Bukowski

After hearing about Bukowski constantly for the last ten or twelve years, I finally bit the bullet and read a Spanish translation of Factotum.

I'd put it into the category of books about how you have to suffer to create. I agree that it's true. But honestly. Can't we just recognize the suffering already present in our lives, and not go out constantly looking for new and more literary forms of suffering to make us better writers? If we dig down deep within ourselves, we all have enough suffering to crank out a few short stories every month. A novel every couple of years.

The suffering artist idea lost all romance for me one night in Santa Cruz, California. I was about to turn 20, and I met a girl who was 22 or 23 and who was out on the road looking for suffering. Specifically, she was becoming a junkie. Lily.

Mr Bukowski: maybe your problem with life was that you were always hung over. I'm not a big drinker myself, but on the few days I've been stupid enough to end up with a little hangover, it's amazing how it changes my worldview. I walk out of the house, and see the Spanish familes walking around doing their shopping, eating on terrazas, kissing on benches, drinking beer in the park, and I think, "You fucking morons. Don't you realize that this life is just a horrible exercise in futility leading to an inevitable death? What the fuck are you laughing about? Stop kidding yourselves."

The misanthropy I feel after a night of drinking is a big attitude shift for me. I can catch the metro on a normal Monday morning at 8.30, spend half an hour packed in a tin box with a bunch of angry, sweaty, bad-smelling people on their way to the jobs that they hate, and I think the whole experience is so hilarious that when I get off in Sol I'm laughing like a crazy person and fully energetic for my work day.

If Lily is on her way to the Nobel Prize right now, I retract everything.

Bukowski: Maybe you should have tried cutting back on the alcohol and drinking four or five cups of black coffee every day. Maybe life wouldn't have looked so post-apocalyptic.