The most inspiring thing Bukowski ever said...

If you're a writer, anyway

Y’all—first, an apology. When I published the reminder for loners and misfits piece on Tuesday I had so much work looming I didn’t notice the comment settings were borked. If you tried to comment and couldn’t, I’m so sorry. If I write something that’s open to read, it’s also open to comment. Note to self — new thing to watch for. :)

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You ever read something that shouldn’t get stuck up in your craw but it does?

Just some silly, unimportant something that someone said, but it sets up camp in your head and days later you’re still mulling on it? But here, let me make some sense...

I was scrolling through Notes the other day and someone said he’s never seen a single Bukowski quote that’s inspiring. And in the comments, noted that he’s never read any of Bukowski’s novels. You’d think that should have been enough for me.

It should have. Enough to shake my head and move along but something about it got all stuck up in my brain, couldn’t let go for the life of me so I aim to puzzle out why, what revelation is there for me. Like Joan Didion, I write to figure out what I think.

Incidentally, as I always say, if you saw that Note too, no names. I don’t do names. Been on the receiving end of that and it’s no fun, so I won’t do it to anyone else.

You want to read something inspiring by Bukowski?

Read The History of One Tough Mother****.

It’s about a cat who, by all rights, should be dead. Starving, shot with a pellet gun, hit by a car, tail whacked off. And a grizzled old drunk laying on the floor dripping water in the cat’s mouth saying you can do it, hang in there, come on boy. The two of them a couple of beat and battered old souls and it confused journalists when they came to interview him, asked who inspired him and he held up a cross-eyed white cat.

(Yes, it’s the cat in the cover photo)

But I get it. He doesn’t mean a whole arse poem.

He means pithy sentences, right?

Don’t we just love pithy sentences that cram a pound of inspiration into a half ounce of words? Share those on the internet and watch the likes and hearts rolling in.

Like this one — “Not all who wander are lost.”

Doesn’t that sound inspiring? It’s Tolkien and he’s been dead long enough we can sell his words now and people do. I’ve seen that little phrase sold as wall posters, framed art, t-shirts and hoodies. Someone even has a crest you can sew on your jacket.

Saw someone use that as a cover image for some self-help post about rich men who supposedly pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The irony is we plucked that line as inspirational but it’s about Aragorn, in Lord of the Rings, wandering because he’s been exiled. Not lost, driven out. Figuring out how to get home to his family.

Here’s another one.

Vonnegut. “And everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

Someone sells a wall cutout of that on eBay, all pretty in some fancy scrolling font. There’s prints of it on Etsy and Red Bubble and wherever we hawk inspiration.

Know what it is? The epitaph of Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Poor bugger could never get out from under his horrific trauma and all he ever wanted was to feel peace but he got shot. Assassinated. So they carved that on his headstone.

Here’s a slice of irony. I read that ninety percent of Americans want to write a book some day, but only forty six percent have read one since finishing school.

That’s the world we live in.

Yay, gimme those sweet, sweet sentences. I don’t mean that sarcastically if it sounds like it. It makes me sad, if anything. How on earth did we get here? Sadly, I can answer that. Attention seeking. Take a famous name, add an insult. Voila. Attention. Right?

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Funny thing is, I can’t think of anyone who’d care less what some rando on the internet thinks of Bukowski’s work than Bukowski himself.

When he could finally stop worrying whether he’d make rent or be sleeping on a park bench again and found success at over fifty, it was no thanks to Americans. Book sales in America were pretty low. It was European sales that shot him to the moon.

Americans found him vulgar. The man’s been dead and in the grave thirty one years, people are still hating on him.

When I decided I was going to write about Bukowski, I went looking for the thank you letter he sent his publisher for saving his sorry butt from the life he was living and the comments were utterly vile. And you know what? If he was still alive, he’d be in there like a dirty shirt, cussing them right back. Pushing their buttons, fueling the anger.

