Buk the Philosopher by Dale Williams Barrigar
The very titles of his poetry, short story, and essay collections are modern sayings, proverbs, and philosophies, ways of being, ways of dealing with it. IT meaning the endless problems and complications of life, the nonstop challenges and endless changes, the approaching finality of death for each and every one of us, the sense of isolation we all feel deep in our core if we’re ever brave enough to stop and think about it. If his work as a writer is about anything, it’s about being alone here, and why that’s OK, and even preferred. It’s about the individual versus the herd and the mob, which he called the continual condition. In a mostly urban world of nearly eight billion people and climbing, there couldn’t be a more relevant concern.
Marcus Aurelius wrote, “One bitten by the true doctrines needs only a very short and commonplace reminder to lose all pain and fear—for instance: The wind scatters one year’s leaves on the ground…so it is with the generations of men.”
While it’s highly beneficial to do so, you don’t need to read farther than the titles of many of Buk’s works to find these reminders, phrased in such a way that they can inscribe themselves on your memory with ease so as to be in reach whenever needed.
The title of his first book, from 1960, “Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail,” parts of which first appeared in the short-lived but widely influential avant-garde literary magazine “Nomad,” tells the reader everything that happens on Planet Earth, has always happened, and will always happen here.
In five words, Buk manages to compress and express the growth and beauty, conflict and struggle, and the mortal reaction of life itself to all of the above. Like a little stoic poem, this title consoles as it explains. These five words alone are an amazing beginning to a literary career that was already going strong although largely unseen and was about to explode, even though Buk, already 40, would write hard for another decade before being able to leave his fulltime job at the USPO as a lowly clerk.
Buk’s second book, from 1963, borrowed a line from Whitmanesque California poet Robinson Jeffers, a writer who celebrated beauty with grace and also never shied away from the horrible truth. “It Catches My Heart In Its Hands” expands on the bestial wail as a commentary on all of life and how we feel while we’re here, if we allow ourselves to feel.
“Crucifix in a Deathhand” and “At Terror Street and Agony Way” are other early book titles that expand Buk’s sense of a world willing to terrify and crucify all of us. Like Jeffers, Buk knew that you can’t get over the pain until you look it straight in the face for a very long time until it flinches. You look into the void until it looks back, as Nietzsche explained.
Other early Buk titles are equally simple, profound and easy to remember.
“Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8-Story Window” sounds bad at first, until you consider that we’re all going to die and this poet is writing for his life before leaping.
“Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts” throws us back into the ancient world of John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
“Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit” expands on images of the poet writing and gives us a picture of the half-mad Buk at the typewriter he considered a piano as in his favorite musician Beethoven, who he was so familiar and intimate with that he called him “The B” and imitated many of his most salient behaviors, like staying up all night drinking and writing and wandering the streets encased in his own private madness which was his art.
Another favorite artist of Bukowski was Li Po, the famous Chinese Taoist sage, poet, drunk, drinker, and thinker who, it’s said, drowned when he, wildly intoxicated, fell out of a boat while trying to embrace the reflection of the beautiful moon in the water. Buk’s early book title “The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills” captures the gorgeous evanescence of life in ten words, reminding us again of the beautiful shortness of all life: not just beautiful, not just short, but both together, inseparable in that yin and yang way life has. When you go through your days ignoring the deepest truths, Buk seems to be saying, you are laboring under a life-denying delusion that will make your time in this world a lot more shallow and meaningless for yourself and others, but mostly yourself. Always start with yourself.
Many of his titles have their obvious double meanings for you to chew on and digest, like “War all the Time,” “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame,” “Maybe Tomorrow,” “Notes of a Dirty Old Man,” “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town” and “Love Is a Dog from Hell.”
The titles culled from his work for his posthumous collections include these gems: “Betting on the Muse,” “What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire,” “Slouching Toward Nirvana,” “The Pleasures of the Damned,” and “On Cats.”
Probably his most representative line/title is: “You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense” from 1986, in the middle of the Reagan years, when Buk was 66. About modern depression and isolation and frustration, this saying also means that solitude, introspection, self-searching, self-expression (NOT self-promotion) lead to, and create, inner, individual vision, a seeing like the third eye of the wise Hindu mystics.
