Jon Konrath put out one of the best 'zines there was, Air In The Paragraph 'zine. In his 'zine Jon wrote about Bukowski. That stuff is now presented here. This first piece is about his trip to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books in San Francisco:

I finally got to City Lights Books and walked in to see copies of Howl and a sign saying the Beat Lit was upstairs. I crawled through the store and headed up the creaky steps, to find a book collection which probably contained as many or less volumes than my home library. I didn't check the poetry section, as I'm not a big poetry collector, but the Beat selection offered less volumes than were available at a standard Barnes and Noble. What a bummer. I went back downstairs and looked for Bukowski in the fiction section (he wasn't in the Beats - at least they got that right). They only had the City Lights volumes of his there, nothing from Black Sparrow Press or any rarities. They did have a large rack of zines, and I found the newest Cometbus there. No copy of sure, A Charles Bukowski Newsletter was among the Xeroxed small-press offerings. I rang out and asked the clerk about the Buk stuff and he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. Sigh. The place was okay, but I think Seattle has just as many good book resources, or maybe more. I'll keep my book money in King county and save a few bucks on travel from now on.

The alley next to the store was called Jack Kerouac Ave., which was pretty hip. There was a bar next door with a bunch of Kerouac pictures and memorabilia on the front, so I thought maybe it would be a cool place to go in, get a Coke, read Cometbus and maybe meet some new age beats or writers or something. I went in, and the place was a total meat market, people dressed in hundreds of dollars of clothes and perfectly manicured, drinking $20 well drinks and doing the Ken and Barbie thing. With my wrinkled shirt, messed up hair, old jeans, and random looks, I didn't exactly mesh. After a quick Coke and a use of the facilities, I made like Sal Paradise and was once again on the road.

His next piece is a review of Buk's Tales Of Ordinary Madness. I bought an extra copy of this book the other day at a Half-Price Books in Fort Worth. Why? Because I know at some time I'll either trade it or sell it at what it cost me to someone who's never read Buk. In fact, that's exactly what's happened to this copy. Thru the Internet I came in contact with a fellow in Greece that puts out a 'zine called Open Forum. He said he'd heard of Buk but had never read him. To make things short we've decided to trade. He's sending me a Plato book and I'm shipping him Buk's Tales. Okay, let's get to Jon's review:

What the shit? This book is a fucking bloodletting. My favorite authors are Charles Bukowski, Charles Bukowski, and...Okay, I'll stop quoting Buk and get on with it. If you don't already know Charles Bukowski is the most underrated writer of the 20th century. He's got a few dozen books of prose and poetry on from Black Sparrow Press and turned out some great shit from the '60s until his death in 1994. He's always been the outsider and a real loner through the years. His stuff's full of stories about booze, women (mostly leaving him), betting on the horses and being alone. It's funny, it's sad, but it also runs with a feeling that Buk is looking at life from another angle than most. He makes fun of everyone: he bashes the establishment, the hippies, the slackers, the anti-establishment and everything else. Why? Because he can, god damn it. OK, this book is the second part of Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness, which was split into this volume and The Most Beautiful Woman in Town by City Lights Books. This is a collection of short stories, some from (the '60s L.A. alternative weekly) Open City, along with a half dozen other literary journals. These older short stories (most of which I'd guess are from the mid-to-late 60's) are great - Buk writes about his East Hollywood slumhouse life, but he also writes some pure fiction stories, which are a real change from his novels and other writing. Some of this stuff is downright hilarious and a bit of it is depressing. I'm not going to call this the greatest book of Buk's life - it is a collection and some stuff falls short. He didn't always have the same focus when spitting out short pieces for the magazines and it shows in places. Not every piece is polished or refined and a few of them really drag. But there's a lot of other good stuff here. It's worth having if you're a collector and not too bad of a read. If you're a complete novice, I'd pick up Notes of a Dirty Old Man or go with something like Post Office or Women. But it's great to hear about the '60's from someone who didn't drop 80,000 hits of acid a day and worship Jefferson Airplane. It's an interesting view.

A guy from Houston, Joey Villarreal, who had ordered issue No. 1 of Losers Are Cool 'zine, saw my Bukowski Tributes pages the other day while he was surfin' the 'net and, without the monetary funds for ordering, asked me for more issues of LAC by forwarding me a photocopy of Bukowski's first ever published piece -- a short story titled "Aftermath Of A Lengthy Rejection Slip" that appeared in the 1944 March-April issue of Story -- in trade. I gladly accepted. Now all you Bukheads can see for yourself the first column -- right here, right now -- of that first-ever published Buk short story. Buk wasn't yet 24 when the piece was accepted by one of the most prestigious literary magazines of all times. Instead of capitalizing on this opportunity, Buk instead hit the road and bummed around America for the next decade, not returning to writing until age 35. Ain't we all glad he did.

Here's a weird ass letter I got from some German dude calling himself Falko. Under his name he typed, "THE GREAT PRESIDENT". President of what? His asshole? Jesus, with an ego that enormous I'm sure he's gone far in whatever it is he's put his mind to doing. Even though I wrote him back, saying, "Yeah, go ahead, use my Bukowski Tribute piece," and sending him various things I had to do with Bukowski, I never heard from him again. So I guess I won't be receiving any FAME and IMMORTALITY like he promised in his letter. And I never got his 'small Bukowski-paper'. I figure this guy for just another "I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that" dreamer. The world's full of them. If they'd all leave me alone I'd be a much happier person. And I wouldn't cuss so much. I wonder how many letters like this Bukowski got? Thousands probably.