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I just finished reading Drinking With Bukowski: Recollections of the Poet Laureate of Skid Row. Got it for $5 from a second hand bookshop. It's a collection of essays, poems and reminisces about Bukowski by people who knew or admired him. It's pretty spotty, and some of it is annoying as hell (one breathless Buk book collector geek uses! An! Exclamation! Mark! Every! Second! Word! To! Convey! His! Excitement!) or plain pathetic (David Barker intoning in 'Charles Bukowski Spit in my Face' that getting spat on by the grizzled old misanthropic alkie, who sounded like he was a real prick in person, was 'A sort of baptism by saliva, a cleansing in the blood of the lamb'...instead of it not just being some ignorant old cunt grogging in your fawning visage) and back again.

Anyway.

There's an anecdote in the book from one of Buk's ex-girlfriends named Karen Finley that I just thought I'd relate here. She tells Chuck that she's pregnant by him, and it freaks him out, as she had been pregnant by Richard Brautigan before and had an abortion.

"If you have that baby I'll change my identity and leave the country."
I turned over to give him back some of his own medicine and said, "Who do you think you are? Jack Kerouac? Jack wouldn't have to say it. He was man enough just to do it."
Oh, this made Charles mad. And he was trying hard not to show it. So I turned the screw more.
"Why don't you have a vasectomy or become a faggot like Burroughs."
Many homes have rules that are left unsaid - no ball playing in the house, no hat wearing at dinner but in this house it was no reference to Burroughs. I used the word faggot before he could because every other word out of his mouth was faggot. I think it was more generational than actual homophobia but I never let him get away with it.

All the grammar and punctuation mistakes are in the book; it has a good few typos. I don't know how true this story is, or whether it's an ex just putting down how she would have liked to talk to the poet, and will never know, but I just thought it was funny and not the sort of thing you'd just make up. I remember Bukowski saying in a letter or Open City column that "Every man is a little afraid of being queer," but he also confessed in another column to accidentally having fucked a man in the ass one night when he was really drunk. So who knows. Draw your own conclusions.

I asked Carl Weissner one time if he'd ever heard about Burroughs and Bukowski meeting. (Carl would've known...) He recalled that they were actually in the same building once. It was someplace in California where both were giving a reading. I don't remember the story too well but the upshot was that Buk stalled in the lobby, fucking around with a soda machine or something, in order to "miss" Burroughs.

Unfortunately I didn't write down the story when Carl told me this and the details have gotten hazy in my mind. But it was something along these general lines. It'd be an interesting question to pose to Mr Grauerholz.

my friend William Burroughs

Charles Bukowski, Slouching Toward Nirvana



Sounds like he was indifferent to Burroughs, at the very least.

A correspondent points out that that same episode is fictionalized in chapter 83 of Buk's novel Women.



It goes on like that to paint a portrait of mutual indifference.

Was genuinely aware of the other WSB mentions in the work of CB (for the obvious reason that they're two of my fave writers; I stuck up a thread a while ago about the crossover on this forum) but just didn't have the other texts to hand. The indifference towards WSB was the main thing that stuck in my mind. Wonder when that snub was, early or late in Buk's career. If it was early it may well have been a jealousy or intimidation thing. Who knows. Would have been fascinating to hear of a meeting between these two; doubt it would have gone well (remember Hunter S Thompson asking 'Charles Who?' and sniggering when asked about competitor Buk). I seem to recall Buk writing about 'Mack Derouac' and Neal Cassady (I may be mistaken about the latter) under some other name in either Tales of Ordinary Madness or The Most Beautiful Woman in Town, but it's a while ago.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1177&hilit=bukowski

Just nipped about for a wee bit on the net and found the following:

"Brautigan is noted as being involved in an abortion by two different writers. Michael McClure, in his essay, "Ninety-one Things about Richard Brautigan" (Lighting the Corners, 46) notes Brautigan "apparently had an abortion with some woman."

The second reference is by Karen Finley, who, in her essay titled "An Affair to Remember," part of the book Drinking With Bukowski: Recollections of the Poet Laureate of Skid Row (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2000), she recounts an argument with poet Charles Bukowski over an abortion she had with Brautigan. Finley's essay starts by noting her argument with Bukowski and then provides more details about her relationship with Brautigan.
"You went to Mexico when you got pregnant with Richard," he [Bukowski] said hissing.

"Yes, and that was when abortion was illegal! You can't let him go can you? Besides, he's dead! He's dead! I was only a kid." (111)

I met Richard Brautigan at Enrico's cafe on Broadway and Kearny down the street from City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco in 1971. It was 1:30 AM and I had just ended my shift as a cocktail waitress at the infamous strip club The Condor. Enrico the owner of the bistro wanted me for I was underage and looked it. He promised to set me up in my own apartment. He never had me but would rub my knee while I ate my club sandwich and drank my hot cocoa. He would always give the taxi driver ten dollars to take me home.

Enrico introduced me to Richard Brautigan in mid-January and it surprised Enrico when I told the table that I had written a term paper on him the year before as a sophomore in high school. That is when Enrico stopped wanting me, for the turn on was that I knew nothing and now that I revealed myself I would have to pay for my own damn sandwich. I knew Brautigan's poetry by heart and when I spoke Richard became enamored. Richard was drunk, despondent, and disillusioned but I was a devoted fan.