Just like in the bars at his poetry readings. Bunch of drunks, him included. Drinking whiskey, reading his poetry while people screamed profanities and him cursing right back, but those gigs paid two hundred bucks so he’d do them. Later, his wife said sometimes he couldn’t write for a good week or two after after those readings.

Back in ‘87, the LA Times ran a piece that said he’s got a sandblasted face and a nose that looks as if it was assembled in a junkyard from Studebaker hoods and Buick fenders. And his voice—it’s so soft it’s hard to take him serious.

That’s what they said. His voice is so soft it’s hard to take him serious.

Saw a piece in Rolling Stone that said his novels are good, but his poetry is all shit. The man wrote literally thousands of poems. But sure, they’re all shit. I read that, thought of The Man With the Beautiful Eyes.

Hauntingly beautiful. Read that poem, you’re never going to forget it. But you wouldn’t know that if all you read was a couple about drinking or prostitutes.

You can skip the video, but if you have five minutes, it’s worth the watch. Maybe save it and come back to it. Up to you. Real snapshot of his era, right there.

I’ve seen some of the poetry that offends people’s sensibilities, but I’ve read some I’ll never forget. Beasts, Bounding Through Time aches. And Confession, which is the poem he wrote when he was afraid his wife would find his body. And this…

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”

It’s from Love Is a Dog from Hell.

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Know what two of the most freeing things in the world are? Hate and judgement.

Because once you know who hates you, who judges you and finds you to be not good enough, not enough, you’re free to stop giving a damn what they think.

And it doesn’t happen instantly or easily. Hardest thing in the world, stacking up the pain of trying to earn approval and falling short again and again until you look in the mirror, can’t see nothing but broken. Sorry excuse for a human being. Not enough. Not good enough. Know that to your bones so you stop looking in the mirror.

His father started beating him at six. Leaning over the toilet bowl, pants pulled round skinny ankles while his daddy unbuckled his belt. Lashed him six, eight, fourteen times. Got a skin condition at thirteen that put him in the hospital, ruined his face for the rest of his life. When his father found his writing, threw all his belongings on the front lawn, said get the hell out of my house so he did. Slept on the street.

Unlike his father, he didn’t pound his frustrations into someone’s flesh. Just onto the keys of an old typewriter. Said sometimes the poems poured out ten at a time.

Live a life like that, one day you wake up and you’re done with it all. Start stacking up all the bricks life threw at you. Climb to the top of that mountain of hate and push the need for approval over the edge. Then you’re free to say whatever you want.

And he did. Wasn’t always pretty. But some was so beautiful, it makes me weep. Go to YouTube. Look for an actual reading of Bluebird. Tell me again how that’s shit.

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Here’s the single most inspiring thing Bukowski ever said.

In 1985, staff at a public library in The Netherlands pulled Tales of Ordinary Madness, from their shelves. Banned it due to a complaint that it was vulgar. A local journalist took it upon himself to write a letter to Bukowski and ask for his opinion. He wrote back. The fourth paragraph of his reply starts with this sentence:

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

He goes on from there.

Explains that if he writes about hate and discrimination, it’s because it exists.

And he observes how interesting it is that people who rail against his work overlook the parts where he writes about love, and hope, and joy. He says life has both dark and light and if he only wrote about the light? As an artist—he would be a liar.

Years later, the entire letter would be published in Letters of Note.

But that one sentence?

It’s gold.

I only photograph, in words, what I see.

That’s everything you need to know about writing, right there. Because you know what most people do, right? They’re so busy trying to tell the world what they think and feel that they leave no room for the reader’s thoughts or feelings.

And if I was to give you any advice, as a writer, that would be it.

Just photograph, in words, what you see.

That’s all he did and insanely prolifically. Published sixty books during his life, and when he was diagnosed with leukemia at seventy four, handed his publisher a stack of thousands of poems and letters. Said take care of my family for me, okay?

It’s easy to look for inspiration in a sentence. Looking for it in a set of eyes peering out of a life on fire, that’s enough for me. As always, love to know what you think…

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