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

improve on things to make them better. Some people might call it lying; I call it an art-form, and, uh uh, no, I didn’t tell you when I started writing or why, but I was drinking, wasn’t I? And also, you didn’t ask. And also, I’m glad you didn’t ask.
    11) Is there anything, other than booze and women (I presume), that stimulates you creative lust? (Smell of horses, faces in the crowd at the track?) (You sort of answered this, but I’d like to hear more if you’d like to say it.)
    Everything, of course, stimulates my creative lust. Faces in the crowd do it plenty. I can look at faces and become disgusted and terrorized and sickened. Others can find beauty in them like large fields of flowers. I guess I ain’t much of a man for that. I am narrow. I can’t see the horizons or the reasons or the excuses or the glories. The average face to me is a total nightmare.
    Well, shit, I guess I don’t look so good to others either. I’ve been told I’m a very ugly man by more than one. So there’s your joke. Let’s get off these faces. I know that I haven’t answered your question properly, but I got into a passion and started yelling. Sorry.
    12) What do you think of “confessional” poetry? How do you see your own work fitting and resisting that label?
    Confessional poetry, of course, depends upon who does it. I think that most brag too much on themselves or don’t know how to laugh properly. Does that sound bitchy? Well, I mean, examine it and see. Even Whitman.
    I really do think that most of my confessional stuff relieves itself as a form of entertainment. Meaning, look, I lost my balls or my love, ha ha ha. So forth. But the ha ha ha must be fairly relevant and real, I mean no Bob Hope stuff, so forth.
    I find that when the pain gets bad enough there are only three things to do—get drunk, kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and laugh.
    Yeh. I don’t always do the confessional stuff but I suppose I am hooked on it, it comes easy because much has happened, I almost MAKE much happen—as if to create a life to create an art. I don’t think this is the true way to do things, it is probably a weakness, but I am a dreamer and maybe a dramatist and I like more things to happen than happen—so I push them a bit. I suppose it’s not right. I don’t claim to be.
    13) What do you think of college kids reading poetry? Why do they do it? Do they read you? Do they read poetry for what you consider valid reasons? (That last verges on being an asinine question, but you might be able to redeem it with a clever answer.)
    Now you know I don’t think of college kids reading poetry. I don’t know if they do or if they read me. There’s no clever way to answer this without making up something I don’t know and which I can’t get away with, so I’m being more clever this way.
    14) What’s so great about living in L.A.?
    I’m here to begin with and then you build around that. Or I build around it. I’ve lived most of my life here and I’ve simply gotten used to the place. I can’t even get lost, sober. And just the other day I found out where the L.A. Zoo was. And the women here seem to love old men. I’ve never seen women like that. At the same time, I’m suicidal and there’s the smog to help me out. So, what do you got in *****Ohio?
    15) What are you reading now? What are your reading habits?
    I’m not reading anything. Well, I write my own things and I read them. I suppose that’s a habit.
    16) If you were suddenly to become wealthy, how would your life change?
    I would become wiser, more profound and more lovely.
    17) Do you have any children?
    I have a girl aged 7. She’s all right.
     
    I mailed the questions and answers in and I didn’t expect much but I got, in the return mail, a letter from Jack M—
    Dear Buk:
    All right! That was good medicine (your response to my questions). I don’t think it’ll be right for the REVIEW, though. That isn’t what I had in mind, and my questions didn’t