Buk

A typical night, after dinner, finds me once again on line. It starts with e-mail, then usually moves to a simple search for a song or band or some music-related tidbit. But inevitably it leads here, then there, then over there, and on and on until a simple desire to learn one thing finds me having already forgotten 13 things that I only just learned.

Such a thread tonight landed me on Charles Bukowski, the low-rent LA writer, poet, fighter and lifetime drunk. I was only fleetingly familiar with him (mostly via the movie Barfly, which he wrote, autobiographically, and I dug), but an hour of clicking and skimming has landed me now among the ranks of his admirers. That's the internet for you. Instant education, fascination, gratification. But I can see I'm a long way off from really getting what this guy was about. Kind of LA's answer to Burroughs, maybe, but who generally chose booze over heroin. Some people called him a Beat poet, but it doesn't look like there was any real connection between him and the Beats. He was fascinating, and a tough guy, but it still amazes me that somebody that led that hard of a life lasted to the age of 74, and it took leukemia to bring him down, not drink. His gravestone even reflects his persona a bit:

Burroughs', on the other hand, just alludes to his craft:

(image compliments of http://www.findagrave.com/)