didn't have Acne Vulgaris, but Acne Conglobata. [year 1934 in the timeline]

(That's what Prof. Dr. Friedrich Bahmer told me, who had been the leader of the dermatological hospital in Bremen, Germany and is a member of the Bukowski-Society.)
 
Well, I trust the leader of the dermatological hospital in Bremen, but I would wonder what he based his diagnosis on?
 
[...] wonder what he based his diagnosis on?
Good point.
As far as I know, it seems mostly to tell from the phenomenons that Bukowski descripes. He (the dermatologist) seemed pretty firm when he talked about it.

Btw, he himself (the dermatologist) never contradicted what Buk had said. Instead, he was calling it Acne Conclobata right from the start.

I think it fits, given that 'Acne Vulgaris' sounds a bit like what Germans call a 'Verlegenheitsdiagnose', which means a vague diagnosis out of confusion or difficulty, when you're not sure, what it is exactly.
Since back in the days he (Bukowski) received a mistreatment first, because the doctors didn't quite know, what to do - that is, when his own words about the matter were right - I find it believable, that the differentiation wasn't as elaborated then as it is now.

So even though we don't have evidence in the form that we'd know the documents from the hospital, I do tend to believe in that more specific diagnosis, especially since, what I've found about it in the web fits pretty good.
 
This may be only sophistry (or as I've just looked up: a persnicketiness), but despite his own claims, Hank didn't have Acne Vulgaris, but Acne Conglobata. [year 1934 in the timeline]

(That's what Prof. Dr. Friedrich Bahmer told me, who had been the leader of the dermatological hospital in Bremen, Germany and is a member of the Bukowski-Society.)
I think the Prof. might well be right. I looked up acne vulgaris and that's just normal acne (zits) than most teenagers get to some extent. Buk had a serious case of acne, so it probably wasn't acne vulgaris.
It looks like there's many different variations of acne:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acne_(disambiguation)
 
just a thought as I reread some parts of 'Women':
He gives info about a lot of readings in that book even though most of them are vague.

Does our timeline include all these readings? I mean - he usually was accurate about such things even in fiction, esp his novels, so I'd assume they're real. (We know of some he mentions which ARE real.)
 
I don't usually add readings unless there's some specific date/venue information about them.

I know the timeline only lists a fraction of the readings, but they are some of the most difficult things to verify. Not much information out there for some reason.
 
[...]most difficult things to verify. Not much information out there for some reason.
That's exactly why I thought of the timeline, when I reread about all those many many readings mentioned (with city etc) in 'Women'.

Comparing the happenings in the book (which we know about, like in some cases what happened between him and the women etc) with the readings mentioned, I thought, we may add them to the timeline marked with a questionmark [?] behind them?
(Maybe this is even a way to get people who knew about some of them to come around and give more info.)

I especially have reread the whole Pam-relationship in 'Women' and parallel reading in her own memoirs and it's always amazing to me, how much fits exactly (AND how much of which we know it's true is in there too). So maybe its worth giving it a shot?
 
If you're volunteering to make a list, I'll add them. ;)

We would have to have either a date or venue for each one though.
 
(the dermatologist) never contradicted what Buk had said. Instead, he was calling it Acne Conclobata right from the start.

I think it fits, given that 'Acne Vulgaris' sounds a bit like what Germans call a 'Verlegenheitsdiagnose', which means a vague diagnosis out of confusion or difficulty, when you're not sure, what it is exactly.
Since back in the days he (Bukowski) received a mistreatment first, because the doctors didn't quite know, what to do - that is, when his own words about the matter were right - I find it believable, that the differentiation wasn't as elaborated then as it is now.

So even though we don't have evidence in the form that we'd know the documents from the hospital, I do tend to believe in that more specific diagnosis, especially since, what I've found about it in the web fits pretty good.
Acne Conglobata is the classification of a very severe and rarer form of the more common, (hence the name) Acne Vulgaris. His diagnosis of Acne Vulgaris as described in Ham on Rye, when he is in 8th or 9th grade, at the hospitalt wasn't a misdiagnosis, just not totally specific. As to the treatment he received, well it was probably on a par with how everyone else was treated in the 1930's mostly with topical application of Benzoyl Peroxide, the 50's see the advent of antibiotics for the treatment of it, but it still today remains a pretty debilitating, extremely difficult ailment to manage.
 
If you're volunteering to make a list, I'll add them.

I'll do.
At the moment I don't even have the time to drink properly due to a book I have to write, on which I'm WAY behind the schedule. (My consumption of coffee has nearly reached the one by Balzac.)

So, remind me again in, say, October. Please.

edit:
better make that November.
.
 
Just reread Hanks letter to Burnett from 2-17-55, where he states, that right after his bleeding ulcer (which would be spring 1954) he worked as a truck-driver.

