Read Online Screams From the Balcony by Charles Bukowski - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Charles Bukowski
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other.
Keep your bones in good motion, kid, and quietly consume and digest what is necessary. I think it is not so much important to build a literary thing as it is not to hurt things. I think it is important to be quiet and in love with park benches; solve whole areas of pain by walking across a rug.
you got it.
dip the brush in turpentine,
p.s.—I asked Webb not to send proofs of the section. I’d rather see it all at once, quietly with a cold beer audience. And maybe think of other days & bad days to come, like all this is well, but the wall will be coming down. [* * *]
----
Arnold Kaye’s interview appeared in Literary Times for March 1963, under the title, “Charles Bukowski Speaks Out .”
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
[?February 1963]
Enclosed copy of Literary Times . I might suggest when book comes out you send them a review copy. Arnold Kaye over last night to interview me, I suppose a la Ben Hecht. He gave me the old bullshit about me being a legend, and he had a list of questions. I was fairly drunk and don’t remember what I told him. Some of the questions rather vapid like: “What effect does Mickey Mouse have on the American public and culture?” I don’t know if they are going to run the interview; I might have been fairly bitter and vulgar. The guy had just come from Zahn’s where Curtis had babbled on and on, I am told. At least I kept it short and hot. Anyhow, what with the horses and interviews and the bottle and being a LEGEND …I have not written any poetry lately, and this is how we go down the drain: doing everything but creating. There are enough traps in this world to kill a man before he becomes five years old.
At any rate I had sense enough to turn down an invite to be on a panel thing on the radio with Zahn and Kay and some editors. J. B. May etc. I still believe in more privacy and less talk. Badly hung over today but I see no broken furniture and my knuckles are not bruised so there was no fight. Good. May told this guy, “Bukowski’s kind of unfriendly.” These people don’t understand that the living takes time and that the talking about it is unnecessary. You do. I think that when they knock on your door you feel the same way I do. That’s why we pretty much get along.
Anyhow, going now.
I think the bastard took my pen.
----
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
Early March, 1963
[* * *] As to dedication of book to you, Lou, it is all pretty simple. When I heard you over the phone and you did not give me a bunch of literary doubletalk, accent, etc. etc.—your complete sense of un falsity, this led me to suggest the dedication to you. This, plus the fact that it being the first book in your series (you and Jon: Loujon ), it seemed in a sense of history—and literary history is the only one that seems to have some sense—the only dedication. As to being on cover with you, great, but it does not seem real, it is a conjecture sort of thing and I will not know it, really, until the magazine is in my hand and I stand here in this room with it and something in my head says, it happened. I will have a drink on it, a good scotch and water, and I will think of myself down in the alleys again or in all the rooming houses in hell, and the jails, freezing, madness etc., and it will come through to me good. You know, for all this, I still feel pretty much outside of everything yet. It is as if, any moment, somebody is going to knock on my door and a couple of guys are going to enter some day, “All right, friend, we’ve come to cut off your arms.” Psychologically speaking, there might be a reason or a term for this, but we do not live with reason or terms, unfortunately. [* * *]
----
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
March 17, 1963
starting to thunder…like a dark closet in here, but I’ve still got #3 to my right here, and I hope you people understand why I did not phone upon rec. copy, but rather wrote. The phone calls have been mostly when I was pretty high,
Keep your bones in good motion, kid, and quietly consume and digest what is necessary. I think it is not so much important to build a literary thing as it is not to hurt things. I think it is important to be quiet and in love with park benches; solve whole areas of pain by walking across a rug.
you got it.
dip the brush in turpentine,
p.s.—I asked Webb not to send proofs of the section. I’d rather see it all at once, quietly with a cold beer audience. And maybe think of other days & bad days to come, like all this is well, but the wall will be coming down. [* * *]
----
Arnold Kaye’s interview appeared in Literary Times for March 1963, under the title, “Charles Bukowski Speaks Out .”
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
[?February 1963]
Enclosed copy of Literary Times . I might suggest when book comes out you send them a review copy. Arnold Kaye over last night to interview me, I suppose a la Ben Hecht. He gave me the old bullshit about me being a legend, and he had a list of questions. I was fairly drunk and don’t remember what I told him. Some of the questions rather vapid like: “What effect does Mickey Mouse have on the American public and culture?” I don’t know if they are going to run the interview; I might have been fairly bitter and vulgar. The guy had just come from Zahn’s where Curtis had babbled on and on, I am told. At least I kept it short and hot. Anyhow, what with the horses and interviews and the bottle and being a LEGEND …I have not written any poetry lately, and this is how we go down the drain: doing everything but creating. There are enough traps in this world to kill a man before he becomes five years old.
At any rate I had sense enough to turn down an invite to be on a panel thing on the radio with Zahn and Kay and some editors. J. B. May etc. I still believe in more privacy and less talk. Badly hung over today but I see no broken furniture and my knuckles are not bruised so there was no fight. Good. May told this guy, “Bukowski’s kind of unfriendly.” These people don’t understand that the living takes time and that the talking about it is unnecessary. You do. I think that when they knock on your door you feel the same way I do. That’s why we pretty much get along.
Anyhow, going now.
I think the bastard took my pen.
----
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
Early March, 1963
[* * *] As to dedication of book to you, Lou, it is all pretty simple. When I heard you over the phone and you did not give me a bunch of literary doubletalk, accent, etc. etc.—your complete sense of un falsity, this led me to suggest the dedication to you. This, plus the fact that it being the first book in your series (you and Jon: Loujon ), it seemed in a sense of history—and literary history is the only one that seems to have some sense—the only dedication. As to being on cover with you, great, but it does not seem real, it is a conjecture sort of thing and I will not know it, really, until the magazine is in my hand and I stand here in this room with it and something in my head says, it happened. I will have a drink on it, a good scotch and water, and I will think of myself down in the alleys again or in all the rooming houses in hell, and the jails, freezing, madness etc., and it will come through to me good. You know, for all this, I still feel pretty much outside of everything yet. It is as if, any moment, somebody is going to knock on my door and a couple of guys are going to enter some day, “All right, friend, we’ve come to cut off your arms.” Psychologically speaking, there might be a reason or a term for this, but we do not live with reason or terms, unfortunately. [* * *]
----
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
March 17, 1963
starting to thunder…like a dark closet in here, but I’ve still got #3 to my right here, and I hope you people understand why I did not phone upon rec. copy, but rather wrote. The phone calls have been mostly when I was pretty high,
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