He died almost exactly thirty years ago at the age of 73. He accepted his death like a Buddhist. Looked down upon to this day by the academic elites and so-called mainstream literary culture, who often shamelessly label him a “bad” writer, he may be the most universal writer of our time. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were also looked down upon until well into the twentieth century, decades after their deaths.
Leonard Cohen said of Bukowski, “He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels.” This quote also means more than one thing. One thing it means is that the angels are already here, if we allow ourselves to see them.
Bukowski saw these angels, in the old drunk at the end of the bar, in the old drunk prostitute on his arm, in the stray cat searching for his latest meal in the alleyway dumpster outside the bar. He said he liked Jesus and Socrates because they had style. He took the profoundest truths this world has to offer and boiled them down into poetic phrases that can help you make it through your own dark night of the soul no matter how often it comes back for you. Just like Marcus Aurelius said.
Image: A mixture of different coloured leaves petals and seeds in orange, pink and red from Pixabay.com
literally stories 
Dale
Much has been written about Bukowski and this is as good, if not better than any of it.
But I want to compliment your style for this piece. The pace is a mix of restraint and mania, like Buk himself. It has a drive to it that is much like a poem, therefore it reads quickly, even though there is a lot of information contained in the words.
I wouldn’t change as much as a comma in this.
Great work!
Leila
LikeLiked by 2 people
Leila
I just commented on your comparing this to a poem, but forgot to hit reply just fyi.
While I’m at it, I also want to mention 2 songs that almost made it into this essay.
They are “LONDON CALLING” by The Clash, and “Lost in the Supermarket,” also by THE CLASH. Both these songs are off their 1979 double album LONDON CALLING, which has all-great songs on it and is one of the greatest rock albums of all time, as many have pointed out.
The songs “London Calling” and “Lost in the Supermarket” are those uncanny kinds of work that really could have been “written yesterday,” OR tomorrow; literally; instead of 46 years ago.
I also want to mention a slim little book by Raymond S. Nelson formerly of Wichita, Kansas (I don’t know him) called HEMINGWAY: EXPRESSIONIST ARTIST, also from 1979. He says Hemingway was an expressionist and not a realist and compares EH’s prose style to painters like Edvard Munch, Picasso, Cezanne, Paul Klee, and Bosch. He also says: “Hemingway tried to tell the truth about his time, to correct the ‘lies’ former generations had told…he focused on what he thought had been distorted by former writers.”
Since Hemingway is referenced by Bukowski far more than any other writer, this is worth mentioning here…
And the film THE MASTER, from 2012, which is, on one level, almost like a representation of Bukowski if he had been split in half and depicted as not one but two characters.
Thanks again for putting this out there along with the explanation!
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Dale
Out and about in the real world today. Strange shiny thing hanging in the sky, but it could be twenty degrees warmer. Just checking in to see how this is going, and it appears to be doing well, as I knew it would!
Leila
LikeLike
PS
L.,
After a brightly lit winter dog walk I realized that one of Bukowski’s greatest contributions was his interpretation (and sometimes impersonation, especially when intoxicated) of Hemingway, not unlike what Picasso did with Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Rimbaud, or Dylan with Woodie Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams.
As Oscar Wilde said in DORIAN GRAY, “The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.”
(Whether the “criticism” be of literature, “tunes,” TV shows, You Tube episodes, movies etc etc, and whether it be oral or written, formally presented or mumbled alone in the car…)
LikeLiked by 1 person
So many Hank poems, so little time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Marco
Thanks!
For me, Bukowski is a short-form writer. His best work is to be found in the poems. And some of his essays and short stories.
His novels are OK too (especially Post Office and Factotum), but they’re mostly long strings of short story-like or essayistic anecdotes and incidents pasted together with poetic segues and short, punchy, essay-like commentaries. And, in the worst cases, filled with far too much repetition and padding because novels (usually) sell better than poetry simply because they’re called “novels.” But when you’re not a novelist, you’re not a novelist, even if you try to write one. (Same is true for Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe.) Bukowski’s most artistically successful novel, for me, is, by far, HAM ON RYE. And he’s so good that even though he’s not a novelist, this is a GOOD novel!
Thanks again!
