Screams From the Balcony by Charles Bukowski
it looks the way I expected Carl. the literary are a cold and inhuman bunch. I have been writing to the wrong people. they may talk life and humanity in their work but when it comes time to doing it, you might as well ask a goldfish to change a tire because you’ve got a broken arm.
most of them simply don’t answer. others answer but just give me literary jive, kind of essay junk, not even really speaking to me, and not mentioning a damn thing about the letters. one sent a letter of reason explaining why he couldn’t return the letters and his letter was the saddest of them all; I mean the reasoning of it—I’ve been talking to an imbecile, a high school boy, a little jealousy tink.
I will say this—if anybody asked me for their letters back under the same conditions, my only thought would be, what size envelope should I use? or how many.
now it’s your turn at bat. I want to ask Norse when he gets here. and there are 2 others. I hope you can help me, Carl. that post office is tearing me to pieces like a tiger in a cage and the people stand outside watching taking notes or looking the other way. well, let me know.
[* * *] jesus jesus Carl PLEASE SEND LETTERS! I have a chance to breathe, to see LIGHT, god oh mighty! don’t put the lid on my grave. someday it may be my chance to help you. now must eat and go to POST OFFICE. eleven years. eleven years down there. going babe. let me hear.
* * *
[To Frances Smith and Marina Bukowski]
October 16, 1968
I haven’t heard from you and hope all is all right. I mailed a $5 some time back. it wasn’t much but hope you got it. with all the thievery going on, no telling what might happen to your mail.
so far I have tried two poets who have my letters, letters that I have written to them, explaining that some univ. will pay me enough for a year or two of freedom if I can give them my letters plus the other stuff I have on hand here—paintings, mags, books, notebooks, so forth. so far one poet has said “no.” the other sent me back a kind of literary essay letter, not mentioning anything about the letters.
the poets are shits. I have always said so.
so I am writing 4 or 5 more and keeping a scorecard. it wouldn’t surprise me if I came up with a blank.
throat still a little sore but improving. missed 4 days work. they still won’t fire me. it’s the busy season now.
pleas let me know if Marina is all right.
and take care of yourself.
Hank
[enclosed with preceding]
hello Marina:
I went to the store today and I was thinking of you and I bought a red light, a blue light and a yellow light. these fit into the lamps. someday when you get here again we will put them into the lamps and see how they look
I had a very sore throat and had to see Dr. Voegel. I am somewhat better now and I am not drinking any beer at all right now because I think that is what is making my throat sore. so now the police can’t get me and throat will get better, so don’t you worry about me, I will be all right. and I hope you are all right too. your paintings are still on the wall and they make me feel good when I look at them.
I have to go to work now. please try to be happy. I am sorry your last visit was so short; it seemed you’d hardly gotten here and then you were gone. and I was sleepy all the time. but I love you very much. stay healthy and happy and have a good time.
* * *
[To Carl Weissner]
[October 23, 1968]
yes, the New York letters…. yes, the Heidelberg letters, January, when you get there. very important. my thanks, sure, straight off the cuff, not many coming through—Wm Want-ling is one who is—but certain others offer silence or send literary essays; one just sends me a lot of verbal shit about his tough life—his wife works to support him while he writes and she doesn’t earn very much. anyhow, there are a few others who I must write; the ones who said NO are the ones I expected to say NO; those who have said YES, likewise. I know that these fuckers can prob. sell these letters after I die and make a few bucks, but I’ve tried to tell them it is more important that I live NOW, that I get out of the post office for a year, out of everything just sit and hit the typer and stare at the walls; after that, I don’t care what happens. one year of FREEDOM, babe. the letters are their PROPERTY as they so sternly state. all I’m asking for IS THEIR property so I will not go nuts. ah ha. you are a good one you understand this thing. I have personally prepared a SHIT LIST OF THE SHITS which I will publish in my deathbed memoirs. the chicken shits will not get away with anything. they will be exposed and burned and wiped and whipped and tarred and feathered before the city gates under a full moon. and the good guys will be listed, although the list will not be very long, that’s the way it goes.
most of the poets are shits. they only WRITE about LIFE. and then not very well. and those who howl the loudest about injustice and pain, lo, all that, those are the ones who dish it out to others. terrible terrible little shits, the bunch of them.
