More Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski, David Stephen Calonne Page A

treachery of man and I am aware of that by walking down the street NOW. History is dull and doubtful and I don’t know how much of it is true. History is the memory of victory and defeat, and I’ve got enough on my mind now.
    5) How about the common belief that all poems are political ?
    No, I think that most poems are cows with big sagging empty tits. I presume that by “political” you mean poems that move something toward the ultimate betterment of Man and the Government of Man. That’s all too perfect and coy. A poem is often something that is only necessary toward one man—the writer. It’s often a perfect form of selfishness. Let’s not credit ourselves with too much. Garage mechanics are more human than we are.
    6) Have you written music?
    Uhuh. I never liked those notes and lines and things they tried to teach me in school, I hated the teacher, so I deliberately didn’t learn the notes. Now it seems too late and too silly. Music affects me much more than writing or painting, though, and I seem to be listening to it continually—classical, rock, jazz, anything. It’s awfully good shit.
    7) Other writers you admire (besides Jeffers and Aiken—I’m thinking of Anthony Burgess, for example, whose Enderby is somewhat Bukowskian . . . & as a matter of fact, Burgess used to be a composer)?
    Never heard of Burgess, which doesn’t mean he isn’t any good. I don’t read much anymore. I like Artaud, Céline, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and the STYLE of the early Saroyan without the content. Then maybe Eugene O’Neill or somebody like that. Most writers simply don’t have it and never will. There’s hardly any looking around, up, down, before and before that. A pack of shameful fakes. If I ever go to hell there will be all writers down there. There could be nothing worse.
    8) Several times during our “interview” you said, sardonically, “I’m immortal”; now I’m no depth psychologist or mystic-of-the-word . . . but the thought occurs to me that maybe you sometimes brood on what sort of trace you’ll leave as an artist, a writer . . . and also on human perishability. (There’s a question somewhere in that preceding sentence.)
    There is? Well, about the “immortal,” I hope I said it “sardonically.” The only good thing about writing is the writing itself—that is, to bring me closer to what is necessary NOW and to keep me from becoming anything like the first face I pass on a sidewalk on any given day. When I die they can take my work and wipe a cat’s ass with it. It will be of no earthly use to me. The only trace I want to leave, after death, is upon myself, and that isn’t important to you. Incidentally, one of the best things I like about humans is that they do perish.
    9) Anything in astrology or Zen or any of the popular cults you believe in?
    I don’t have time for cults. That business is for the large gang of people who need toe-tickling. For them, it’s all right. It might even be helpful. But I build the IDEA of myself from myself and my experience. I will have my blind sides, true. And I might have much to learn from other men. But, basically, I am not a learner from other men. I am headstrong and prejudiced but it’s good to live without too much instruction from other men. I’ve found the most learned men to be bores and the dumbest seem to be the most profound and uncluttered. Who wants to be many voices when there is only one voice trying to get out?
    10) You told me you stopped writing when you were 24 (incidentally, have you written an account of this episode with your father? If you haven’t we’d like to see it for THE ____REVIEW—we pay something like $50.00 for stories and essays) . . . but you didn’t tell me when you started writing before that, and why you started writing.
    I’d much rather you paid me $50 for answering these questions. I’m not sure that thing I told you about my father is quite true, although there is a partial truth. Sometimes when I’m talking I