He Said He Woulda Rather Been The World's Greatest Horse Player Or The World's Greatest Fucker But He Ended Up Being The World's Greatest Writer

by Robert W. Howington, 4-5-94

      Charles Bukowski, called America's greatest poet by French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Genet, died at age 73 1/2 on March 9, 1994, at a hospital in San Pedro, California, after an almost year-long bout with leukemia.
      "The medical cause of his death was myelogenous leukemia, also called acute gramulocytic leukemia," wrote Linda Lee Bukowski to Anti-Hero Art after it was erroneously reported in several news sources that her husband died from pneumonia. "Hank had a short bout with pneumonia, which was completely cleared up with antibiotics weeks before he passed on. He was rarely in any pain, and his final moments were as gentle and peaceful as could be hoped for. His daughter, Marina, her husband, Jeffrey, and myself were at his side. When he died, half of my soul died. We were together for 17 years, and at least a million lifetimes. I know we shall be together again."
      'Buk' (it rhymes with the word 'puke'), probably the toughest man to ever live, had fought off many challenges to last as long as he did, including his dysfunctional parents, horrid facial boils, playground bullies, ulcers, insanity, insane women, tar paper shacks, hepatitis, skin cancer, fights in allies in the worst parts of major America cities, barroom brawls, cat fights with girlfriends, a nagging case of hemorrhoids, cheap rooms, alley rats, jail, the draft, politically correct poetry editors, L.A. freeways, attempted suicides, poets he befriended, Philly mobsters, humanity, cops, groupies, scars, rejection slips, silverfish, cheap booze, barflys, park benches, bad running cars, mind-numbing jobs, stupid ass and dull-headed co-workers, New Orleans whores and all that other shit that kills ordinary, run-of-the-mill humans.
      In a letter to L.A.'s HALF-TRUTH 'zine, Buk wrote, "I've just come out of the hospital after 6 weeks. Leukemia. Chemotherapy and antibiotics. I'm home for the moment, don't know for how long, trying to build up strength to face the last round, which is called the consolidation. I might make it. If I don't, hell, I should have been dead long ago anyhow."
      'Hank', as his close friends called him, leaves his wife, Linda Lee, and his daughter, Marina, and a grandson. But what he also left was his vast amount of often times hard-hitting, autobiographical novels, short stories and, what he's known best for in America, gut-check poems. Using a direct and clean line he wrote about god awful and unthinkable but very real and true degradation; shit that no 'normal' human would ever contemplate experiencing first hand themselves. So what these closeted humans did and still do today is get off vicariously on those experiences thru his writings. Most people can't get enough of his shit because his life was so incredibly down and dirty it makes their own worthless and miserable lives seem much less so.
      Marvin Malone, editor of the long-running literary magazine Wormwood Review, reported in an L.A. litzine, Caffeine #7, that Bukowski's work would appear in his litmag through the year 2000 because he had 87 of the poet's unpublished poems in his file (UPDATE: Malone died on November 26, 1996, and the last issue of Wormwood Review, #145-146, came out in April of 1999, with his two daughter's acting as its editors. One of the daughter's, Christa, told Anti-Hero Art that she returned the balance of the Buk poems her father had on file, around 80, to Linda Lee in late 1997. Linda Lee, surprisingly enough, did not acknowledge their receipt or what she would do with them, Christa said.). And Buk's final novel, a fictional detective yarn called PULP from Black Sparrow Press, which he finished during his battle with leukemia, is at bookstores now. So we'll still be reading Buk's stuff in the years to come. He does live on on the page. And that is a comfort to know because his ugly mug will be greatly missed by all of his hardcore fans and friends.
      Buk was born on August 16, 1920, in Andernach, Germany, to an American serviceman father and a German mother. The couple soon married and moved to the States in 1923 and settled in Los Angeles. Buk's old man beat his ass all the time with a barber's strop. After awhile little Buk stopped crying during the beatings and just took the pain and transfered it into a searing hate and distrust for his fellow man. At 16, he decided to stop taking the shit his father dished out every day. He punched his father in the face and he crumpled to the floor. His old man never fucked with him again. I don't want to go further into how his life evolved because you can read his five autobiographical novels --- HAM ON RYE, FACTOTUM, POST OFFICE, WOMEN and HOLLYWOOD --- and find out for yourself how it turned out from the man himself.
      You can also check out the critically-acclaimed movie BARFLY at a video rental store. Buk wrote the screenplay, one of the best screenplays ever written in my bloated opinion, and the movie stars Mickey Rourke (he does an incredible job of playing Buk) and Faye Dunaway (who plays a great lush Rourke befriends). It's about Buk's days in Philadelphia when he spent five straight years in the same bar --- every morning, noon and night. He drank, fought, fucked, puked, shit and pissed his sorry ass life away and somehow the fucking gods allowed him to survive to become the writer who told us exactly how life was really lived day-in and day-out on the mean, cold fucking streets of AmeriKKKa.
      What's sad is that Buk is more well-known and respected in Europe than he is here in our over-commercialized, culturally-retarded and highly-illiterate nation. Since it came out in 1971, 75,000 copies of POST OFFICE, his first novel written in three weeks after he quit his post office job, have sold in the USA while half a million have sold in Europe, according to Rikki Hollywood's BUKOWSKI 'ZINE (England). People of influence in AmeriKKKa, i.e., academia, critics, scholars, don't want to give Buk credit for his ability to convey the most complex thoughts we humans think into the most simplistic, profound lines anyone has ever written. Why? Because they couldn't and some old drunk fucker like Buk with only a high school degree could.
      Poet Gregory K.H. Bryant told me he thought that now Buk is dead he would finally become recognized by mainstream AmeriKKKa and get his long over due due by being taught in university english and creative writing classes. I have my doubts about that, but it may happen.
      I think it'd be romantic for Buk to remain in the small press underground with the rest of us. He'd be our little best kept secret. A secred we'd want to keep close to our hearts because he touched them with his words so much.
      Bye, Buk.