[***] I did one reading for a grand. I ask $500 plus air and plus…for others. keeps me at home. where I belong instead of waking up in bed with a teacher of retarded children in Tallahassee, Fla. and waking up in another bed with another teacher of retarded children in T. Fla. the next morning, no toilet paper in her crapper, I gotta write [sic] off my shitty bung with a brown paper bag into a beershit that will not let go. this ever happened to Ezra? [***]
I am in trouble with women as usual. they are getting younger and more vicious and more beautiful. they are my superiors. they kill me, almost. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
July 13, 1976
[***] as usual, the women have me on the old cross. I am sitting around waiting for Cupcakes O’Brien’s footsteps. Her shoes, hairpins, mirrors, stockings, underwear, lotions everywhere…but where is she? Cups, you bitch, appear!
Off to Columbus, Ohio, tomorrow…The Hustler magazine flying me out round trip, putting me into a hotel to interview me the next day. I feel like Hemingway. I hope they hustle me up a nice piece of ass. They’ve bought a couple of short stories from me…they say over the phone…I await the solid feel of a check, however. Columbus, Ohio, that’s where Thurber came from, you know. I will shake his invisible hand when I land at the airport.
you keep close touch, old buddy. we are just beginning to blast the shit out of their bungholes! the women won’t kill us, the booze won’t kill us, the smog and the horses won’t kill us, God won’t kill us and the devil isn’t interested. our journey through this…will be remembered. I am drinking steam beer, fan on my ass, good music on the radio; the sky is turning red and the dead sit on their palms just as they were meant to do.
[To A. D. Winans]
July 13, 1976
Have meant to answer sooner but I’ve been on the road. now going again—to Columbus, Ohio, Thurber’s x-hangout.
as per a quote for back of your book, could you use this one?:
A. D. Winans is one of the few writers I have met (and I’ve met too god damned many of them) who doesn’t act like a writer or think of himself continually as a writer, and maybe that’s why he writes better than they do. I always prefer a man I can tolerate for more than ten minutes—that’s rare, and so is A. D.
—Charles Bukowski
[***] down here with women I am having much trouble. I am over-emotional, not worldly, and my feelings get hooked in when others might be playing games. I get burned, pal, but it has almost always been that way. [***]
can you give me any advice on women, kid? they are waving my guts on the ends of their flagsticks.
[To John Martin]
September 13, 1976
[***] on the novel, Love Tale of the Hyena, I may have to wait a while. I think my nose might be too close to the mirror at the moment. there’s no use writing a bad novel early when you might write a better one later. there are holy mathematical equations running through my mind—ha, ha—and I might take the woman and mix her into 3 women. Uh, I just don’t know. I play around with these things in my head—when?—I don’t know. But maybe we’d better delay things and do them more or less right—right meaning the taste and the flow of a good thing. I feel that this novel just didn’t start with the right…easiness of laughter and terror. we’re just going to have to wait, baby, and it may never arrive but that’s better than having it arrive asshole badly and as journalese…or however the shit it dies. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
September 13, 1976
[***] Things are still shitty here, I mean spiritually shitty. The redhead I was in love with for a while, the former part-time hooker told me today she has gone back to it. She did a trick last night for $100. I cashed the motherfucker’s check for her. It will probably bounce.[***]
I am luckier than most; I have various other sources of fulfillment—female, of course. But I doubt that there is any real woman upon the horizon (for me, my mind, my need, my weakness) and I’ll probably go to my death without ever seeing her—which hardly makes my life any different from another man’s. Yet I keep feeling that she’s out there, somewhere, but how do you get to her?
Christ, what a lack of grace, what a shit-smeared moon, night, day, noon, 3:45 p.m. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
October 16, 1976
[***] Cupcakes and I are finished. I have 3 new girlfriends but she can’t seem to be replaced—none so vicious, so evil, she was a real witch with long red hair. It’s going to take me a long time to get over this one. I was thinking of coming to Germany with her but now that it’s over I don’t want to come. [***]
I can’t write much more. I am sitting here with this spear stuck into my gut that Cupcakes jammed into me. pure pure blithering agony.
you hold and I’ll try to hold.
[To A. D. Winans]
October 26, 1976
[***] I am still mending from the Cupcakes disaster; it’s a slow heal…the eternal beautiful witch-factor. she is killing off some other poor sucker soul as I write this. some people need to kill, it’s an instinct, it keeps their neon juices flowing.
Do you think you’ll ever be able to give up editing? It’s my suggestion that you do…before the dogs eat off your toes.
Get out, Al, and take a plane and go lay down next to J. W. for a week. eat breakfast together and get drunk at night. there aren’t any poets; gather real valuables. get the hell out of North Beach and go East of no West.
and allah be wit de.
[To John Martin]
October 27, 1976
[***] not to hex myself, but anyhow I think after Nov. 13 I’ll jump into this novel I have in mind: Women. whether it works or not.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do the childhood bit. oyee, maybe when I’m 70 but you know some woman is going to kill me before I reach 60.
