Read Online Absence of the Hero by Charles Bukowski, Edited with an introduction by David Calonne - Free Book Online Page A
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honor. And it was cleanly set with immaculate cover, Notes of a Dirty Old Man , 0115.
I got into bed and read my own stories or whatever they were and I enjoyed them. Once I have written a poem and go back to it, I only get the sense of vomit and waste. And people quote lines to me, verily, from back poems and I donât know what the hell they are talking about. Itâs like when they tell me when I am in hangover, âYou chased 23 people out of my house and tried to fuck my wife.â
You know, it seems like a bunch of shit.
But the stories, as I laid there in bed, I rather liked. Rotten thing to say, what? I do suppose it was the gathering of experience between covers ghostly which cuckolded me. Reading the life-days and nights of my life I wondered how I could possibly still be alive and walking around now ?
How many times can a man go through the thresher and still keep his blood, the Summer sun inside of his head? How many bad jails, how many bad women, how many sundry cancers, how many flat tires, how many this or that or what or what or what? . . .
Frankly I read my own stories in easy wonderment, forgetting who I was, almost almost, and I thought:
Ummm, ummm, this son of a bitch can really write.
I remember other writers. Being very discouraged with Chekhov, G.B. Shaw, Ibsen, Irwin Shaw, Gogol, Tolstoy, Balzac, Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, so forth. They, all of them, seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself. In other words, or perhaps more clearly, each of these men condescended that life itself could be evil but that it was all right so long as they could get by and say it in their special literary way.
Which is all right. If you like playing games.
And I do think that the professors are finding, now, that the students themselves are tired of game-playing.
All right, letâs get back to Notes of a Dirty Old Man .
Re-reading them, stories and fantasies, I found them wondrous and flaming. I thought, Jesus, there hasnât been a short storyteller this good since Pirandello. At least since then.
Itâs crappy to say, but I think that the book is worth reading. And that the unborn librarian virgins, 200 years hence, will come in their flowered panties, recognizing the power, after my damned dumb skull has become a chickenshit playground for subnormal worms, gophers, other underworld creatures.
Oh, one other thing.
In ten years your $1.95 copy will be worth $25. And if you live long enough and the Bomb doesnât do it, you may be able to pay a monthâs rent with the book.
Until then, read your nuts off and
Gobble and grow what you can.
Notes of A Dirty Old Man
OPEN CITY , DECEMBER 8â14, 1967
In the Dec. issue of Evergreen there is a small poem by one Charles Bukowski far in the back pages, and all through the magazine there is an interview of LeRoi Jones, poems by LeRoi Jones, ads for LeRoi Jonesâ latest book, plus a speech by the departed Malcolm XââGodâs Judgment of White America.â Evergreen was beginning to look like Ebony . I read on through.
Later in the day, the woman came over with my 3-year-old child. We sat down to dinner.
âI think Iâll write a poem called â WHO â S AFRAID OF LEROI JONES ?ââ
â Youâre afraid of LeRoi Jonesâ the woman shouted. She was a very liberal white liberal liberal liberal.
â Whoâs Afraid of Leroi Jones ?â I asked again, looking at my little girl.
She pointed an arm at me over her ground round and french fries. â YOU ARE ! YOU ARE !â
The woman was meanwhile pantering and bantering, her voice neurotically high-pitched, explaining to me the meaning of black America and LeRoi Jones, in the way that only a very liberal white liberal female can do. I was not attacking LeRoi Jones but I had somehow stepped upon sacred ground and he was being defended, almost violently. It was niceâfor LeRoi. Hell, I
I got into bed and read my own stories or whatever they were and I enjoyed them. Once I have written a poem and go back to it, I only get the sense of vomit and waste. And people quote lines to me, verily, from back poems and I donât know what the hell they are talking about. Itâs like when they tell me when I am in hangover, âYou chased 23 people out of my house and tried to fuck my wife.â
You know, it seems like a bunch of shit.
But the stories, as I laid there in bed, I rather liked. Rotten thing to say, what? I do suppose it was the gathering of experience between covers ghostly which cuckolded me. Reading the life-days and nights of my life I wondered how I could possibly still be alive and walking around now ?
How many times can a man go through the thresher and still keep his blood, the Summer sun inside of his head? How many bad jails, how many bad women, how many sundry cancers, how many flat tires, how many this or that or what or what or what? . . .
Frankly I read my own stories in easy wonderment, forgetting who I was, almost almost, and I thought:
Ummm, ummm, this son of a bitch can really write.
I remember other writers. Being very discouraged with Chekhov, G.B. Shaw, Ibsen, Irwin Shaw, Gogol, Tolstoy, Balzac, Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, so forth. They, all of them, seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself. In other words, or perhaps more clearly, each of these men condescended that life itself could be evil but that it was all right so long as they could get by and say it in their special literary way.
Which is all right. If you like playing games.
And I do think that the professors are finding, now, that the students themselves are tired of game-playing.
All right, letâs get back to Notes of a Dirty Old Man .
Re-reading them, stories and fantasies, I found them wondrous and flaming. I thought, Jesus, there hasnât been a short storyteller this good since Pirandello. At least since then.
Itâs crappy to say, but I think that the book is worth reading. And that the unborn librarian virgins, 200 years hence, will come in their flowered panties, recognizing the power, after my damned dumb skull has become a chickenshit playground for subnormal worms, gophers, other underworld creatures.
Oh, one other thing.
In ten years your $1.95 copy will be worth $25. And if you live long enough and the Bomb doesnât do it, you may be able to pay a monthâs rent with the book.
Until then, read your nuts off and
Gobble and grow what you can.
Notes of A Dirty Old Man
OPEN CITY , DECEMBER 8â14, 1967
In the Dec. issue of Evergreen there is a small poem by one Charles Bukowski far in the back pages, and all through the magazine there is an interview of LeRoi Jones, poems by LeRoi Jones, ads for LeRoi Jonesâ latest book, plus a speech by the departed Malcolm XââGodâs Judgment of White America.â Evergreen was beginning to look like Ebony . I read on through.
Later in the day, the woman came over with my 3-year-old child. We sat down to dinner.
âI think Iâll write a poem called â WHO â S AFRAID OF LEROI JONES ?ââ
â Youâre afraid of LeRoi Jonesâ the woman shouted. She was a very liberal white liberal liberal liberal.
â Whoâs Afraid of Leroi Jones ?â I asked again, looking at my little girl.
She pointed an arm at me over her ground round and french fries. â YOU ARE ! YOU ARE !â
The woman was meanwhile pantering and bantering, her voice neurotically high-pitched, explaining to me the meaning of black America and LeRoi Jones, in the way that only a very liberal white liberal female can do. I was not attacking LeRoi Jones but I had somehow stepped upon sacred ground and he was being defended, almost violently. It was niceâfor LeRoi. Hell, I
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