This is a shadow of Bukowski’s first volume of
letters Screams From the Balcony
published near the end of his lifetime in 1993. You don’t see the venom of
crazy, randy, drunken, stream of consciousness rants that you experience in the
first collection. He covers a wide range of topics including civil
rights, the stupidity of the masses, English teachers, the writing process, the
assassination of JFK, the recession & many others . Towards its last limping fifty or so pages, Living On Luck appears more concerned
with the balance sheets of his business of writing, especially after he
befriends Linda Lee Beighle in 1977 and starts to think about his future.
Bukowski often mentions the idea of luck throughout
his work. In this book, he often metaphorically uses the expression ‘the luck
of the gods’, but ultimately he realizes that he makes his own luck. He writes
Carl Weissner, his German translator and literary agent, drunkenly late one
night, ‘It’s too late for anything else, I’m too ugly now, too insane, too old,
I am just going to have to luck it. and the best luck is to keep this
typewriter HOT. yes.’
Many of the early letters are addressed to the poet John
William Corrington (1961-1964) and are more of a tacked on addition to Volume 1. He
tells Corrington within the first couple of pages, ‘Death works a lot of
avenues, and although you say you like my stuff, I want to let you know that if
it turns to rot, it is not because I tried too hard or too little but because I
either ran out of beer or blood’.
He reveals to Corrington many fascinating aspects of
his personal life. He tells him in December 1966; I have never written a novel,
don’t feel like writing a novel, although if I live to be fifty I will try
one’. In response to a Corrington question regarding Bukowski’s religious
upbringing he says, ‘I was a Catholic. As a kid. Just got past the catechism
bit…At 13, 14, 15, I stopped going and there wasn’t much my mother could do and
the old man didn’t care’. In an earlier letter Bukowski colourfully stated his agnostic, stoical view of God: ‘It would be
short-peckered wisdom indeed if we thought we could pull the curtain on God and
expose his kisser…or the small pile of bleached bones. All we can do is work
against the tide as best as we may’.
He defends his nonliterary, innovative style in a
letter to James Boyar May of Trace in
response to an article by Robert Vaughan ‘Essay on the Recent History of
Immortality’ which appeared in the Jan-Mar 1961 edition through an insightful summation
of his craft: ‘I think sometimes the great symphonies that we have accepted
today that were hissed at and walked out upon when first heard… but wouldn’t it
be wonderful if we could instead of sweating out the correct image, the precise
phrase, the turn of thought, simply sit down and write the god damned thing,
throwing on the colour and sound, shaking us alive with the force, the
blackbirds, the wheat fields, the ear in the hand of the whore, sun, sun, sun,
SUN!' He concludes the letter forcefully, raging against the straight-jacket of
formal rules in poetry: ‘Let’s make poetry the way we make love; let’s make
poetry and leave the laws and the rules and the morals to the churches and the
politicians; let’s make poetry the way we tilt the head back for the good
liquor; let a drunken bum make his flame, and some day Robert, I’ll think of
you, pretty and difficult, measuring vowels and adverbs, making rules instead
of poetry.’
Probably more interesting are Bukowski’s explicit comments
about his writing process. He tells Corrington he simply writes his poetry, he
does not know what the poems mean and he doesn’t want to know: ‘When I write the
poem it is only fingers on typewriter, something smacking down. It is that
moment then, the walls, the weather of that day, the toothache, the hangover,
what I ate, the face I passed, maybe a night 20 years ago on a park bench, an
itch on the neck, whatever, and you get the poem- maybe. I don’t know much
about what you can say about these poems’. He later tells editor Robert DeMaria, ‘Of
course my work is not carefully worked-out and hastily written. that’s the
point. I write down what I need. Poetry has long ago dulled me with its tricks
and mechanics’. To John Martin, ‘You know, the writing must come out of the
living, the reaction to the living. If I get a little scorched now and then,
it’s all for the good of the barbecue’.
The most important correspondence in LIVING ON LUCK is addressed to John
Martin, his Black Sparrow Press publisher, and Carl Weissner, his German
translator and European literary agent. Also interesting are his letters to fellow
poets A.D. Winans and Gerald Locklin.
After Bukowski meets Linda Lee Beighle in March 1977
he becomes far more concerned with his financial concerns. In June 1978 he writes
Carl Weissner thanking him for providing a ‘complete rundown of finances’ and
in July he asks his publisher John Martin that he sign a new contract for each
book. He also requests if Martin dies or sells Black Sparrow that whoever takes
over pays him according to the contract. In closely examining some old
contracts with City Lights in December 1978, Bukowski realizes they have underpaid him
foreign rights royalties and he pursues
them.
As the royalties started to flow in, Bukowski also
sensibly became interested in minimizing his taxes. He buys a big old house in
San Pedro which overlooked the harbor which he lived in until his death in 1994. He also purchases the latest model BWM for $16,000 cash. In the second
last letter in the collection in December 1979, he justifies the purchases to his friend A.D.
Winans and insists that he hasn’t lost his soul: ‘Both investments were made to help avoid
some of the tax bite out of European royalties. Here in America, if you don’t
lay the money off, they take it. I offer no excuses for buying a car or living
in a house. Although some may take this as a sign I am losing, have lost, my
soul’.
He tells Martin straight-up, ‘We just have to forget about “the
image.” I never hide anything. The car is a 1979 black BMW, sun roof and all.
32oI. (52% tax write-off.)’ Later, he will savor the image of his staunchest
critics reading his ‘BMW poems’. In Reach
for the Sun: Selected Letters Volume 3, Bukowski smirkingly tells Stephen
Kessler, a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times: ‘I write the BMW poems to piss
off those who hated me when I lounged upon park benches. If I get my American
Express Gold Card you can damn well bet I’ll write a bit more to spoil their
sated evenings.’
This is a fascinating collection of letters from a
writer who becomes increasingly famous during the writing of this series of
letters. Bukowski was grateful that fame came to him late in life because it never got
to his head. He never forgot where he came from and compellingly wrote about
his childhood, his life as a starving artist and his dodgy relationships with woman
for decades.