[To John Martin]
November 2, 1976
oh, I ain’t quite quit yet. I feel I’m in a slump, swinging at the outside curve out of the strike zone. the redhead still bites me inside my gut even though I know she is a deathly scorpion bringdown…so I’m rather batting .143 in the minors. I get to pinch hit now and then, I hope to get the swing back. I feel I still have it. it just has to rise up to meet me.
meanwhile, the checks look great, I hope the sales hold. I wouldn’t feel good if you sent me money that didn’t come from royalty sources. I’m not your son. hardly. and if things narrow down you cut the margin down. the bankroll looks good…I’ve had to open another account next door at the Bank of America. oh, christ. what I mean is that I don’t have the needs of most people and I live cheaply. this will help me keep writing. I’d rather not be a janitor in my last years. so I’m careful with my money, even though the redhead took me for about $500. a real artist, she. [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
November 2, 1976
[***] yes, watch those young girls, Al. their sincerity seems so sincere until they don’t get what they really wanted, then they move on in the hunt. meanwhile we get burnt down believing that they wanted us. we let our egos waylay us, it’s so easy. then the truth comes up and we can’t believe what was obviously the believable.
on short stories, I think the best idea is to write them the way you want to write them, then look for a market. the deliberate slant automatically takes the juice out.
keep it together.
[To A. D. Winans]
November 30, 1976
My spiritual advisors have told me not to give any more mixed readings. —but no shit, they are a bringdown. I like Alta, you and Miche[line] but it just won’t work. it causes a scratching I don’t like. so I’ve got to say more. like: no. call me a shit but there’s a lot of shit in the river.
Miche has never got his just due but it’s as well—it’ll keep him on his spring instead of turning him into a silky-haired, over-read, over-precious N. Mailer. overexposure is the toughest whore of all. and one that few men can turn away for a head job.
you’re right on the women.
they can eat your time, they can eat you out. but, finally, they will leave you alone for a while—they make master moves on the chessboards of cunt-cock steel-wall play. but what material. I realize that I have gotten locked almost into this area. but that too will pass. and then I can write about the cockroaches, or whatever is left. [***]
I miss that belly dancer. We laughed for almost 9 days and nights. she said I caused the laughter but it was her, she made me feel so good and crazy. Sometimes there’s luck. When there is you stock up on it and wait for the other times. [***]
· 1977 ·
[To John Martin]
January 8, 1977
everything’s lovely except there’s a madwoman on my bed and her back faces mine and she has covered herself with a blanket. I really draw them. she’s been like that for an hour. I doubt I’ll ever die a natural death. o, poems enclosed. keep it up. mine is.
[To John Martin]
January 10, 1977
I’ve got a reading on the 30th of this month, which means poems, so I’m going to hang with the poem until then, hoping for new juices and so forth. Then in Feb. we start the 3rd novel, Women. I mean, I’ll start it. And if it doesn’t roll by itself I’ll just stop. Let me be the judge. and jury. and the killer. ah.
anyhow, I’m glad you’re on a new book of poems. 1976 was one of my roughest years. since I was in my early 20’s. so much happened and so much failed. It was like I had to learn all over again, and that’s good. those big eyes looking into one’s soul aren’t always telling the truth no more than the roses are or the fish are or the mountains are. [***]
[To Hank Malone]
January 16, 1977
Lost your address, found it. Have also been going through a bit of rough time via some trollop-strumpet red haired witch. One is not too interested in literary essays when one is walking around with a knife in the gut. It’s still there. But—as in your essay—one goes on. Wow. Endurance is more important than truth, I says.
Hank, the essay hits some points pretty good—the alcohol bit-need, the carry-on in face of constant shellfire, and the need—sometimes—for laughter. Sometimes instead of dying or killing myself I just go to bed for a couple of days. Shades down, swilling in the swill.
There are always more women but the one that’s wanted and the one that’s gotten a bit is the one that works you over good. And never leaves you alone long enough to get over the trap.
You got any advice for me on women—send right off.
Me, I’m watching James Cagney. White Heat. and drinking white wine. thanks for mailing me the essay.
[To Carl Weissner]
January 27, 1977
[***] the mailman found me passed out in bed, hungover, at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. “Charley,” he said, “I got you a little letter here.” he’s o.k. he sees me with young girls, hags, and I’m usually drunk or drinking. got a couch outside. 2 young German girls came to see me one day. I tried to fuck both of them, finally settled on the older (22) and the other went for a long walk, and maybe it was limp dick but it seemed she had a corkscrew pussy. sometimes there are those and they work good. I say, “ah, ah, look I’m sliding way up around the left side but I’m in, somehow I’m in, I’m no boy scout, I’m in, and ah ah ah…” but maybe I wasn’t in this one. I kept punching at a tunnel-ending. I gave off and ate her out. they stayed for 3 or 4 days and nights until I got tired. then I drove them off to some woman’s place in the hills and I drank cans of beer steering out of there, and little cans of vodka mix, red or pink cans, the sunlight blaring in at me, wondering if I were nuts or the world has calmed, but really nothing much, I found my way back in, stretched it out, went to sleep for a couple of hours, the phone rang…[***]
This is the first mention in these letters of Linda Lee Beighle whom Bukowski eventually married on August 18, 1985.
