Frank Hank
Thanks to Reader S for sharing this. It’s a letter from Charles Bukowski to the man who freed him from his day job.
Publisher John Martin agreed to pay Bukowski a monthly stipend if only he’d agree to quit his time-wasting job as a mail clerk. In the letter, Bukowski shows his gratitude and follows it with an almighty complaint about the indignity of employment:
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.
Say what you like about Bukowski, but he was great at blowing the whistle. I think that’s one of the things people like about him. He wasn’t afraid to cry “bullshit!”
In Post Office he calls out the world of work. In its prequel, Factotum, he does the same for the world of art, expressing his frustrations with publishers, of not being allowed in for so long as a working-class man.
See how he describes his onetime fellow rat racers, with scorn but not without sympathy:
what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Beautiful, furious stuff. The whole letter is worth a read.
*
Prince Charles
Charles Bukowski:
How in the hell could [anyone] enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
8:30?! It shows how little the onetime factotum knew about conventional day jobs. Isn’t it more like 6:30?
*
Get up at 10:30 instead. And read New Escapologist.
Life of a poet
Our sub-editor, Reggie, sent me this grubby poem. He finds it depressing but I like it.
Poem For My 43rd Birthday
Charles Bukowski
To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine–
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
…in the morning
they’re out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers…
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.
Buy the complete back catalogue of New Escapologist with a 10% discount today.
Or buy the complete back catalogue on PDF, with £1 off the price each issue.