Dale
LikeLike
Leila
I have to say WOW and thank you!
As a poet at heart, I truly cherish having this compared to a poem in any way. As someone who believes in a kind of restrained mania as a way of living life on a daily basis when possible, I also cherish your description. (Or the restrained mania days should be alternated with occasional, so-called “do nothing” days for the longer life and less wear and tear on the owner of the body doing the living. If I didn’t know how to rest sometimes, I wouldn’t be here.)
Thanks for publishing this, AND for explaining it, even to myself, or especially to myself!
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great wrap up of a life. I’ve always felt lucky to somehow stumble upon Bukowski.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you so much!
Finding a writer you can always feel lucky for is surely one of life’s greatest gifts…and it also says a lot about the person who feels lucky.
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale,
As enjoyable & eye-opening as ever. Bukowski made more of a man in this – as opposed to mere cynical he-man. He was another example of what Leila Allison calls sticktoitiveness. I always found his novels, short though they are, to be hard going, but found a kind of hardbitten grace to many of the poems. Unlike so many of his admirers – & detractors – he knew something of hunger from the inside, knew what it was to be radically cut off from the party – on account of e.g. years of severe acne & so on; it often made for a sympathetic eye cast on those he encountered – whether landladies of cheerless rooming-houses or overly cheery car salesmen. Your piece gives his work added depth. Heard of his once being visited by a bunch of well-to-do hipsters who, thinking to impress him, bragged about their various exploits – chief among which was the stealing of books from public libraries. Bukowski was appalled, made short shrift of them – public libraries having been the very places that for decades had kept his mind fed & his body warm. Looking forward to your next instalment.
Geraint
LikeLike
Thank you, Geraint!
Your comments on my essay are at least as good as my essay is, if not better, and in any case a great companion piece to it.
THANKS for: A. Having the knowledge, which took much effort (and talent) to come by. And B. Taking the time.
On You Tube now – at the end of the film BORN INTO THIS – which was playing on the television when my (now ex- but still friends with) wife’s water broke with our twins – I had to stop watching the film and rush her to the hospital 17 years ago – at the end of this film, there’s footage of Buk not long before he made his exit out the final door. His body ravaged by cancer. The ubiquitous beer in hand but barely sipping it now. Still smoking but only taking a few puffs here and there. And reading his poems aloud alone in the house with his wife, who was filming it. You can tell that this individual doesn’t feel too sorry for himself, which his wife corroborates in the movie. He took it as his due for the life he’d lived. If that isn’t stoic philosophy, I don’t know what is. He also has some beautiful poems about this time in his life. Many folks also don’t know that he did largely control his drinking and smoking intake, especially in the last 20 years of his life or so. They say that when Samuel Beckett moved into the very modest, regular-person old folks’ home in Paris (even though he was world famous), the only things he cared about bringing with him were his bottle and his smokes – and he too accepted his end with great grace and calmness about him. When they took him out of the home one time for a trip to the hospital, he shouted back at the other residents as the ambulance attendants were wheeling him out the door on the stretcher: “I’ll be back!”
Thanks again, Geraint!
Dale
LikeLike
Excellent overview of Bukowski’s life and body of work. He seemed to be one of the few people who refused to be untrue to himself. Glad he was a writer so, with help ffrom people like Dale, we can get a glimpse of what made him tick.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi David!
Thanks for reading and commenting. Yes, I think on many levels Bukowski belonged to an American strain of individualism that refuses to follow the rules when those rules have to do with quashing one’s own individual voice, vision or spirit for profit, comfort, safety, popularity, and/or gain. He’s an American Transcendentalist in that vein, not unlike Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson, for example.
While the comparison of Emily and Buk may seem to be a wild stretch at first glance, I think these two writers have very, very much in common under the surface and in the subtleties of their works and lives. And in many ways, the comparisons between Emily Dickinson and Charles Bukowski are simply overt. An extreme penchant for solitude often going right up to the point of being an art-obsessed hermit and recluse; an ability to write rebellious experimental poetry of such condensation and brevity that it will last a very long time; and, like you said, an absolute refusal to be untrue to themselves. One of Bukowski’s favorite writers was Carson McCullers, another American maverick.
Thanks again!
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi David
I wanted to add one Stoic quote that your comments made me think of.