Karl, I gotta thank you plenty for coming through [* * *] all I can offer the good guys is further lifetime communication, and I will not always be bothering them for letters back.* the shits, (editors and poets) no more communion, poem or letter or word or beer or sound. and although this may not sound like a very big threat, it is sure a fine thing to get those pains in the ass out of my soul, and that in this way, I have been warned against them. I’m not playing saint, Carl, just cleaning out the dirty dresser drawers. so? [* * *]
Notes of a Dirty Old Man to be issued in book form by porny publisher. they think I am dirty. but they publish good stuff too. Happiness Bastard, Kirby Doyle. Essex House. good advance. I have written about 70 columns in 70 weeks so they have a lot to pick from. not too much, either. I threw out a hell of a lot of it. luckily, most of remainder is in typescript. I gave Bryan 20 bucks to have some Negro he knows type up the rest. Bryan paid the BLACK IN FRONT. Negro did a few, faded. Bryan says he will find him, get him going on the rest. gave Bryan 10 percent for setting up deal with Essex house, and he deserves it, I never woulda thought of it. but if we don’t get the typescripts in by Dec. 14 we gotta give the money back. a cool grand. fuck. get 4 percent retail sales up to 150,000, 6 percent after…
* * *
[To John William Corrington]
November 2, 1968
Dear Mr. Corrington:
I see you did not answer my request to return my letters. Silence is the tool used by superiors to their inferiors. It is possible that you are my superior. I have noticed a marked divergence between us since you made your trip to England and poked at the corpse of J.J. for that extra dangler they give you in college. I have nothing against explorations and education except that I have very little of it and so must work from instinct like any slaughterhouse, workhouse, street animal. I recall meeting you in New Orleans. I recall that you didn’t bring your wife. I recall other things. This is not a crank letter, this is a letter to explain you to me and the only way I have to do this is to write it down.
It was poking at J.J. in England that first dehumanized you, then it was getting paid good money for a bad novel, no, not a bad novel at all, a medium novel, a wooly jockstrap of fatal reference and day-dreaming, plus a few fine passages. But like money turns a whore’s head, money turns a man’s head also. After all, there is a hell of a lot of difference between being printed in Epos by a Commie who lives with a mulatto (mulatto? u, should know), then getting a bit on fine stationary from an editor in N.Y. with circulation push and that thin but fat check placed within. This makes you a pro. Although some thinks this makes you a prick. Some think Mailer is a prick. But he is mostly a pro. But pros seem to turn to pricks, finally. See Mailer, Genet, Burroughs, Ginsberg, who the hell else? showing at the Chicago Yippie thing. As giants of Humanity? Bullshit. As Giants of Publicity. Still, all these were at one time pros. and some pro remains within them. It is difficult to destroy a truly good man even tho he makes many foolish mistakes against his soul. I ain’t no Saint. I drink myself sick and play horses an
But I want you to know that I still do not consider you my superior, even tho I am a postal clerk and you are a Dr. of Literature. To put it bluntly, I think that I am the better writer and the better man and that your refusal to answer my letter was chicken-shit and chickenfeathers and chickenfat. My dear Southern Gentleman. of course, I am drunk, what other way is there to be? And I’m even fond of you for Christ’s sake, no form what? Anyway, I am sorry that home in New Orleans is swallowing all your money like a slot machine. ah, life can get HARD, can’t it? especially in Berkeley.—DON’T TELL ME THOSE ACID-CATS CAN’T UNDERSTAND FINNEGANS WAKE? tell them that’s it’s just like music or singing or talking, you say and feel what you want, but don’t INVENT majestics that are not THERE like you people do, also with POUND’S Cantos which are nothing but dry and hard work with little joy, and Art is the Joy of Telling the Truth, bastard, just like I am telling you the truth now.
Since I last met you (New Orleans) the gods have for some reason put upon me to meet many college profs and some few men of fame. they all fell short in naturalness—they are shits and goofs. and so, at last, I see the game. the pretty facade. everybody hiding. what TERRIBLE WORD-SLINGERS they ALL are! what little inventiveness or easiness they have! shits, a worldful of shits in some disguise or other.
You said you would send me your last novel. You never did. Did you steal it from my letters? You have failed to answer a request upon last letter mailed to you. Southern Gentleman. My dear Southern Gentleman, I’d sure as hell hate to meet a Southern boor. I won’t bother you any more, professor, you are the pro.
* * *
• 1969 •
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
February 5, 1969
got the Patchen Outsider 4/5, and the old magic is still there; I could recognize the angelic beatificness of a LOUJON book even while being slugged while drunk…. enclosed a sixer for hardcover edition.
every man’s life has its particular misery, but I would like to see you both write a book, yes a BOOK about THE ADVENTURES OF LOUJON IN A LOWDOWN CLIME, or something like that. all the times the press went in and out the window, sometimes the same window, out, in, out again. the time of the attempted robbery. the time Bukowski tried to gas you. the bed up in the air. the bathtub filled with pages. that ugly and cold Santa Fe scene. the crazy and dull visitors. the madmen. the gangsters who push their bad work almost with threat. the pests. the sickness again and again. flood, fire. old papa with his beer. Bukowski vomiting in the University trash can. the old hand press. the madness and agony of everything. all the things I do not know. Lou on the corner trying to sell paintings. the deaf and dumb guy in the bar. city after city. all the odd benefactors with strings attached. the whole crazy wild story. I’m sure that there has never been a press and a time like yours, and I think that it would be a shame and an error if it were not recorded, because someday somebody is going to do it and they’ll get it ail WRONG. well, it’s a thought anyhow. [* * *]
also Penguin Poetry 13 out. but won’t be printed in U.S. until June 26, this year. Bukowski-Norse-Lamantia. but we are already in trouble. the slick-poetry academy boys and critics are already after our asses. Sinclair Beiles wrote a good review of Penguin 13, said it was the best of the series, but London Magazine refused to print the review and Beiles sent it to a South African paper which also refused to print the bit. Beiles wrote Norse that he thought Hal and I were the best living writers using the English language. which is neither here nor there, but the battle’s on, and Hal suggested that we fight back instead of taking it as we have all these years. so, again, I come to you two…Nikos Stangos, the editor, has review copies which he can mail out. and I wonder if you might know anybody who could possibly give us a favorable review, or if not favorable at least unbiased and unprejudiced before the reviewer sits down? all my work is taken from It Catches and from Crucifix. and Hal’s is all good. Lamantia weak here and there. but I’ve agreed with Hal to enter battle. so if you know of any reviewer who might not be stricken with Creeley-itis, please let me have their addresses…and many many thanks. I know I’ve laid a lot down on you here. now must rush out. [* * *]
* * *
[To Jim Roman]
February 25, 1969
REMEMBER THE STARVING WRITER!
