On Writing

by Charles Bukowski

except maybe some violent sketches I made while sponging on my parents in Los Angeles.

The drawings!! And portfolio (though it has a different meaning here)!! In some twisted way I am now in a similar situation lol

but they do not think my stuff is poetry. I know what they mean. The idea is there but I can’t break thro the skin. I can’t work the dials. I’m not interested in poetry. I don’t know what interests me. Non-dullness, I suppose.

Somehow, I’d always had the idea that I could write anything I wanted, and, if it was good enough it’d get in there.

and especially today, when everybody’s so god damned afraid of offending or saying anything against anybody else—an honest writer is in a hell of a hole.

For my money, everything went to hell with World War 2. And not only the Arts. Even cigarettes don’t taste the same. Tamales. Chili. Coffee. Everything’s made of plastic. A radish doesn’t taste sharp anymore. You peel an egg and, invariably, the egg comes off with the shell. Pork chops are all fat and pink. People buy new cars and nothing else. That’s their life: four wheels. Cities only turn on one-third of their street lights to save electricity. Policemen give out tickets like mad. Drunks are fined atrocious sums, and almost everybody’s drunk who’s had a drink. Dogs must be kept on a leash, dogs must be inoculated. You have to have a fishing license to catch grunion with your hands, and comic books are considered dangerous to children. Men watch boxing matches from their armchairs, men who never knew what a boxing match was, and when they disagree with a decision, they write vile and clamorous letters to the newspapers in protest indignant.

It's fascinating to hear that people felt the similar way towards the society even back then in the 1950s

This factotum has another menial job. I hate it, but I have two pairs of shoes for the first time in my life (I like to doll up for the track—playact for the real railbird character).

Well, I’m 34 now. If I don’t make it by the time I’m 60, I’m just going to give myself 10 more years.

*CRIES*

There simply—as you must know from your nervous breakdown—isn’t enough time—I have my trivial, tiring, low-paying job 44 hours a week, and I am going to night school 4 nights a week, two hours a night, plus an added hour or two home work. I am taking a course in Commercial Art for the next couple of years, if I last (this is the night school deal), and besides this, I have just started my first novel, A Place to Sleep the Night.

About me, I must seem pretty old to be about beginning in poetry: I was 38 on this last August l6th and feel, look and act a hell of a lot older. I’ve been working with poetry the last couple of years after about a 10 year blank, self-inflicted I suppose, and rather unhappy but not without its moments. I’m not one to look back on wanton waste as complete loss—there’s music in everything, even defeat—but coming up on a death bed in a charity ward slowed me somewhat, gave me the old pause to think.

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.

Omg me too, bro...........

I received a D in English I at dear old L.A.C.C. for showing up every morning at 7:30 a.m. with a hangover. It wasn’t the hangover so much as the fact that the class began at 7:00 a.m., usually with a rendering blast from Gilbert and Sullivan, which, I am sure, would have killed me.

He hated them??? Lmaooooo

A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper. And if I can see more poetry in the Santa Anita stretch or drunk under the banana tree than in a smoky room of lavender rhyming, that is up to me and only time will judge which climate was proper, not some jackass second-rate editor afraid of a printer’s bill and trying to ham it on subscriptions and coddling contributions.

yes, the “littles” are all an irresponsible bunch (most of them) guided by young men, eager with the college flush, actually hoping to cut a buck from the thing, starting with fiery ideals and large ideas, long explanatory rejection slips, and dwindling down, finally, to letting the manuscripts stack behind the sofa or in the closet, some of them lost forever and never answered, and finally putting out a tacked-together, hacked-together poor selection of typographically botched poems before getting married and disappearing from the scene with some comment like “lack of support.” Lack of support? Who in the hell are they to get it? What have they done but camouflage themselves behind the façade of Art, think up the name of a magazine, get it listed and wait for submissions from the same 2 or 3 hundred tired names that seem to think they are the poets of America because some 22 year-old jackass with a bongo drum and a loose 50 dollar bill accepts their worst poetry.