Epictetus: “NEVER CARE WHAT ANYONE ELSE THINKS ABOUT YOU. Caring about this is the only thing that can make you their fool.”
Like many famous statements, it may be a bit of an overstatement, and is very hard to live up to; also, it isn’t true, and doesn’t work, in all cases.
But it gets its point across. It’s funny to think that Epictetus was a slave and Marcus Aurelius was an emperor but they both came to the exact same conclusions on so many things (on everything important). Sometimes empires and even vast class inequities can and do truly help to create great things for the ages. And Epictetus said he felt like the emperor/king of his own little world; and Marcus said he felt like a slave to being an emperor.
Dale
PS,
As another Stoic sage quipped: “Nero can kill me but he can’t harm me.”
LikeLike
Hey Dale
Great, thought provoking essay, on a serious dude! The first paragraph covers this amorphous “IT” defining it well, this grappling with life. And a chilling reminder of where life on this planet is going. The herd/mob vs the individual. Sometimes I sympathize with the mob as they are victims, too. But to blindly follow is not recommended.
The Marcus Aurelius quote. “Once bitten by the true doctrine.” That sounds dangerous, like taking the red or blue pill in the “Matrix.” Haunting as well, like we are, “Dust in the Wind.”
“Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail,” will be a good guide for me to read, since I’m not much of an authority on Bukowski. Having only started “An Ordinary Madness.”
Awhile back you pointed out to me that Mickey Rourke played Bukowski in “Barfly.” That was pretty damn cool. And there’s the movie “Factotum” with Matt Dillon.
Such bold and thought provoking titles. Kind of blows the mind… I mean, “Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8-Story Window.” That is bizarre! But as you point out–going back to the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius… Life is short–quick—a flash! We’re all falling–I’m falling to my death at this moment– typing on the way down!
“Crucifix in a Deathhand” and “At Terror Street and Agony Way” Talk about making use of his words for titles! And his other titles… Like “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame.” So cool, the use of the oxymoron.
The forgotten elites and critics have a way of dismissing the greats.
You have captured deep waters here. Only a brilliant writer in his own right could accomplish such a monumental task!
I thought the Marcus Aurelius quote was an elegant ending.
Christopher
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ananias
“Typing on the way down!” is a great way to put it, worthy of Bukowski’s own way with words! Thanks for reading this, understanding, and commenting in a wildly perceptive and eloquent micro-essay that helps create a dialogue with “Buk the Philosopher.”
Over the weekend I was rereading Sigmund Freud’s essay called “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood” (available free online etc). Siggie called this “the only beautiful thing I’ve ever written” (which isn’t true, but it is true that this essay is truly beautiful).
In the essay, Freud makes a few claims that are actually wildly inaccurate and impossible to substantiate (as he often does). But this is not lying for gain; it’s thinking going to extremes and being willing to say the “unsaid,” or trying to.
Freud’s central attempt in this essay is to deal with this question which he poses for himself: “What was it that removed the personality of Leonardo from the understanding of his contemporaries?”
Freud also points out that Leonardo, now seen as a monumental (monolithic) megalith of both the artist AND the scientist, often, and sometimes mostly, in his own day “lived an unsuccessful and uncertain life,” often itinerant and almost on the run. (He makes much of the fact that Leonardo only ever completed 11 or 12 paintings. 2 of which are the most famous paintings in the world.)
I have to say that even Freud isn’t able to answer his own central question with complete satisfaction. Making the (failed) attempt is what makes his essay great!
Yes, Buk was truly an artist of the word, a word artist who could truly say many profound things in nothing more than a handful of the most common (reinvented, reimagined and rearranged) words. His lack of fear and his willingness to go barefoot and track mud across the expensive carpets are two things that make the gentle, well-sheltered elites tremble in their expensive, trendy, “well-educated” slippers and shoes.
Two of my very favorite books of his that are both great and are well worth checking out and studying are: WAR ALL THE TIME and LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL. The first one is poems and prose-poem-stories; the second is all poems (but many of his poems are micro-stories).
LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL has a few poems about a mysterious red-headed woman that can match any sad love song Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash ever penned (or sang together).
