More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (32 page)

Authors: Charles Bukowski,David Stephen Calonne

BOOK: More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

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11
Bukowski,
Notes of A Dirty Old Man
, p. 9.

12
Ibid
., p. 132.

13
Bukowski, “what have I seen,” in
The Continual Condition: Poems
, ed. John Martin (New York: Ecco, 2009), p. 110.

14
Michel Foucault, “The Repressive Hypothesis” from
The History of Sexuality, Volume I
, in
The Foucault Reader
, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 318–19. Bukowski’s work has been included in several anthologies of erotic literature. See
Fetish
:
An Anthology of Fetish Fiction
, ed. John Yau (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998), “Love for $17.50,” pp. 23–28;
Love Is Strange
, ed. Richard Glyn Jones (London: Indigo, 1998), “The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California,” pp. 143–153;
The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present
, ed. David Lehman (New York: Scribner Poetry, 2008), “Hunk of Rock,” pp. 67–74.

15
Darlene Fife,
Portraits from Memory: New Orleans in the Sixties
(New Orleans: Surregional Press, 2000), p. 4. On Bukowski, NOLA, and an account of the “persistent harassment” the paper experienced, see Laurence Leamer,
The Paper Revolutionaries: The Rise of the Underground Press
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), pp. 146–52.

16
Ibid
., p. 15. On Francisco McBride’s artwork, which illustrated Bukowski’s column, see p. 26. On Bukowski and New Orleans, see Jeff Weddle
, Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of
The Outsider
and Loujon Press
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007); “Writing New Orleans” by Andrei Codrescu in Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors,
A New Literary History of America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 405.

17
Federal Bureau of Investigation File #140-35907, 1957–1970. Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr. (a.k.a. “Charles Bukowski”)
.

18
Absence of the Hero
, pp. 59–63.

19
Bukowski,
Tales of Ordinary Madness
(San Francisco: City Lights, 1983), pp. 77–82. The original
Erections, Ejaculations and Other Tales of Ordinary Madness
has been subsequently divided into two titles and republished as
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town
(San Francisco: City Lights, 1983), and
Tales of Ordinary Madness
(San Francisco: City Lights, 1983).

20
Notes of A Dirty Old Man
, “When Henry’s mother died it wasn’t bad,” pp. 112–115.

21
Mailer admired Bukowski’s poetry, writing in a letter to Al Fogel that “he spits his words out like nails” (personal communication from Al Fogel, July 19, 2010). Hank Chinaski comments on “Victor Norman” (Mailer) in
Hollywood
: “What I liked best about him was that he had no fear of the Feminists. He was one of the last defenders of maleness and balls in the U.S. I wasn’t always pleased with his literary output but I wasn’t always pleased with mine either.” See Bukowski,
Hollywood
(Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow, 1989), p. 107. For Bukowski on Mailer, also see
Sunlight Here I Am
, pp. 54, 121, 150, 162, 224. The two men met at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood during the making of
Barfly
. See Sounes, pp. 210–212.

22
“Dirty Old Man Confesses,” p. 101.

23
Ibid
., p. 92.

24
Barry Hoskyns,
Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits
(New York: Broadway Books, 2009), p. 73. Waits’s poem beginning “diamonds on my windshield, tears from heaven” appeared together with drawings by Bukowski in the magazine
The Sunset Palms Hotel
, vol. 2, Spring 1974, no. 4.

25
Carol Sklenicka,
Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life
(New York: Scribner, 2009), pp. 168. Also see pp. 207–9, 210, 448.

26
Conversations with Raymond Carver
, eds. Marshall Bruce Gentry and William L. Stull (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1990), pp. 36. Also see pp. 192, 226. For Carver’s poem on Bukowski, “You Don’t Know What Love Is (an evening with Charles Bukowski),” see
Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories
(New York: Vintage Books, 1984), pp. 57–61.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
—like my earlier book of Bukowski interviews,
Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews & Encounters 1963–1993
, and the two previous volumes I have edited for City Lights,
Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook
and
Absence of the Hero
—has had a long genesis. Back in the nineties, Jamie Boran sent me an anthology of Bukowski’s work that he had compiled from the
Los Angeles Free Press
. This was one of the catalysts that set in motion my fifteen-year quest for unpublished and uncollected Bukowski writings. I included a selection of the
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
columns in
Portions
and
Absence
, but it became clear to me that there remained a still unknown cornucopia of wonderful stories, essays, interviews, cartoons, poems, and aphorisms. At City Lights, Garrett Caples—who like T.S. Eliot is both poet and editor—shared my enthusiasm. He imagined this book as a sequel to the first and famous
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
, and I would like to thank him for his dedication to this project during a time when he has been working hard on his own groundbreaking edition of Philip Lamantia. I would also like to thank Julie Herrada, Head of the Labadie Collection, Special Collections at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This is a treasure trove of anarchist literature, and I spent many happy hours in that seventh-floor room with a view. Thanks to Roger Myers of the University of Arizona Library, Special Collections and to Ed Fields, University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library. Thanks Scott Harrison, former proprietor of the Abandoned Planet bookstore in San Francisco for information about John Bryan as well as to Al Fogel for his exchange of letters with Norman Mailer. I am grateful to Roni, head of the
Charles Bukowski Gesellschaft
in Germany and editor of a splendid series of
Jahrbücher
devoted to Bukowski scholarship published by the Society. Roni, at the very last moment of the book’s production, alerted me to the existence of the extremely cool photograph by Michael Montfort that graces the cover. My thanks to Daisy Montfort for granting permission. Gratitude as always for everything to Maria Beye.
Muchas gracias
to Abel Debritto—
il maestro di che sanno
—who helped with his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Bukowski. To my 90-year-old father, Pierre Calonne, who during this past year showed me the meaning of the word courage. To the memory of my mother Mariam. To my brother Ariel, his wife Pat, my nephews Alexander, Nicholas, and Michael. Deepest thanks to E.M. Cioran, for keeping me up, bright, and sublime. And finally, my gratitude to Linda Lee Bukowski whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time in October 2010 at the Huntington Library’s
Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge
celebration in San Marino, California, and whose unflagging energy and passion continue to inspire me: thank you, Linda.

Charles Bukowaki
was born in Andernach, Germany, in 1920 and brought to California at age three. Although Bukowski spent two years at Los Angeles City College, he was largely self-educated as a writer. He spent much time in his youth in the Los Angeles Public Library, where he encountered some of the writers whose work would influence his own: Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, Céline, e. e. cummings, Pound, Fante, and Saroyan. He was a prolific poet and prose writer, publishing more than fifty volumes. City Lights has published several Bukowski titles including
Tales of Ordinary Madness, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944–1990
, and
Absence of the Hero: Uncollected Stories and Essays Vol. 2. 1946–1992
(2010). Charles Bukowski died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994.

David Stephen Calonn
e is the author of
William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being, The Colossus of Armenia: G.I. Gurdjieff and Henry Miller
, and most recently
Bebop Buddhist Ecstasy: Saroyan’s Influence on Kerouac and the Beats with an Introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(San Francisco: Sore Dove Press, 2010). He has edited
Charles Bukowski: Sunlight Here I Am/Interviews & Encounters 1963–1993
. For City Lights, he has previously edited
Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944–1990
(2008), and
Absence of the Hero.
He has lectured in Paris and at many universities including UCLA, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, the European University Institute in Florence, the University of London, Harvard, and Oxford. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan. During Spring Term 2009, he taught a seminar on William Saroyan at the University of Chicago. Presently he teaches at Eastern Michigan University.