So that is how I met Richard Brautigan. I later met Kathey Acker as my teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute, who introduced me to Gregory Corso, who introduced me to Bukowski at Brautigan's funeral.

The Brautigan issue with Bukowski was that I became pregnant with Richard and had an emotionally, highly charged, dramatic illegal abortion in Mexico. A conflict and an intimacy that Charles grew envious and jealous of as his feelings for me deepened. The fact that I actually read Brautigan and never read Bukowski made matters worse. So now you know. I had an affair with Bukowski and never read any of his goddamn books. (112)

Whether McClure's reference speaks to Finley's alleged abortion with Brautigan, or whether it is a reference to a second alleged abortion, is uncertain. Finley's reference to an abortion with Brautigan seems unlikely. First, Finley claims she met Brautigan in mid-January 1971, and therefore the abortion she alleges sharing with Brautigan would have been after this date. Of note: Finley, born in 1956, would have been 15 when she met Brautigan. Finally, Brautigan wrote The Abortion in the mid-1960s, well before Finley claims to have first met him. For these reasons it seems unlikely that an alleged abortion shared with Finley could have had a direct influence on the writing of the novel.

Brautigan's notebooks record his trip to Tijuana, Mexico, where he collected notes that were used in the writing of this novel. But, despite these notes, and the references noted above, no evidence has been found that Brautigan actually participated in an abortion with anyone."


Hmmm. So that dates Finley's sojourn with Bukowski as being after 1971; by the sounds of things, a good bit later, as she is referring to herself as 'just a kid' with the Brautigan abortion, but who knows. And it sounds like she was some sort of literary groupie (occupational hazard with writers who attract women who like writers) who fed Bukowski this line of bullshit about her being the inspiration for a Brautigan abortion novel. And anytime after 1971 (the year of Post Office's publication) would have been a decent time into Buk's writing career, so his (obviously genuine) WSB apathy-cum-antipathy may well have been a homophobia thing versus a sales or writing talent thing. If Finley is even to believed about this, that is. Wonder what date the column about him fucking a man up the ass ran in the LA Free Press (or Open City, whichever it was); would certainly explain his homophobia on one level at least. Interesting how both things relate to sexuality; Buk lost his virginity at 24.

I do not recall him ever having a problem with the past sexual history of any of his women (he often goes on about going out with 'whores,' which may be a comment, but he was Catholic so, well, who knows) in his work, though I might be wrong (I wasn't taking notes when I read it). And as for homophobia, well, there isn't too much of it in his work as I remember; he was aware of the correlation between poetry and homosexuality, 'softness,' and talked against being soft, but homophobia isn't much in his work, as I recall. I may well be wrong, as I will say again. But I don't think Finley is on the level, as judging by some of the complimentary things he says about WSB and Ginsberg in the other thread, and people like Lorca. Words, not cocksucking tendencies, were what mattered to him, though he does lay the knife into Ginsberg in another chapter in Drinking With Bukowski.

Erm...Bukowski was friends with Harold Norse and "cocksucking tendencies" didn't seem to be a problem to their friendship.

Having read the guy extensively, I don't think homophobia could be qualified as a fixture of the man.

We'll have to see if Burroughs mentions Bukowski in the second volume of letters. Bill Reed mentions Burroughs reading Bukowski at the 8th Street Bookshop: http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic- ... -bookshop/. I would think that Burroughs would not really have Bukowski on his radar. I do not think any Bukowski books are in Road to Interzone, for example.

On the other hand, I do not think Bukowski was indifferent at all. All that writing about his indifference suggests exactly the opposite. Bukowski mentions Burroughs in his correspondence: To the Webbs on March 17, 1963 stating "Burroughs, of course, is important because he keeps the air-holes open. We need a Joyce or Burroughs or Gertrude S. every age to keep us loose and let us know that everything needn't be so, they way it seems or the way the herd-writers want it to seem. These people are valuable, in a way, beyond their work - icebreakers, knockers down of policemen."

Again in a Letter to Weissner on November 18, 1966: "Burroughs, Ginsberg ... how does it feel to be communicating with the Lights of the Age, and also with me. B and G have disappointed me at times, but let's admit that they have done things, and that no man creates pure Art day after day."

That is not indifference on two levels. It shows Bukowski respects Burroughs's writing and it shows that Bukowski is not indifferent to literary history and tradition in general no matter how much Bukowski played the anti-intellectual booze poet. In the early years, Bukowski spent lots of time in the library as well as the bar. Bukowski acknowledges (admires??) Burroughs's talent as an artist; he cant help himself. Maybe Bukowski is ashamed of himself that he is not indifferent, that he is no different in his aspirations from those he hates

Furthermore I think Bukowski's prejudices are rather strong. To the Webbs on Oct. 1, 1963: Bukowski mentions that the "floss fell away" when he learned of Burroughs's trust fund. Bukowski is also turned off by "the homo bit." Bukowski's stance towards Burroughs is colored by the difference in class, the difference in their status as writers and their difference in sexual preference. All these differences, which Bukowski thinks (cannot help thinking about) about when he thinks of Burroughs, do not point to indifference.

All this is just from the early letters without even getting into the fiction or poems. Bukowski writes too much about Burroughs to be indifferent. Bukowski can not be indifferent; he cares to much about writing and literature. That is why he writes.