What would Bukowski think of modern culture? (1 Viewer)

I was thinking about this question the other day...

In 'The captain is out for lunch' he clearly enjoyed the pragmatism of using a computer. On paper he seems like the kind of guy who might be against change, but he was a very realistic and yeah practical guy in a lot of ways.

I was interested in reading so many fans on this forum saying they were against online publication and only cared about the print press (probably influenced by Bukowski)....
but uh

Bukowski was a man of his time! He used the little magazines because they were the most effective way (and only way) to get his marginal voice out there.

I have problems with networking and all that and it's hard to imagine Bukowski integrating himself into twitter or blogging but if one were to take his ethos and transplant it into the modern time I think that would involve using all means possible to get your writing heard.

But I've noticed his fans romanticise this world weary downtrodden writer thing probably imagining themselves a kind of modern day Bukowski like figure without seeing the world has changed and there aren't writer celebrities anymore and maybe never will be unless they end up writing for TV.

I think I'm attacking myself here too because I have been obsessed with publication in newspaper/magazines but that isn't what's important culturally now!
 
ha was basically thinking the same thing about "modern culture" of the 1940s as well as "modern culture" in the 1960s as well as "modern culture" of the 80s and would just think so about our "modern culture" now:

there is no such thing like "modern" culture (in the sense that there's ever anything "new" coming up):
mankind has always been the same stupid, rotten, destructive, unjust race full of shit and always will be.
 
you manage to out-dumb yourself with each post...

i mean the way you interpret what people say around here. i can't figure out whether you're a weak troll or just a blockhead.

i don't mean you, roni.
 
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mankind has always been the same stupid, rotten, destructive, unjust race full of shit and always will be.

Think Buk would share these same sentiments very much.

So to answer the original question of this thread: what would Bukowski think of modern culture?
Short answer: Not much.
 
The easiest way to see your name in print is to become a journalist. By the 12th time you see your byline the desire dies and you wish you were your housemate who makes five times the money pouring drinks and gets laid ten times more than you...
 
Haha...true in a way.

I once worked as a staff writer for a magazine and for a day I thought 'I'm a writer!' and then I was writing advertorials and that dream died.
Jesus...

When I talk about the culture in a lot of ways I mean the role of print writing though. I mean I don't even know how important the novel is anymore and poetry well forget about it.
 
The easiest way to see your name in print is to become a journalist. By the 12th time you see your byline the desire dies and you wish you were your housemate who makes five times the money pouring drinks and gets laid ten times more than you...
What Pogue said. I know. I wrote for a glossy once upon a time (LA Style, and yes it was about BOOZE). The money was actually OK ($1.00/word). And I did enjoy writing about (and sampling) the elixirs whose praises I sang. And there were no "advertorials" - in fact, my editors were VERY picky about making sure there was a clear line between Advertising and Editorial. Still...What Pogue said...
 
I was thinking about this question the other day...
Your culture, such as it is, as a young man is not The Culture. Young people do not run the world - they never have and they never will - so they don't really define the culture. Youth culture is a different and separate thing.

You will define the culture in a few decades, but I fear it will be a shit culture, since no one will know how to make anything but artisanal pickles and apps (used to locate the nearest artisanal pickle). Everything young people fetishize was created by previous generations: LPs, the PANTONE color system, analog synthesizers, the Internet, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer...everything.

That's not your fault, but it's your legacy.

As someone who is a fan of innovation, creation and disruption, I really want to root for you, as a generation, but you give me nothing to root for. So my advice to you would be to go create something. Anything. I will be the first to applaud you and hail you as the genius you believe yourself to be. I'm waiting for you to blow me away. I really am.
 
I'm not speaking for the quality of the stuff I do...but if there's one thing I don't have to defend it's my productivity.

And thanks for the condescending holier than thou patronising tone.
 
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consider it a dose of 'tough love' mjp style - you'll appreciate it later...
 
You will define the culture in a few decades, but I fear it will be a shit culture, since no one will know how to make anything but artisanal pickles and apps (used to locate the nearest artisanal pickle). Everything young people fetishize was created by previous generations: LPs, the PANTONE color system, analog synthesizers, the Internet, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer...everything.

Haha, don't mess with the mjp or you get the horns!
 
The easiest way to see your name in print is to become a journalist. By the 12th time you see your byline the desire dies and you wish you were your housemate who makes five times the money pouring drinks and gets laid ten times more than you...
You are a wise man.

From reading his massive volumes of letters to editors in the 60's - he was a very ambitious writer (although he downplayed this and almost silent). The man would have used social media in the same way he disciplined himself to send out thousands of poems to small press magazines. And I am glad he was so ambitious in in writing (although not sure i would have wanted him to be my postman).
 
You are a wise man.

