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Any Charles Bukowski fans here?

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betplom

*plommer*
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Besides plommer?

:dunno:


http://bukowski.net/poems/


Do you still go to the races much? Is that something that you've done for a long time?
I went to the racetrack in an attempt to find a substitute for drinking. It didn't work. Then I had drinking and the track. Nobody bothers me at the track. And planning your plays, placing your bets, you find out a great deal about yourself and also about the other people. For instance, knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge at all. It's a good school, although sometimes a boring one, but it keeps you from thinking that you are a writer or whatever you are trying to be.

Can you recall the first thing you had published and how you felt about it?

No, I can't recall. Can remember my first major publication, a short story in Whit Burnett's and Martha Foley's Story magazine, 1944. I had been sending them a couple of short stories a week for maybe a year and a half. The story they finally accepted was mild in comparison to the others. I mean in terms of content and style and gamble and exploration and all that. Got another story accepted about that time in Carese Crosby's portfolio and after that, I packed it in. I threw away all the stories and concentrated upon drinking. I didn't feel that the publishers were ready and that although I was ready, I could be readier and I was also disgusted with what I read as accepted front-line literature. So I drank and became one of the best drinkers anywhere, which takes some talent also.


Why did you leave it so long to go into writing full time, I guess there are a few reasons?
Yes, the drinking. And in between, the bumming between cities, the low-level jobs. I saw little meaning in anything and still have a problem with that. I lived a rather suicidal life, a half-assed life and I met some hard and crazy women. Some of this became material for my later writings. I mean, I drank. There was a bit of a death scene in a hospital, charity ward. I was spewing blood out of my mouth and my ass but didn't go. Came out and drank some more. Sometimes if you don't care whether you die or not, it can be hard work going. Then two and one half years as a letter carrier and eleven and a half years as a postal clerk didn't exactly give me a zest for life either. At the age of 50, twenty years ago, I quit my job and decided to become a professional writer, that is, one who gets paid for his scribblings. I figured either that or skidrow. I got lucky. I still am.
 
“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
Charles Bukowski

“Do you hate people?

I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”
Charles Bukowski
 
“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
Charles Bukowski, Factotum


:guitar:

 
“We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes”
Charles Bukowski
 
“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
Charles Bukowski, Women
 
“There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.”
Charles Bukowski
 
“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”
Charles Bukowski

^^^^
Plommer
 
“This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.”
Charles Bukowski
 
“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that's the result of a chance meeting too. You're damned right. Drink up. We'll have another.”
Charles Bukowski
 
“I drank for some time, three or four days. I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting
in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too
much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for
the moment it didn't have you by the throat. ”
Charles Bukowski