AS A POET OF T

HE STREETS, BU

KOWSKI RAGED A

ND OUTRAGED, B

UT HE

ALWAYS TOLD TH

E TRUTH--ESPEC

IALLY ABOUT OT

HER WRITERS

alking about

writing is

like talking

about love

or love-maki

ng or love-

living: Too m

uch talk abo

ut it can ki

ll it off. Wi

thout seekin

g them out,

I

have, unfort

unately, met

many writers,

both succes

sful and uns

uccessful—I

mean

at their cra

ft. As human

beings they

are a bad l

ot, a distas

teful lot, b

itchy,

self-centere

d, vicious.

One thing th

ey almost al

l have in co

mmon: They e

ach

believe thei

r work great

, perhaps th

e greatest.

If they beco

me successfu

l they

accept it as

their norma

l due. If th

ey fail, the

y feel that

the editors

and the

publishers a

nd the gods

are against

them. And it

’s true that

many bad wr

iters are

pushed and m

anipulated t

o the top, w

hatever the

reason may b

e. It’s also

true that

many great w

riters have

starved to d

eath, or alm

ost starved

to death, or

killed

themselves o

r gone mad a

nd so forth,

and were la

ter discover

ed as fine (

though

dead) talent

s. This hist

orical fact

gives heart

to the write

r who is tru

ly bad.

He likes to

imagine that

his (her) f

ailure is ca

used by any

number of th

ings

besides simp

ly being a p

oor talent.

Well, so we

have all tha

t.

Also, when I

think of th

e writers I

know, mostly

poets, I no

tice that th

ey

are supporte

d by others—

wives, mostl

y mothers ca

rry the econ

omic load of

those I know

. And they a

re quite com

fortable wit

h TV sets, lo

aded refrig-

erators and

apartments o

r houses by

the sea—most

ly in Venice

and Santa

Monica—and t

hey sun them

selves in th

e day, feeli

ng tragic, t

hese male

PHOTO COLLAGE BY JAMES IMBROGNO

MAR FEAT House of Horrors;13.indd 2MAR FEAT House of Horrors;13 indd 2 12/7/09 9:43:37 AM12/7/09 9:43:37 AM

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TOP: BUKOWSKI LIFTING

WEIGHTS IN HIS

HOLLYWOOD APART-

MENT, 1976. BOTTOM: THE AUTHOR AND HIS WIFE, LINDA, IN

1996.

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BUKOWSKI AT WORK, HOLLYWOOD, 1976.

SCHROEDER

AND HIS FA

VORITE SUB

JECT ENJOY

ING A LAUG

H DURING

THE PROMOT

ION OF BAR

FLY IN 198

7.

BUKOWSKI: THE LEGEND AND THE MISUNDERSTANDINGSTHE DIRECTOR OF THE DIRECTOR OF BARFLYBARFLY PAYS TRIBUTE TO THE MAN PAYS TRIBUTE TO THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTHSBEHIND THE MYTHS

Misunderstand-ings and opposing opinions about Charles Bukowski never cease. In Germany he is considered one of the great writers of our time, and his col-lected works have sold more there than those

of any other writer. The American East Coast literary establishment, however, has yet to take him seriously.One common misconception about him is that he was one of the Beat poets. Nothing could be further from the truth. Los Angeles has pro-duced very few great men; Charles Bukowski is one of them. A product and chronicler of the world of the workingman, he was far too shy and proud to have joined a bohemian movement—which he could not have afforded anyway. Instead, he submerged himself in the working/drinking class, all while reading authors who had writ-ten honestly about what he, himself, was also witnessing: Dostoyevsky, Celine, Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc.He created a legend around him based on his weekly columns: “Erec-tions, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Mad-ness” in the L.A. Free Press and “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” in Open City, which were based on his own “improved” real-ity. This legend-making is not uncommon for an artist, especially for a writer who avoided using third-person narration and wrote mostly about him-self as a combative and often antic drunk. But in Bukowski’s case it hides one of the most important elements of his personal-ity: an extreme, almost feminine sensitivity, accompanied by a great

sense of decency and respect for the Other. He could often be cruel in his blunt comments about people, but otherwise, he would liter-ally not have hurt a fly.In my DVD The Charles Bukowski Tapes (50 of his improvised monologues filmed in 1983–84) there is a very revealing moment in the seg-ment entitled “Nature”:“People are indifferent. They don’t get themselves in with the spider and the fly. I got myself in. I am the fly,” Bukowski confesses. This is the Bukowski you discover when you read his most beautiful poems, for instance, the ones from the collection Love Is a Dog From Hell (one of his 25 books of poetry). His admirers are divided equally between those who prefer his poetry and those who prefer his prose. For many, he completely changed the nature of poetry in the United States. As for his prose, he was condemned to fol-low Hemingway but had a darker and funnier voice. One of the best of his six novels, Women, the prose complement to Love Is a Dog From Hell, starts like this: “I was 50 years old and hadn’t been to bed with a woman for four years.” In the next 300 pages, using his newfound celebrity, he catches up at a rapid, hilarious pace to end up in a durable rela-tionship with the only woman who at first refused to sleep with him.When I think of Bukowski, the title of a book by Sartre keeps pop-ping into my head: Saint Genet, Poet & Martyr. I also find myself think-ing of the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes and the images of his hun-dreds of followers who in repudiating Plato and his idealizations, in holding fast to Cyni-cism, nature and extreme asceticism flourished for over 500 years until the triumph of Christ. Using his madness, Bukowski was forever trying not to be seen as a Wise Man, although that impression often stayed with those who met him. A consistently dark and devastating humor was his armor (concluded on page 000)

BY BARBET SCHROEDER

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5

against anyone who chose to take him too seriously, and yet he was very serious and lucid about his talent.

Even in his drinking there was a form of wisdom that kept his writing fresh and allowed him to continue to sidestep his own destruction. Slowing down the drinking, for example, was done in a graceful way. I saw him in East Hollywood as he was start-ing to come down, at the age of 58, from hard liquor to white wine—albeit wine in very large quantities. During our early days working on the film Barfly, 12 empty bottles of cheap German white were often lying on the ground by three A.M. A year later, he never drank before sunset. Later still, he switched to red wine, and then, much later, drank only one bottle every other day.

He went back to hard liquor on rare evenings—once at a fancy dinner party for a music industry event at the Beverly Hills Hotel. At a table behind us sat Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom Hank tried to pro-voke into a fight. “If you’re really so tough,” he said to him, “come outside and show us.” In a panic, Schwarzenegger’s press agents were discreetly signaling Arnold not to respond. Later, Hank stole a carving knife from the kitchen and “went after the rich” with it, spitting on arriving Rolls-Royces.

For his chemotherapy, of course, he had to stop drinking altogether, even the reduced form. First, though, the doctors checked his liver to see if it could withstand the chemo. The test revealed he had the liver of a young man. He was a force of nature. He used a short remission to finish his last novel, Pulp, and in the midst of his pain, kept on laugh-ing until the end about the human comedy he was sharply observing in the hospital around him.

New York, 11/5/2009

b

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