[To Carl Weissner]
March 3, 1977
[***] have heard from Ferling.’s bookkeeper. I think his overseas cut is 50 percent. it can’t be helped. but it does leave a goodly sum. John Martin is nicer. His cut is ten percent and so far he has always been good enough to waive it.
Cupcakes has vanished into space. not really. she’s after the gold fillings and after a young dentist who plays with them. smart girl. got some new ladies, a little less related to the shark. Linda Lee—the # one new one (not Linda King—x) studying German. she thinks we’re going to Germany. well, who the hell knows? [***]
[To A. D. Winans]
Late April, 1977
Thanks for sending your special issue to the Germans. Things are working up over there—4 or 5 of my books in translation. I think the Germans have me down as an admixture of Bogart, Hem, Adolf, and Jack the Ripper. I may go there this summer with my lady friend. Drink and die there. The Fatherland. [***]
[To John Martin]
May 10, 1977
Enclosed the bit from Germany. It’s nice that you take 10 per instead of 50 like Mr. Lawrence F. He wrote me the other day suggesting that City Lights put out a Bukowski “selected poems.” I haven’t answered. I’ve told him time and again that I am in the Sparrow’s nest.
The Germans are honest and I think Carl W. keeps them that way.
On the other hand there is London Mag who put out Post Office and Life and Death in a Charity Ward and not a sound, not an advance, no royalties. These books were issued in 1974. I wrote the editor inquiring about the matter about a year and a half ago. No response.
Well, it’s just like the women—the writing’s still the thing. No matter what they do or don’t do to you. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
May 11, 1977
[***] although I no longer live on one candy bar a day, life still kicks my ass pretty hard, mostly in the form of people, mostly in the form of women, a real crazy rip. sometimes very authentic and horrifying, so you see the gods are still playing with me. don’t worry, old friend, if some woman doesn’t kill me there is a lot more coming via the word.
Martin phones: “Weissner is the one responsible for getting you over in Germany. He is a very good man.”
“Hell, I know it,” I say, “and he even collects my bills for me. And I have the strange feeling that the son of a bitch improves my writing when he translates it.”
I talk to my present girlfriend Linda Lee about you. “I’ve got to do something for Carl. Maybe I should send him some money.”
“No,” she says, “do something really nice for him.”
“Like what?” I say. It’s hard, Carl, for me to do something nice. I’m going to dedicate a book to you some day, hurrah. but that don’t buy no groceries. well, anyhow, thanks for all the damned work you’ve done. thanks again. jesus christ, yes. [***]
my 89 year old uncle is alive in Andernach. Heinrich Fett. and, did I tell you?—the house I was born in still stands but is now a brothel. I can get the address from my biographer if you want to get a piece of ass in the house that Buk was born in. [***]
[To Hank Malone]
May 27, 1977
Yes, I read your piece again—the altered one—and you know it’s difficult for me to say whatever. You must know that I don’t know who I am or why I do what I do, and that if I did know I probably couldn’t do whatever I am doing now.
I don’t ask you to feel guilty in choosing me as subject matter but don’t ask me to feel guilty either, or to understand anything about it. You must know this. You must know that I’m unable to handle it—not out of modesty but simply out of whatever makes me functional.
I have no feelings about most writing—past or present—except that I dislike most of it, can’t read it.
Thanks, anyhow, for sending this on. [***]
[To Carl Weissner]
August [?17], 1977
[***] I don’t care much for the record 90 Minutes in Hell. The title wasn’t my idea. and I don’t care for most of it, except for the short story that ends it. I think I did a good job there.
There seems to be plenty of people knocking on my
door nowadays and they just seem to sit and sit and sit, and it’s like they are crunching on the hours and I am the only one who seems to feel it. they can’t take hints. finally, after much agony I politely inform them that I’d like to do a little work. you can’t tell them you want to take a shit because they’ll wait that out.
Went down to Del Mar with Linda Lee and we got stinko in our motel room and went swimming and diving in the rough surf at 1:30 a.m. A real gasser and not a bad way to die but I came on out and we got back to the motel, poured some more, and got along that night. She’s a good girl and has lived through many of my drunken, mad, unkind nights and has forgiven me…so far.
[To Carl Weissner]
September 22, 1977
[***] Got first copy of Love Is a Dog from Hell in mail yesterday. Finished the novel Women last night: 433 pages, 99 chapters. I think it’s all right but it will confuse some people; others will simply hate me, as usual. They may even put a hit man on me? [***]
Now it’s back to the short story and the poem again.
That novel was a real juicer for me (Women). I mean it gave me energy, it didn’t take it from me. I feel strangely lost now….
All the Germans who come by drink Coors which is one of the worst beers in America. I can’t sip it without puking. [***]
[To John Martin]
October 9, 1977
[***] I sent the corrected pages of the novel off a couple of days ago. It still read o.k. to me. had to make another name change—from Ruthie to Cecelia. The woman was Ruthie Wantling and I thought that was getting too close.