From reading his massive volumes of letters to editors in the 60's - he was a very ambitious writer (although he downplayed this and almost silent). The man would have used social media in the same way he disciplined himself to send out thousands of poems to small press magazines. And I am glad he was so ambitious in in writing (although not sure i would have wanted him to be my postman).

Another point is how divorced he as from his time in some ways, for example he despised movies and rarely watched or discussed then...yet wrote Barfly and that had huge impact on his fame.

Like all reclusive artists, he was full of contradictions.

I suppose the role of the 'writer ' celebrity is dying out or has been dead for some time.

But we do value confessional writing perhaps more than ever. We live in a time delighting in emotional honesty as a means to feeling 'real' in a technological age.

I love having idols and figures who seem more than mere men...but the way our culture is now the mundane aspect of our heroes is becoming more and more noticeable.
At the same time our 'selfie' generation turn themselves into stars- self glamorization is everywhere.

Arguably posting on this message board is an act of that.
 
I love having idols and figures who seem more than mere men...but the way our culture is now the mundane aspect of our heroes is becoming more and more noticeable.
At the same time our 'selfie' generation turn themselves into stars- self glamorization is everywhere.

Arguably posting on this message board is an act of that.

I almost took your post seriously until this last bit. Well done.
 
What ?
I'm just thinking aloud (well actually I'm typing silently)

The idea of the reclusive writer is kinda lame now and we tend to respect people more who reveal everything and seem without a persona ...

Bukowski was ahead of his time on all this in a way ...but he defo had a mystique and a 'character'
But being honest about everything is the most popular image to have nowadays.

You don't have to be talented or successful to stroke your ego now. Everybody can have their voice heard and message board use, social media use, they're all ways to project to the world we exist - to fill that void.

It used to be harder to do that and it was prob that hole that drove most of these geniuses to devote themselves so hard to their craft (and fame)
 
Makes you hanker for the days when everything got swept under the carpet and kept firmly in the closet:wb:.
You have a point, I don't know if we have become a culture of attention seeking cry babies, or when " stop crying" as a phrase, went out of fashion.

But there is a distinction to be made between writers who want to strip away the pretences and reveal something of themselves and when it's done well, something about us too, from the professional wailers; celebrity and ordinary punter, whose emotional outpourings are measured in; was theirs the first, the loudest and the longest wail on every available media, that's phoney and embarrassing.
 
Everybody can have their voice heard and message board use, social media use...
Actually the more popular these things become, the less chance you have to "be heard."

The design crowd has an old saying, "When everything's bold, nothing's bold." It is said about typography, but it applies to most other things as well.

15 or 20 years ago it was pretty easy to stand out online. Today, not so much. You not only have to bring something unique, you also have to know how to find and build an audience. Most of us out here now can't do either one of those things.

As far as WWBD, he would use everything he had access to. I'm not sure why anyone questions that. Every opportunity he had to modernize or trade up, he took advantage of. He was not a Luddite or overly nostalgic or superstitious, as some writers can be.
 
Yes - he would have been VERY active on twitter, internet etc. We no longer have the 'smalls' in the same way were back then, but there is a wide and growing (and good for poetry/writing) growth of poetry,fiction,art ezines/magazines. Many (perhaps 30%) still print - not that it matters greatlly.
People who are savvy at these outlets have a much greater chance at platform - and he was savvy and prolific in the small press medium.
 
Actually the more popular these things become, the less chance you have to "be heard."
This is true.

I don't know...I remember reading someone say that if Cobain existed now he would have just sat around grumbling on music forums rather than make music.

That whole story...being the 'loser' and then devoting yourself to ONE thing and making it is old as well.

The future is going to be people good at a lot of stuff AND yeah the promotion marketing.

BUT shallow and I mean...can you think of anyone you like who is media savvy?

I kinda like James Franco but more because he ISN'T savvy about his renaissance man thing and seems bizarre.

And yeah...Kanye is also great because he seems earnest.

Anybody who is carefully building a twitter following with strategic tweets I mean....eh....I don't know...I AM down on the whole social media thing and the influence of the internet thing

and who knows how the hell much my love of Bukowski isn't partially enjoying this darker more authentic voice of a previous time where locking yourself in a room with a wine bottle could seem like the only option.
 
Bukowski would shitstorm you all! On twitter!!
My words will be everywhere. Clubs and societies will be formed. It will be sickening. A movie will be made of my life. I will be made a much more courageous and talented man than I am. Much more. It will be enough to make the gods puke. The human race exaggerates everything: its heroes, its enemies, its importance. The fuckers.

Maybe, aye...:)

Bukowski, Charles (2009-03-17). The Captain is Out to Lunch (Kindle Locations 1050-1053). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
 
As far as WWBD, he would use everything he had access to. I'm not sure why anyone questions that. Every opportunity he had to modernize or trade up, he took advantage of. He was not a Luddite or overly nostalgic or superstitious, as some writers can be.
100 percent correct, MJP. Buk sent his submissions out - relentlessly. Traded up to IBM Selectric when it became available. And then to a Mac when it became available. It was all about getting his message across. I also agree about the irony out there in the blogosphere. Sure, EVERYONE can have a blog, and everyone can post on-line. But there's so much noise out there (well, noise being anything that I didn't say, of course), that it is almost impossible to be heard above the cacophony.
 