I have so many things to say about this. This is about people who don't try enough, yet keep complaining that the situation, the people, the society, and the world have failed them. Of course, context matters, people DON'T have the same starting point, but each man is aware of what's on their bag. Thus the quality of each person's work can only be compared to what they are capable of. If you have more on your plates, give a higher quality to your work. If you are on the opposite side of the privileged, nothing can excuse you from putting your best effort, showing your best sincerity in your work. I want to put a lot of emphasis on sincerity because privileged or not, nothing can refrain you from giving your sincere effort. I remember coming to a morning common course on the history of science and technology. I can see that the professor put a lot of time arranging the course and put a lot of thought into discussing and interacting with the student. So it broke my heart when I saw the students coming late and those who were taking it online didn't even try to appear as if they were listening to the lecture. What makes someone who excels differs from the one who doesn't is sincerity. You can't measure one's sincerity, only you can measure your own. You're the one who knows what's already on your plate, so you're the one who knows best what's stopping you from the things you want to do. My time in graduate school leaves a lot to be desired. Why were things going that way? I graduated, but that's it, full stop. Yet, I know that I only have myself to blame. Reading this passage forced me to question myself: Had I been sincere during my time finishing my degree?

What I mean is, like with the cartoons, the novel, I don’t know the mechanics of doing and I do not want to waste a lot of words doing everything backwards that some sycophant will twist and turn to his own use. I thought the Art world and things like that would be clean. That’s shit. There are more evil and unscrupulous octopus people in the Art world than you’ll find in any business house because in a business house the guy’s minnow imagination is just on getting a bigger house and a bigger car and an extra whore but usually the drive does not come from some twisted inside that cries for RECOGNITION OF SELF beyond all decency and straightness, no matter how it’s gotten. That’s why some of these editors are such damn buggers: they can’t carve it themselves so they try to associate themselves with those who hack and carve at a little clean marble . . . that’s why a lot of them won’t answer letters of inquiry about submitted work: all the lights within them have fucked themselves to pieces and out.

the difference being that if you are a loner and nobody, you are a nut; if you are a loner and a little known, then you are a snob. they’ll always find the proper shaft to fit you no matter which way you move.

so long as you’ve got the rent, what do these pricks TELL their students in ENGLISH CLASS I or II? it must be holy sickening . . . these Ph.D. boys who never missed a meal or fell to the floor drunk or turned on the gas, without fame or flame for 3 hours . . . what do they tell those kids???? what CAN they tell them? nothing. so, therefore, everybody appears to be COOL KOOL AND INTELLIGENT and this is the façade and the fish-smell of the wasted centuries. [

Why is it so funny to me that he's writing like a stan twt

Much publishing is done through politics, friends and natural stupidity.

My critic at the N. Y. Times is probably a nice enough fellow, knows his language, well read, so on. Don’t think he ever missed a meal, though, or broke a leg or got pissed on by a whore, or ever slept on a park bench, and so forth. Not that these things are necessary, they happen, but when they do you tend to think a bit differently.

I get many letters from people who say about the same thing: “If you’ve made it maybe there’s a chance for me.” In other words, they know I’ve been fucked around pretty badly but I’m still here. I don’t mind them getting onto that as long as they don’t beat on my door and come in and babble their troubles to me over a batch of 6-packs. I’m not here to save the People, I’m here to save my own coward’s ass. And typing words down while I’m drinking seems to keep me on the roll. o.k.?

I think one of the best things that ever happened to me was that I was so long unsuccessful as a writer and had to work for a living until I was 50. It kept me away from other writers and their parlor games and their backbiting and their bitching, and now that I’ve had some luck I still intend to absent myself from them.

My last day on the job, some guy let a remark fall as I walked by: “That old guy has a lot of guts to quit a job at his age.” I didn’t feel I had an age. The years had just added up and shitted away.

You know, I’ve had well-meaning people tell me: “Everybody suffers.” I always tell them, “Nobody suffers like the poor.” Then I get rid of them.