For the most part, Buk did his very best writing, hands down, when he was in his 50s and 60s, a fact he himself pointed out multiple times.
Thanks again!! Hope all goes well in Indiana!!
Dale
PS:
Freud also says in his essay: “One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature.”
Leonardo and Siggie are a great match because they were both artists AND scientists.
LikeLike
Dale
That sounds like a good read. I have found s pdf of it. “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood.” You mentioned a while back how good of a writer Freud was/is. I’m glad the Nazis didn’t get him. Freud and Jung seem like the pillars of psychology. I never really considered Freud as a writer since he was so famous for psychoanalysis, so this is a great perspective on him. Just like Lincoln–but my first clue was “The “Getty’s Burg Address.” But he is also overshadowed with his fame as the President. When I think of what a president is I think of Lincoln and G. Washington.
I’ve started a book about Lincoln’s assignation called, “Chasing Lincoln’s Killer,” by James Swanson. I’m learning intimate details about that horrible event on 4-14-1865. I didn’t realize he was shot at around 10 PM. That’s the great thing about independent reading versus school textbooks. Things are expanded upon and less bias.
Christopher
LikeLike
Hi Dale,
Interesting and informative. Written with style and panache!
I have read ‘Ham On Rye’ many years back after the founder member of the site, Adam West, recommended it to me. What I remember about it was enjoying the sparseness. That said more than twelve pages of text of description ever could!
I saw Barfly and enjoyed it. I had seen Mickey Rourke in the wonderfully weird and quite brilliant ‘Angel Heart’ so I knew that he wasn’t adverse to taking on the off-kilter / obscure or interesting roles.
I do have a book of poetry of Bukowski’s that Gwen got me this Christmas that I’ll need to have a look at. Weirdly this is the first Christmas that I received not one but two books of poetry. My niece gave me ‘Come Doon Toon’ by Emma Armstrong AKA ‘The Wee Glesga Poet.’
She writes about her addiction and recovery. The poems are simple, raw, honest and have that bitterness, acceptance and revelation in them that makes them real.
There was an author called Mark Frankland who wrote a brilliant book called ‘The Cull’. It was all about how the young professionals ended up with a joint (Not that type!!) habit due to getting high with E and then using smack to bring them down so they could face work. In the book his son overdosed and it was about him going after the suppliers.
That book made me seek out more of his work and I came across, ‘Roads To Down’. It is superbly done as it is aimed at young adults. It is a series of short stories about folks who get involved with drugs. Frankland tried to get this book into schools as part of the curriculum but as far as I’m aware, he didn’t manage it. When I read it, I thought that it would have been a great idea. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naive enough to think it would do much good but it may have opened up a few debates, that if handled correctly couldn’t have done any harm.
Sorry, off in a tangent. That’s what I love about you, Mick Bloor’s articles and Leila’s Saturday Posts – You take me to the off-shoots!!!!!
Thanks as always and all the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
LikeLike
Hugh
I’ll check out Frankland’s work.
I’ve said this before, but about a year and a half ago, one of my daughters’ best friends died of an alcohol and opioid overdose at the age of 14. My daughters saw him five days before he died; he was wasted and they tried to talk him out of doing the hard stuff; he made a promise to them that he would get off it; the promise failed. He died.
I took my daughters and three of their friends to the funeral. You can imagine what it was like seeing the mother there (he was an only child). The thing about this kid was that he seemed like he LOVED getting high and drinking, no one could talk him out of it. He had a good home to stay in with his mother, but he was always sneaking out at night and going out to party with the homeless drug addicts who hang out at night by the library (where free food is available). He was an exuberant kid and it really did seem like he wanted to be doing what he was doing (sneaking out and heading across town to party with the homeless drug addicts). On the other hand, he didn’t have a father (or not one he knew) and he didn’t do well in school either (when he showed up, which was infrequently, especially post-pandemic). Either way, when he partied, and even when he didn’t, he seemed and acted HAPPY most of the time. Of course, it didn’t stop him from dying. Not at all. Both my kids keep a picture of him on the wall/s in their bedroom/s.
You’re exactly right, the sparseness of HAM ON RYE is a huge part of its artistic success, that and the truly real, expressionistic depiction of an outsider, and alcoholic, teenager (who happens to be Bukowski himself). I read an essay (can’t remember who it was by) that compared HAM ON RYE to Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, Bukowski himself being the “monster” in his own book.
