Bukowski

By: Written by Ben Pleasants | Photographed by Lawrence Robbin | October 19, 2010 |

In one of his novels, Charles Bukowski, in his fictional persona as Henry Chinaski, tells the woman he’s with that he is a great writer. She replies, “Yeah, you’re the greatest writer nobody ever heard of.” Bukowski found his audience over time but not the acceptance of the Eastern literary establishment.

He was born in Andernach, Germany, in 1920. His family immigrated to the United States in 1923 and settled in Seattle. At the age of 24, Bukowski’s short story “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip” was published in Story magazine. Two years later, Black Sun Press published another short story. Failing to break into the literary world, Bukowski quit writing for almost a decade, a time that he has referred to as a “ten-year drunk.”

In 1969, at the age of 49, he accepted an offer from John Martin, the publisher of Santa Barbara’s Black Sparrow Press, and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing. Less than a month after leaving the postal service, he finished his first novel, Post Office. Bukowski published almost all of his subsequent major work with Black Sparrow Press, although he continued to submit poems and short stories to small presses until the time of his death.

His writing was drawn from the streets and rooming houses of Los Angeles, and drawn on the lives of working-class people, on the act of writing, alcohol, his relationships with women and the drudgery of menial work. Two films were made from his work, one in Italy and, in 1987, Barfly, directed by Barbet Schroeder, starring Mickey Rourke, as Chinaski, and Faye Dunaway. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually having more than 60 books in print. He died of leukemia on March 9, 1994, in San Pedro, Calif., at the age of 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Writer Ben Pleasants was a friend of Bukowski’s and part of a vibrant L.A. literary scene in the late ’70s. In the early ’70s, Pleasants asked Bukowski if he could be his biographer. Bukowski liked the idea. In time, that resulted in the tapings of a series of interviews, some of which Pleasants has made available to Malibu Magazine and presented here.

BEN PLEASANTS ON BUKOWSKI AND L.A.
Steve Richmond was Charles Bukowski’s best friend. Two hundred letters [sent] back and forth. What did [Lawrence] Ferlinghetti’s personal assistant from City Lights tell me in a letter dated 4/29/10? “Thanks for offering us the collected works of Steve Richmond. Unfortunately, we must pass on this project. ...”

You mean, you couldn’t sell the 200 letters back and forth between Charles Bukowski and Steve Richmond, or is there something in those letters you do not want people to read? It was Steve Richmond who first introduced me to Charles Bukowski at his place on De Longpre in 1965. An all-night drunk.

Yes, Steve Richmond, heroin addict, rent collector, poet, painter, America’s mad Rimbaud to whom Bukowski wrote in 1965:

Rich,
Your 2 poems have the vitality of the young and the granite carving of the artist, hurrah, and they did not hurt me, they did me good, and your photos of paintings good god you can paint, babe, I work with it strictly in an amateur way, can’t mix colors, don’t have really, just children’s crayons and leftovers, I bought some oil paint the other day but found such a trial, need of special paper and mixing. I’d like to get hold of some house paint or automobile paint, big, cheap cans of shit and get a garage and cheap paper and cut loose, I don’t like the nicety of working finely, and maybe some day I’ll find a chance, meanwhile no excuse no excuse and I don’t mix well with people, I am now so old and have this old woman too and we have gotten this unexpected child, and she’s art, I love her every bone, but it’s all kind of foolish, I am almost done, tired, and I just don’t know what to say to young men, I am not a talker, Webb found that out when I went South, I just sat on a chair, and a couple of profs came down from the university … Yammering, and I couldn’t say anything, shit, I felt foolish, dumb and in many ways am, they were so bright, they came up with a lot of jazz and action and life and I liked them but I could contribute nothing, too many factories, too many drunk tanks, too many women, too many years, too many park benches, too much everything and that is why I do not invite you over. …

But Bukowski did invite Steve over and then Steve took me along. We saw that crazy sorting case Bukowski had with his poems, his letters, his kid Marina’s crayons, his acceptance letters, his hate mail, the whole panoply of crazy shit that makes up modern poetry. It all fell into my hands, thanks to Steve Richmond.

Steve had one big crazy idea: to create a bookstore for L.A.’s anti-academic, antiestablishment poets. That was the beginning of Earth Books, Earth Magazine, Earth Books & Gallery. Bukowski loved it. Bukowski wrote back: “Well, yes, the poetry store thing could be a great dancer, and then it could rack you up and make you rancid, eat snails and go to the pity drawer. …”

Bukowski was Verlaine to the young poet’s Rimbaud: “... [They] both just came into the kitchen, and the girl sits and watches me talk to type to Steve Richmond, the young madman who fiddles with law books, and I twist her goddamned nose and continue. Look, if your shop opens, I am not any good at poetry readings … am a loner, not a snob, sweetheart, but I dream high brick walls and a place on the hill with a moat and a watchdog and a rifle on the wall, and about 18 rooms, all of them empty except for buckets of paint, brushes, ink; rooms of paper and typers and beer and wine and whiskey and cameras and drunk, never-pregnant women and weeks of no women at all, no sounds, just green moss and the inside of the head banging. But since I can’t get this and am already pretty fucked up by life (two rooms, three people, voices forever; my slump shoulders; and teeth falling out) all I can do … is walk through the racetrack and get drunk and not think except to think of the sun. …”

When the bookstore opened, Bukowski would work behind the counter. So, for me, the Bukowski era began, thanks to Steve. I began to go with Bukowski to the races. He liked to drive. I rode along as he talked about his childhood friends, his German ancestry, his time in jail, L.A. High, L.A. City College, his various jobs, politics at the Post Office and as much as I could listen to about his women. It was about that time I began to bring along a tape recorder.

By the early ’70s, Bukowski had settled down to a front apartment on Carlton Way in East Hollywood. Linda King was on her way out and Linda Bukowski had not yet showed up. About that time, I asked Bukowski if I could become his biographer. He liked the idea and called his ex-wife. When he put me on the line, she told me she would never have anything more to do with Bukowski and would not help me in any way with the biography.

Next, he called an aunt and uncle in Palm Springs. When I got them on the phone, they told me Bukowski owed them $6,000 for his mother’s last surgery — the last one before she died. They never wanted to talk to Henry again. That’s a whole book, how he changed his name from Henry to Charles.

Through all the alcohol and racing track noise, the name of John Fante never stopped. I did finally get a copy of Ask The Dust to read at the library table in Bertram Goodhue’s magnificent L.A. Public Library fiction room.

In 1977, I found Bukowski’s Uncle Heinrich Fett in Andernach, Germany. Bukowski told me he’d be in the graveyard, but Heinrich was very chipper and funny. Over a glass of white wine, he told me in very good English what Bukowski’s mother and father were like. He liked Bukowski’s father, who found him a job — also a Henry. They were all Henrys. Bukowski would visit his uncle in 1978. I could see by then that Bukowski was into his famous phase as a writer.

The last time I saw Bukowski was at Hollywood Park in 1984. He looked sad and alone. He looked sick.

Here are the tapes.

 

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