Was Bukowski a well read man? (2 Viewers)

he didnt think much of norman mailer.
he named knut hamsun as the greatest writer ever (in women)
he also likes fante and celine.
he has commented on hemingway and dostoevsky
so he was someone who used to read quite a bit even though he often said that he didnt like talking about literature.
which other writers did bukowski read? and what did he think about all of them?
 
And of course Fante. :?: I think we have that one covered.

It's funny because Buk did like a few writers, but sometimes wrote somewhat contradictory statements about his feelings toward their work (go figya). I believe that Buk liked Camus, but he did indicate in a poem or two that (and I can't remember the exact words) his work was rather cold and dispassionate (which it was - that was rather the point, no?). Something about presenting an apocalyptic situation in a way that resembled eating a sandwich (only nothing like that).

Here are some words from the mouth: https://bukowskiforum.com/index.php...ore-the-academies-and-get-his-ass-killed.914/
 
He often wrote of his love for the work of Rod McKuen, and how he thrilled at discovering his writing at one of the many reading he went to in the 1960s.
 
d gray, he talks about mccullers in WOMEN.

in the introduction to fante's ASK THE DUST, bukowski mentioned that he also liked a few german writers (or did he say philosophers) who wrote the truth.
 
a couple poems i read of buks recently reminded me of D.H. Lawrence .. i wont go into it, unless someones particularly interested .. and ill find a couple comparisons .. great forum btw .. i thought i was on my own over in the south of uk reading buk poems all this time ..
 
McKuen, Dan Brown, Ayn Rand, Jacqueline Susann, Danielle Steele,
Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull), Tom Clancy,
William S. Burroughs, Edgar Rice Burroughs...
 
Interesting list, David, but Rand and the Burroughs boys don't fit - at least to me. When I was in college the profs hated Rand which of course endeared her to the subversive sort amongst the ranks and we passed The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged with glee.
 
:wb: It was all of course meant to be a funny list. The real list would be Catullus, Li Po, Tu Fu, Celine, Dostoyevsky, cummings, Conrad Aiken, Rabelais, Jeffers, Hamsun, Hemingway, Fante, Saroyan, Neruda, Pound, Turgenev, Gorky, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kafka, Artaud, D.H. Lawrence, Thurber, McCullers, Boccaccio, Whitman...
 
Interesting question, however it's in line with the other questions regarding authenticity of his stories. My father, although he could recite quotes from the certain Russian books, and claimed he read more books than '100 people you meet on the street combined' - I never saw him read one book in my life! He also came to the realization "You have to be good liar..." to be a writer.

I don't know if he (Bukowski) read the amount of books he claimed he did - however we should have more interest in Bukowski as writer than Bukowski as man? I know, that's hard thing to do...
 
A good writer reads.
A good film director watches films.
A good football coach watches football.
Seems pretty obvious to me.
 
I know he read McCullers because the first time I read her I was amazed at how much he'd picked up from her. It seemed like his voice was echoing in her work, but she wrote it first, so actually her voice was echoing in his work.
 
I would say that all the others should be offended to be included on any list with Ayn Rand.

Recently I had some numb-fuck on another website cite the works of Ayn Rand as proof that the recorded music business was a sound vehicle for promoting the careers of musicans. It's amazing to me that so many people can get out of bed in the morning without suffering an aneurysm while they figure out which leg to put through their jockey shorts and why their toothbrush is jutting out of the dog's bunghole.
 
Take any of the 3 volumes of letters by Black Sparrow Press and have a quick look at the index of names at the end.

You'll be amazed!

I'm guessing you have them, would you kindly share the index with us? I live in another country so this one would be really hard to get. Please scan them! :)
 
The Black Sparrow Press letter collections were reissued by Ecco and you can still order them:-
  • Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (Volume 1)
  • Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s (Volume 2)
  • Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994 (Volume 3)
 
The Black Sparrow Press letter collections were reissued by Ecco and you can still order them:-
hey, solo.

I know that, they aren't that expensive either, its just that to import them from the US is very expensive, and, even though I would love to read them, I'm interested in the index with the writers that Hank liked.. so, that's why i only wanted the scan of the index, not the whole thing. (google books preview doesn't have the index)
 
[...] and Notes from Underground. There are many great russian writers.
Yeah, he also mentions 'Notes from the Underground' several times and said he loved it.

He's also read Turgenjev, which he liked and Tolstoi, which he didn't like so much. (If my memory serves me right here.)
 
From a June 12, 1992 letter to Jon Cone:

Well, on e.e. cummings, he came at a time when I was reading everything and had many half-heroes. It was not so much his content as his tricky and lovely and easy and funny way of using and placing his words. That was it. No content, say like Jeffers. But somehow I had this strange Romantic feeling about him. And Auden, Spender, Pound. Sherwood Anderson, etc. These bastards simply gave me the old thrill. It didn't last but it was good while it did. And I look back at them and probably feel that they were much better than they actually were. But they did their work for me: they carried me along while I worked with my own madness and failure.

Then he goes on to William Saroyan.
 
Don't know where to put this film clip. Los Angeles circa 1948. At around 3:50 someone has said the big building is the L.A. Public Library, a place Bukowski spent some time at.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2011/09/post_303.php

And in a Dec. 29, 1991 letter to John Martin, Bukowski was happy that Black Sparrow was reprinting D.H. Lawrence's Birds, Beasts and Flowers collection of poetry. A Google preview of that book can be found here.
 
Oh man, I love old film of Los Angeles.

The first part is filmed on the old Bunker hill (which is now flat and covered with skyscrapers). The car starts at 2nd & Olive, then turns left onto Grand Ave. The second part of the clip follows the same route, but takes a right on 5th St., then right onto Flower St. The library is on 5th and Grand, so what you see at 3:50 or so is indeed the library.

(I see that I could have just read the comments for the video and saved myself the trouble of mapping/typing that, but there you go. Someone even mapped it! Ha.)

Notice at the very beginning of the third part you get to see a Mobilgas sign with the winged Pegasus logo, referenced in Barfly.
 
Here is a short film inspired by Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. The technique is explained in an article that I have read. It consists of a painted slab of plaster which is sanded and scratched to bring out the lighter part the images. Some other parts are highlighted with a brush with reds and darker browns. None of the imagery is kept, only photographed.
http://www.openculture.com/2012/12/dostoyevskys_crime_and_punishment_animated_by_piotr_dumala.html

[This video is unavailable.]
 

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