Thanks for being one who likes to think and delve deep and who understands the endless paradoxes of being this thing we call human!
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale,
So sorry to hear about your kids friend. That’s so sad and as you hinted, there were probably reasons. Their enjoyment can either be an excuse, a safety net, a denial, an explanation or yep, a reason. (For so long anyway)
When certain folks state that it is the person’s choice, they are right for a window of a few times only. Human want then takes over and an addiction is what is left, the reason is lost in there somewhere and that’s what makes the whole situation so difficult. The problem with a lot of the do-gooders is they have no understanding of the whole problem!
If you are able to, please tell me the boy’s name. No weird reason, it’s just that it will let anyone who reads this know that he was not an addiction, he was a young kid whose life was taken from him.
I’ll totally understand if you are not able to.
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
LikeLike
Dear Hugh
Thanks for your wise words of kindness and understanding.
His name was Jayden F.
I’ll leave out the entirety of his last name just because I don’t know his mother personally and out of respect just in case, etc etc.
Thank you.
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale,
Thanks so much for introducing us to Jayden.
Hugh
LikeLike
Dear Hugh
Hello. Sadly and tragically, I need to add another name to the list. I’m saying this because he was a friend of mine. “Friendly acquaintance” might be a better description; but I still think of him as a friend, somehow, especially now that he’s gone.
He was shot dead in Chicago about a week ago. I just found out about it. I don’t know who did the shooting. And I don’t know why.
These are the things I know about him. He was sometimes homeless, but not always. He had just gotten a new puppy. He was a happy-seeming and friendly man, despite living on the streets half the time. He made his way in this world by what he called “hustling.” And he was shot dead at the age of 42 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
His name was Deon.
Thank you Hugh! I’m glad to be able to share this with you, because I know you understand.
Dale
LikeLike
A very influential writer in my life since I was about 20. “There’s a bluebird inside of me, wanting to get out, but I won’t let him”….. “If you’re going to try, go all the way.” Inspirational and scary. Indeed, he’d never get published today in any University based literary publication. Too darn real and frightening.
LikeLike
Harrison
Thanks very much for reading and commenting. I believe you’re exactly right about him not being published in any university-based literary publication these days. Absolutely. Thanks again!
Dale
LikeLike
I first read the mighty Bukowski in 1994 (not long after he died) when a friend lent me a copy of Women. The book, like so few before it, blew my mind. I remember reading it on my bus trips to college and feeling like I held a man’s secrets in my hand. I went on to read all his novels, short stories, and have made my way through most of his poetry I believe. In other words, I’m a fan and like you love his ability to say something with such depth in such a throwaway, real manner.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Paul
Thanks for a great description of your reading experience with him. This is much appreciated! I appreciate it as a fellow reader; AND because this kind of thing helps me develop my own art (essays) somehow.
I first heard the name Bukowski in 1987 as I was sitting somewhere in Chicago watching none other than Roger Ebert on the television set, as he was sitting somewhere else in Chicago and talking about this strange new independent movie called BARFLY for which this radical underground writer had penned the screenplay. Ebert proudly made a point of pointing out that he himself had gotten drunk with the writer (like he also used to do about John Belushi and Mike Royko). Already a Hemingway and Faulkner fan, I raised my beer in a toast while puffing upon my cigarette and immediately vowed to see the movie, which I did twice at the theater when it came out. I’ve never seen it since; for me it lives back there in the land of memory and imagination as a vivid thing; if I watched it again it would ruin it. (Maybe someday.)
From there I went on to NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN and THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN TOWN, which were these wild (or seemed like it at the time), crazy, experimental, roughhewn essay-stories that seemed more radical than anything else I’d read since Henry Miller. Later the rest of the short stories, most of the novels, a large swath of the poetry. And his letters. His letters are amazing. He’s so good at everything else, the fact that he was one of the best epistolary writers of his era (like Hunter S. Thompson in that way) gets lost. One needs to be selective b/c plowing through all of them can become much too much. On to the next thing! But here and there, brilliant!
Thanks again, deeply appreciated.
Dale
LikeLike