how’s that for an opening line? anyhow, sent you a good month or so ago, upon request, a signed copy of The Curtains Are Waving. you mentioned a bit of remuneration. it was my next-to-last copy. did you receive it?
I hope that you haven’t caught “Corringtonitis”*!
(* a refusal to acknowledge receipt of mail and refusal to answer inquiry. a disease which befalls one usually after a trip to England, say the University of Sussex at Brighton for one’s Ph.D.**)
(** an over-exaggerated accomplishment which is attained more through drudgery than skill. i.e., a “lickboot,” a “chilblain,” a gatherer of calloused candlewick; i.e., a terrible bit of wading through shit.)
Notes of a Dirty Old Man is out,—paperback. a gathering of filthy stories and inane ravings. $1.95. you can probably located one in Fort L., Jim, at your local book or liquor store, but look in the porny section. I don’t think the stories are dirty. when they lean to sex, and many of them do, I believe that sex is a very tragic and a very laughable matter.—see Boccaccio, The Decameron. we are all so ludicrous and lousy with our miserable sex organs. I hope that if you read these stories, you will understand, not misunderstand the intent. I am down to one copy, but if you can’t find any out there, let me know if you wish an inscribed copy, “To Jim Roman,” etc. etc. whatever.
I am disappointed in your not responding to my mailing of The Curtains Are Waving, but hell, I do realize that Life does get in our way, sometimes. I have been just about out of my jughead mind for about a year and couldn’t answer a damn letter to anybody. you must have thought I’d a gone to BRIGHTON, Eng. but I didn’t write anybody. it was as if my head were chopped off. but now, strangely, things seem to be oozing back into place. I don’t understand these mental blackouts and I’d rather not have them. I’m not a prima d. I don’t play Arty. and basically I am a kind person, although it sounds unrealistic to say so. I think that finally and actually, there were too many people writing me at once and I simply gave up. I couldn’t keep up. now I am corresponding again, but only with 3 or 4 and I am keeping it that way. and I feel better. I answer everybody but not at the length that I used to. [* * *]
all right then, fire engines going by. I am on FIRE! here they come! they are circling back. they are going to put me out just like a landlady who never read Rimbaud, or Bukowski….
* * *
[To Jim Roman]
April 2, 1969
I think your Bukowski collection better than mine. somebody stole my only copy of my first book [* * *] and my only copy of “The Genius of the Crowd.” but I’m told that this happens to all writers. those who come and beat on our doors and drink our beer and take our time—also steal our books.
[* * *] since you have shown such an interest I will be mailing you, in the next couple of days, one of the two hardcover Penguin Library editions that were airmailed to me. Dark gray binding, gold lettering on the spine; pages thread-sewn. they’ve really done a beautiful job, but I do want to take care in packaging and mailing. but it will arrive, autographed to you, as per usual. these books will not be on sale in American until July 1969. [* * *]
* * *
[To Jim Roman]
April 14, 1969
[* * *] I do want to get back to doing some painting with something or other—some kind of color on paper—there has been a long gap there. I jump from painting to poetry to prose, back and forth and in between with all three—my wives, my whores. speaking of which, the mother of my child is taking said child (aged 4) to New York City to live and it’s going to make a hell of a cut into my feelings—the little girl and I vibe perfectly, but with the mother, it?
* * *
This letter announces the short-lived magazine, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns, that Bukowski co-edited with Neeli Cherry. “We didn’t get very good submissions,” Bukowski recalls, “so we wrote most of the stuff ourselves, inventing the names of writers.”
[To Carl Weissner]
April 23, 1969
you SENT the letters, baby, god bless your majestic koool spirit behind those shades!!!! I already hit the univ. for sum on manus. paintings books, other shit, but this is more money in the bank and since they are REALLY FUCKING with me on the rotten JOB—poor attendance, same old thing—this will help keep me alive, and also Marina, and if the breaks keep coming I’ll simply sit here over the typer and pour out the bullshit. I can write ENDLESSLY if I wish—and forgive me—but it all comes out pretty good. so, you’se a good Hun, babe. all my thanks. future letters yours—if they are worth a damn or not—I will not HIT you for letters again! so, you are great after all! I love your guts!
ho, and I am being a bit shitty in my way—I mean those who did not return letters upon my deathbed request—I was damn sick at the time—I no longer correspond with. so, I am a shit, you see.