Charles Bukowski - The Captain Is Out to Lunch

And as a writer… am I one? Oh well. As a writer I have trouble reading other writing. It just isn't there for me. To begin with, they don't know how to lay down a line, a paragraph. Just looking at the print from distance, it looks boring. And when you really get down there, it's worse than boring. There's no pace. There's nothing startling or fresh. There's no gamble, no fire, no juice. What are they doing? It looks like hard work. No wonder mostwriters say writing is painful to them. I can understand that.

Sometimes with my writing, when it hasn't roared, I have attempted other things. I have pouren wine on the pages, I have held the pages to a match and burned holes in them. „What are you DOING in there? I smell smoke!“ „No, it's all right, baby, it'all right…“ Once my wastebasket caught fire and I rushed it out of my little balcony, poured beer over it.

For my own writing, I like to watch the boxing matches, watch how the left jab is used, the overhand right, the left hook, the uppercut, the counter punch. I like to watch them dig in, come off the canvas. There is something to be learned, something to be applied to the art of writing, the way of writing. You have just one chance and then it's gone. There are only pages left, you might as well make them smoke.

Classical music, cigars, the computer make the writing dance, holler, laugh. The nightmare life helps too.

Each day as I walk into that racetrack am blasting my hours to shit. But I still have the night. What do other writers do? Stand before the mirror and examine their ear lobes? And then write about them. Or their mothers. Or how to Save the World. Well, they can save it for me by not writing that dull stuff. That slack and withered drivel. Stop! Stop! Stop! I need something to read. Isn't there anything to read? I don't think so. If you find it, let me know. No don't. I know: you wrote it. Forget it. Go take a dump.

I remember a long raging letter I got one day from a man who told me I had no right to say that I didn't like Shakespeare. Too many youth believe me and just not bother to read Shakespeare. I had no right to take this stance. On and on about that. I didn't answer him. But I will here.

Screw you, buddy. And I don't like Tolstoy either!