![]() He traveled the globe to collect photos, film footage, and documents such as resignation letters and eviction notices, and put them in the film. Dullaghan was certainly invested in the project, devoting seven years to bringing Bukowski’s life to the screen. John Dullaghan’s 2003 documentary, Bukowski: Born Into This, is a perfect primer on Bukowski. If that isn’t reason enough to learn about Bukowski, I don’t know what is (note sarcasm). Especially since my friend, who is reading Christopher Ciconne’s Life With My Sister, told me that Bukowski actually lived with Madonna and Sean Penn for a while. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.As an avid reader who doesn’t know that much about Charles Bukowski, apart from the poems I read in school and his reputation as the hardened “dirty old man”, I felt that it was time to educate myself more on the prolific writer. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. ![]() Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. He died in San Pedro of leukemia in 1994 at the age of 73.Ĭopyright © 2020 NPR. VITALE: Charles Bukowski told me his acquaintances called him Hank. Some people interview you, they're living around, you're going to see them, you know, three times a week - going to bring their little sheaf of poetry and their girlfriend and their six-pack. As for interviewers, he said the only reason he talked to me was because I was from out of town.īUKOWSKI: You pack up, you'll be gone, right? You've got to go back to New York. VITALE: Bukowski said two nights later, the poem came to him about the waitress and his indifference to her plight. And she came by me with her mop, and she says help me, help me. I went out to eat, and here it was this guy who just hired a new waitress, and he was really brutalizing her. VITALE: Bukowski said he never consciously looked for things to write about.īUKOWSKI: I'll give an example. And when I see that poem in the morning, it's an utter idiotic, gibberish thing of a madman. You know, I'm writing great, immortal stuff. VITALE: Bukowski did plenty of work in San Pedro - seven or eight poems a night, he said - some of them not so good because of the wine.īUKOWSKI: I have caught myself at the end, you know, really drinking. And in San Pedro, we just got the old man - the old man who had work to do before he was heading out. And he was the dirty old man in Hollywood. He's the drunkard - this bigger-than-life persona that everyone fell in love with. ROMERO: Hollywood Bukowski was the dirty old man. VITALE: Angela Romero is president of the San Pedro Heritage Museum, who's raising funds for a bronze statue of the writer. Still, he made the town a literary tourist destination.ĪNGELA ROMERO: We wanted to honor the legacy of the work that he created here with a statue. VITALE: It's not like he actually became respectable. I'm no longer doing this, so I just can't write about it. Seven years after "Post Office" came out, he moved with his partner Linda to a big house in San Pedro.īUKOWSKI: People always expect me to keep writing about prostitutes and getting drunk and puking on the rug. VITALE: For whatever reason, Bukowski's writing clicked. It just makes him a misogynist who is a misogynist because he is the product of his time. Baim says she knows Bukowski was writing in a different era.īAIM: But contextualizing it doesn't make him a misogynist who knows better. ![]() Her boyfriend has a tattoo of the cover art from one of Bukowski's poetry collections, so she decided to read the author's 1978 novel, "Women," and write an online essay about it. VITALE: Cassandra Baim is a 29-year-old writer living in Brooklyn. He wrote his first novel when he was 49 called "Post Office." It featured his fictional alter ego, Henry Chinaski.ĬASSANDRA BAIM: Henry Chinaski mistreats and sexually assaults and belittles and insults women. VITALE: The factories, the horrors and the drunk tanks were a big part of Bukowski's success, which came relatively late. What am I doing with this leisure? Where did the factories go and the horrors and the drunk tanks? It's called "Do You Use A Notebook."ĬHARLES BUKOWSKI: I turn on my radio and light a cigarette. So in 1981, when a young reporter showed up at his home in San Pedro, Calif., the 60-year-old author read a poem about the stupid questions interviewers ask. TOM VITALE, BYLINE: Charles Bukowski was annoyed and amused by the world around him. I wanted to be a writer, so I did that.īukowski in the end was not rejected. In one poem, the writer described taking all the little rejection slips that he received when publishers turned down his work and taping them on the wall as a kind of bitter motivation. Years ago, a friend showed me poetry of Charles Bukowski.
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