the same name) and his bosses were so impressed they promoted him. Bukowski was disgusted when he found out, imagining the people at the museum looking at his father and saying, admiringly: ‘There goes the writer Charles Bukowski.’ It was too terrible to live under the same roof as ‘the beastly little prick’, so he left home and rented a room downtown, off Alvarado Street in the red light district.
He was drowning his sorrows in The Glenview Bar one night when he met Jane Cooney Baker.
Jane inspired much of Bukowski’s most powerful work: the poetry book The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills is suffused with her memory; she became Betty in his first novel, Post Office ; and Laura in his second novel, Factotum . Most famously she became Wanda, the character played by Faye Dunaway inthe film Barfly , for which he wrote the screenplay. With Barfly , and other pieces he wrote, Bukowski transformed Jane into a stock character of his fiction, second only to Henry Chinaski and his father. She died before Bukowski became famous and was never interviewed. Her picture has not previously been published. The only information about who she really was has come from the few biographical details Bukowski provided in interviews. He said she was a half-Irish/half-Indian orphan, raised by nuns after being abandoned by her parents, and that she married a wealthy Connecticut attorney. This colourful story was entirely fictitious.
Jane was the youngest daughter of well-to-do St Louis doctor, Daniel C. Cooney, who contracted pneumonia in 1919, when Jane was nine. He moved his family to New Mexico where he hoped the dry air would be good for his health, settling in Glencoe, 170 miles south-east of Albuquerque. He died soon afterwards. Jane’s mother, Mary, was obliged to move the family to a more modest house in nearby Roswell where she went to work for the First National Bank.
At Roswell High School, Jane was known by the nickname ‘Jacques’ and for her catch-phrase: ‘Isn’t that atrocious!’ Although not outstandingly pretty, being short with mousy hair and slightly boss-eyed, she had many boyfriends and managed to scandalize the town. ‘She liked to go out and party, drink and dance,’ says Orville Cookson, who knew the family. ‘But Mary was a devout Catholic and she was against all that.’
Jane graduated high school in the spring of 1927 and almost immediately became pregnant by one of her boyfriends, twenty-one-year-old Craig Baker from the nearby hick town of Artesia. They married on 25 January, 1928, the licence having been granted the night before, and left for El Paso in the morning, soon returning with a young son, Jo. In 1931, Jane had a second child, Mary.
Far from living in luxury, as Bukowski said, Jane and Craig moved in with her mother because Craig was doing so poorly in business. There were arguments and Craig started to drink heavily. The night before Mary Cooney’s funeral, in 1947, Jane and Craig had dinner with neighbors who recall the condition he was in. ‘Craig was royally drunk. Jane wasn’t drinking, but he got stinko,’ says Lavora Fisk. ‘She begged him to eat, but he wouldn’t becausehe was so stowed-up with liquor.’ Craig died shortly afterwards, in an automobile accident for which Jane blamed herself, and she began to drink heavily, too.
It was a year later that she met Bukowski in LA. Jane was thirty-eight, an alcoholic who had lost touch with her family. She was also getting a little crazy, and had a reputation for attacking men she took a dislike to. But she allowed Bukowski to drink with her and they left The Glenview together, picking up two fifths of bourbon and a carton of cigarettes before going back to his place.
‘Say, I don’t know your name. What’s your name?’ asked Bukowski, when they were in bed.
‘What the hell difference does it make?’ she said.
Although Bukowski was twenty-seven, Jane was his first serious girlfriend, only the second
He was drowning his sorrows in The Glenview Bar one night when he met Jane Cooney Baker.
Jane inspired much of Bukowski’s most powerful work: the poetry book The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills is suffused with her memory; she became Betty in his first novel, Post Office ; and Laura in his second novel, Factotum . Most famously she became Wanda, the character played by Faye Dunaway inthe film Barfly , for which he wrote the screenplay. With Barfly , and other pieces he wrote, Bukowski transformed Jane into a stock character of his fiction, second only to Henry Chinaski and his father. She died before Bukowski became famous and was never interviewed. Her picture has not previously been published. The only information about who she really was has come from the few biographical details Bukowski provided in interviews. He said she was a half-Irish/half-Indian orphan, raised by nuns after being abandoned by her parents, and that she married a wealthy Connecticut attorney. This colourful story was entirely fictitious.
Jane was the youngest daughter of well-to-do St Louis doctor, Daniel C. Cooney, who contracted pneumonia in 1919, when Jane was nine. He moved his family to New Mexico where he hoped the dry air would be good for his health, settling in Glencoe, 170 miles south-east of Albuquerque. He died soon afterwards. Jane’s mother, Mary, was obliged to move the family to a more modest house in nearby Roswell where she went to work for the First National Bank.
At Roswell High School, Jane was known by the nickname ‘Jacques’ and for her catch-phrase: ‘Isn’t that atrocious!’ Although not outstandingly pretty, being short with mousy hair and slightly boss-eyed, she had many boyfriends and managed to scandalize the town. ‘She liked to go out and party, drink and dance,’ says Orville Cookson, who knew the family. ‘But Mary was a devout Catholic and she was against all that.’
Jane graduated high school in the spring of 1927 and almost immediately became pregnant by one of her boyfriends, twenty-one-year-old Craig Baker from the nearby hick town of Artesia. They married on 25 January, 1928, the licence having been granted the night before, and left for El Paso in the morning, soon returning with a young son, Jo. In 1931, Jane had a second child, Mary.
Far from living in luxury, as Bukowski said, Jane and Craig moved in with her mother because Craig was doing so poorly in business. There were arguments and Craig started to drink heavily. The night before Mary Cooney’s funeral, in 1947, Jane and Craig had dinner with neighbors who recall the condition he was in. ‘Craig was royally drunk. Jane wasn’t drinking, but he got stinko,’ says Lavora Fisk. ‘She begged him to eat, but he wouldn’t becausehe was so stowed-up with liquor.’ Craig died shortly afterwards, in an automobile accident for which Jane blamed herself, and she began to drink heavily, too.
It was a year later that she met Bukowski in LA. Jane was thirty-eight, an alcoholic who had lost touch with her family. She was also getting a little crazy, and had a reputation for attacking men she took a dislike to. But she allowed Bukowski to drink with her and they left The Glenview together, picking up two fifths of bourbon and a carton of cigarettes before going back to his place.
‘Say, I don’t know your name. What’s your name?’ asked Bukowski, when they were in bed.
‘What the hell difference does it make?’ she said.
Although Bukowski was twenty-seven, Jane was his first serious girlfriend, only the second
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