Bukowski,Kerouac & Kennedy P.D.
I notice Canongate are about to launch two new books on Bukowski and I feel the need to congratulate them. Bukowski's poems I've always felt I can understand. they are no bullshit poems. So the forthcoming collection I look forward to getting. I have yet to read the biog by Howard Sounes so that re-release should prompt me to correct my oversight. I have recently had the pleasure of reading the two earlier Canongate Bukowski publications. They are both wonderfully designed covers and well done to the artists who did them, I am not sure the Barfly would have appreciated them though. He may have found them a bit too fussy? The drawing of Bukowski on the cover of the poems published posthumously is so similar to my drawing below of the man that I pat myself on the back for being of good taste 30 odd years ago! I find the poems as always stir me out of my torpor. I love the way he battles with his late found fame & fortune. And of course his late description of the making of the film Barfly in "Hollywood" casts his irreverent eye on the movie business. this novel loses the 'edge' of a lot of his earlier writing inasmuch that he by this time was sure he would not die in poverty, but it retains his wonderful cutting sardonic humour. I just love his assessment of a popular singer (who we might allege is Tom Jones) ability. It illustrates well his total lack of acceptance of any fashions or sacred cows, or bulls. Personally I enjoyed the film I saw more recently but which came out first, 1981,"Tales of Ordinary Madness" based on Bukowski/Chinaski better than Barfly. I found the lead man's [Ben Gazarra] representation of Bukowski better then Rourke's and the lead woman [Ornella Muti] was astounding. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bukowski.htm
It so happens that I hail from a so called 'working class' background where writers were considered a bit sissy or not considered at all.I began to write after being inspired D. H. Lawrence I related to his working class beginnings, if he could do it why not I? Then came a bigger inspiration, Jack Kerouac. Not only from a working class background but also mad on sport like me. He played his sport and wrote at a higher level than me of course, but that's no matter. I don't think Bukowski liked Kerouac but I related to his way with It was in the mid-1970's I discovered 
Bukowski who apparently came from a 'well- off' background which he chose to discard to live a life of exaggerated nihilism. He was able to write with a Bowery bum's instinct because he sometimes was one. I felt he was a great poet, see 'The Days run away like wild horses over the hill'. His column for City Lights he called "Dirty Old Man' and it seems he was given the freedom to write anything about anything that popped into his skull. As a child of the 60's I loved his irreverent views but I was able to glean two warnings from his penchant to shock:
- Don't drink endlessly because it can have dangerous consequences.
You cannot write about just any thing! Or maybe better put - should not. Bukowski's free-rein was alright until in one of his short stories he saw a young girl through the eyes of a tramp with lewd thoughts. I put the book down never to return. I also abandoned MacEwan when I suspected he used the same Bukowski story as a device in one of his own. If it was not plagiarism it was an incredible coincidence that he should write almost an identical story, and it showed just as much bad taste as Bukowski's original. There is always a need for self-censorship, as J. Ross and his mate, the hairy one with the tight pants, have recently reminded us all. I used to be hairy myself until follicle challenge set in and I wore tight pants in the late 60's early 70's. I'm not sure if that makes me ahead of my time and Brand behind me? Oops, self censor cuts in, " Pete you shouldn't write about behinds!" But I ignore all forms of censorship, mostly. Like Walter Matthau said in a film once, " Sometimes it is not good to tell the whole truth", or words to that effect.
I have written for 40 years mostly in journal form choosing to write about almost anything, barring self-censored subjects and rarely
about about topical subjects as a matter of course. At first I did not write stories, I relied on the quality inherent in the word on the page and my story was my life unfolding. I followed no particular literary canon, invented my own spelling and was let us say creative with punctuation. I gave myself a free reign (not rein) see what I mean?
Someone else who used a working class basis as inspiration died last week was called Studs Terkel. He cleverly referred to working class folk as 'uncelebrated'. So far I have never read one of his books but love to see him quoted like his reference to Blair as Bush's house-boy. Terkel wrote: "Work is about a daily search for meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor, in short for a sort of life, rather than a Monday-to-Friday sort of dying.” I must add Terkel to my long list of unreads. That's what I love about writing & reading and the other arts too, one thing leads to another in a never-ending story. When you read Kerouac you meet Cassady who was also Ginsberg's hero.
They all looked back to Walt Whitman who wrote 'Leaves Of Grass'. It was written over a lifetime and published incrementally so that he added changes with each re-print. Books grow like leaves of grass if you let them. Recently I saw Bob Dylan wandering round on horseback for the film Green Mountain(?). The difference between Dylan, (or should that be Zimmerman?) and Whitman is that whilst Dylan sees the civil war from a film set Whitman saw it for real. He walked from bed to bed of dying men, and boys, from both sides his Union and those sad Confederates he found far from home.
He listened to their stories and comforted them when he could, sometimes sharing their last moments with them. Apparently Studs Terkel was a listener too. His writings were taken from his conversations with people in Chicago and other places in America celebrating their stories.
Maybe sub-consciously I began writing and making art in order to get my story 'celebrated'? It was also a route away from my humble starting point at the foot of Pendle. Maybe I should start listening more to others, my wife for one would like that.