("As soon as I got out [of the hospital] I had to go out and get a job driving a truck ...")

Our timeline says, he was a mail-carrier from 1952 till March 1955 in one row.

I don't really see a reason why he would lie to Burnett in that point. What do we make with that?
 
According to his post office employment/payroll records he was promoted on April 1st, 1954, which would be just before he went in to the hospital. So when he came out of the hospital he certainly could have done some other job(s), but if that was the case, why did the post office then promote him again in March of 1955?

What's odd about the timeline in 1954/55 is that everything seems to point to the hospital incident being in April 1955 - resigning from the post office in "ill health," working the non-post office jobs in the second half of 1955, etc. But we know from the letters and bills that the hospital stay was in 1954. So that mid-50s period has a few question marks.

What makes the argument for the uninterrupted period at the post office is the promotions. Think about it; if you worked a job for a couple of years, then left just for the hell of it, then came back, would you be promoted after you came back? Maybe that's how the post office worked, I don't know. But if you left for medical reasons, I can see them "holding" your position for you until you came back.

What could have happened is after the hospital Bukowski wanted to leave the post office, tried some other things (like driving a truck), and then figured that going back to the post office was easier since he was getting established there. But once he got back in he was disillusioned again, and quit (right after receiving a huge raise, interestingly).

Speculation, I know, but it's all we've got unless there are more letters from that period waiting to surface.
 
What if he was driving a truck for the post office? There are of course postal truck driving vignettes in Post Office and poems like 'Hot' [burning in water...]
...
I delivered all the mail
and then Henderson put me on the night pickup run
in an old army truck,
the damn thing began to heat halfway through the run
and the night went on
me thinking about my hot Miriam
and jumping in and out of the truck
filling mailsacks
the engine continuing to heat up
the temperature needle was at the top
HOT HOT
like Miriam.
...
 
I don't really see a reason why he would lie to Burnett in that point.
Not at that time, no. But we can't overlook the possibility that he was stretching the truth slightly and engaging in some early myth-building, even then. Burnett was a publisher, after all.

We could add "truck driver" to the jobs in 1954, but to someone looking at the timeline without all of this discussion it's not going to make sense.
 
on an unimportant sidenote: have just reread 'Confessions of a man insane enough to live with beasts' and right at the end of chapt 4 (which deals with the bleeding ulcer) he writes:

"Thirteen days from the night I entered I was driving a truck and lifting packages weighing up to 50 pounds."

But sure, that's only fiction and right in the following sentence he reminds us of that: "A week later I had my first drink"
Thought it was a funny coincidence with the letter though.

And btw.: Today I've reread 'Life and Death in the charity ward' as well and it's interesting to compare, what he took from the one thing into the other and what he made up for the later ('Erections') version.
 
maybe it sucks to come back to that goddamn truck-driving again (I just stumble upon it while reading things):

in a letter to Corrington from Jan 14, 1963 he writes about the time right after the hospital:
"I got on a mail truck and drove it around and delivered letters and drank lightly, experimentally ..."

So, hanko and hooch had it (and I suppose some others too who didn't bother to repeat it). The truck-driving actually was for the PO.

Oh and btw: in his 'Narrative account of career' (no date, guess around 1974 since he mentions the Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts) he writes:
"I came out of the hospital and got a job driving a truck."

Like you all, I hope I don't stumble about more of it and we can close this truck-driving-file now.
 
ow fuck!
That odd truck again!

"When I came out of that hospital, I was strangely relaxed. So I got hold of a typewriter, and got a job driving a truck."
Interview with Robert Wennersten, 1974 in: 'Sunlight Here I Am', p.94.

(yeah, I know - "Shut up and play yer guitar!" / sorry)
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edit:
and HERE he isn't driving a truck!!

"I came out [of the hospital] 900 years older. Found a job as a shipping-clerk somewhere and got hold of a typewriter."
( letter to Douglas Blazek Nov 4, 1964 in: 'Screams', p. 1154)
 
Could be that he usually told the story as "getting out of the hospital and getting a job driving a truck" because it sounds good. Going from the verge of death (maybe) to truck driver in a few weeks sounds like the story of a badass. And isn't that what he wanted us to believe he was?

I think if we looked for details on any job (other than the P.O.) we might find a lot of contradiction and embellishment, like you're finding here with the "truck driver" gig.
 
sure.
I didn't want to bitch around with that thing anyway, I just happen to stumble over it these days, whithout intention.
But now, I'm off to marry a millionairess, so hopefully, I won't have to read about that damn truck again.
 
We have no way of knowing, but it feels like there is something true about the truck-story. He mentions it too often, in too many different places.

It could have been a mail truck for the P.O. for a short period of time, "highly romanticized to give the story juice" , like many other things in his life. "Marrying a millionairess", for example.
 

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