Good point - and most of the people who say 'you can do anything!' are either people who had a background in the entertainment medium or business medium.

There aren't really that many interesting success stories...I listen to podcasts and read a blog here and there but it's probably most beneficial to people who were already established in some way before it blew up in that it gave them other options.

I dunno...

But yeah Bukowski was a more everyman plodding kind of dude in some ways ...the day to day grind of sending letters and writing everyday...more than the drinking that's probably would should influence people
 
I think the whole "you can do anything" talk mostly comes from adults when talking to children. When you grow up they change their tune because suddenly all those ambitious kids have become a threat to their own position. Then you realize that the world doesn't want another CEO, it wants part-time cashiers working two or three jobs.
 
Sure, EVERYONE can have a blog, and everyone can post on-line. But there's so much noise out there (well, noise being anything that I didn't say, of course), that it is almost impossible to be heard above the cacophony.
Yea, there is alot of noise. But there was alot of noise then. And the 'smalls' he submitted to had scant circulation. I'd say he would be bigger now with the internet/twitter - he was TIRELESS in his pursuit of avenue. Reading his letters leads me to think he was compulsive in his writing. He also understood his niche and more importantly stuck to that niche.
 
Good point - VERY good point. That's true. About the "noise" then - versus now. And I also tend to agree with you about his tirelessness in his pursuit. Interesting dichotomy, though...on the one hand, he often said "Don't try. " And on the other hand, he managed to keep trying...
 
Would Mark Twain appear on the Bill Maher show?

I was thinking about this thread and the real answer to the question is it doesn't matter. Because there was no web during Bukowski's lifetime. May as well ask how he would have got his work published if he lived in the middle ages, or "What would Bukowski's poems sound like if he typed them on Mars?"

We are all products of the time we live in. Times change and people who don't change with them get left behind and die off. Then it starts all over again. The only constant is a pretty girl and a good steak. Those are the only things you could talk to, say, a Viking about, because it's all we have in common over the span of a thousand years.
 
Would Mark Twain appear on the Bill Maher show?

I was thinking about this thread and the real answer to the question is it doesn't matter. Because there was no web during Bukowski's lifetime. May as well ask how he would have got his work published if he lived in the middle ages, or "What would Bukowski's poems sound like if he typed them on Mars?"

We are all products of the time we live in. Times change and people who don't change with them get left behind and die off. Then it starts all over again. The only constant is a pretty girl and a good steak. Those are the only things you could talk to, say, a Viking about, because it's all we have in common over the span of a thousand years.


My sentiments precisely.
 
Buk would be sitting in the grandstand and he would haul the iPhone out of his pocket to write poems in the "notes" section, then he'd email or text them from there straight to the sparrow.
 
God the modern day world is a disgusting mess. This generation truly sickens me. I think a more important question is whether Bukowski would have even been accepted in the modern day, he would probably have been bombarded by feminists and other so called liberals, defaming him as a misogynistic rape supporter unaware of his white privilege as part of the patriarchy or whatever other nonsense they like to drag up. I think Bukowski at first might have utilised social media in substitute for the little magazines but soon enough he would become fed up with the madness, stupidity, hypocrisy and witch hunts he witnessed online. After all he would have to share social media with the rest of society, it is a universal medium, unlike the little magazines which were more of a quiet, one way outlet. But who knows, I'm kind of glad Bukowski is not alive to see the world as it is today.

Also Ewok does say some idiotic shit, but he also brings up some interesting points, even if they are mostly bones of contention. It gives us on here something to chew apart and by god you lot do love chewing people apart. Ewok is not responsible for the stupidity of his generation and he can hardly fix it on his own. I think its a step in the right direction the fact that he's on here exploring Bukowski rather than tweeting about his favorite manufactured band or uploading some dumb selfie or whatever other vain, meaningless pursuit kids do these days. Of course he could also be doing all those vapid, shallow things as well as posting on here, but i'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Also in response to Ewok - I don't think anybody respects these insta 'celebrities' who now have a voice on the internet... we are just aware of them. we are aware of them in away we weren't before. Unfortunately.

P.S I can't stand kanye or franco and I can't understand how anyone could put a tortured literary genius like Buk in the same sentence as those soulless, narcissistic divas.
 
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by god you lot do love chewing people apart.
He says, as he chews apart an entire generation.

I've never seen a reasonable person of any age or persuasion be chewed apart here. So maybe you should rephrase that. Change "people" to "idiots" or something. Just a thought.
 

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