Twain

Ernest Hemingway wrote, "All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Yet less than a year after it was published in 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned by several American libraries for obscene language and moral degeneracy. In Concord, Massachussetts, the librarian said the book "is not suitable for trash."  Twain responded, "This will sell us sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!"

To many Twain scholars, Huck Finn exposed the hypocrisy of slavery in a democratic republic while humanizing the slave Jim.  Twain's critics claim Huck Finn depicts Jim as a minstrel stereotype prone to superstitious and ignorant beliefs.  In 1957, the NAACP accused Huck Finn of containing "racial slurs" and "belittling racial designations."  In 2009, a Washington state high school teacher called for the removal of Huck Finn from the school's curriculum.

Twain himself was nonplussed by public reception. He said, "I wrote Huck Finn for adults exclusively and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them.  The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.  I know this by my own experience and to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old.  None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave."

Twain claimed the character Huck was inspired by his childhood friend Tom Blankenship whose father was a drunk and the model for Pap Finn.  But in many ways Huck was inspired by Twain himself.  Like Huck, Twain grew up in the pre-Civil War South.  Twain's home state of Missouri was a slave state and Twain's uncle owned 20 slaves.  In his autobiography, Twain wrote, "I vividly remember seeing a dozen black men and women chained to one another…awaiting shipment to the Southern slave market.  Those were the saddest faces I have ever seen."

As he matured, Twain's attitudes toward slavery evolved.  Twain married into an abolitionist family and his father-in-law, Jervis Langdon, was a conductor on the Underground Railroad who at one point housed Frederick Douglass. Commenting on the Emancipation Proclamation, Twain wrote, "Lincoln's Proclamation…not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also."

Amazingly, Huck Finn almost never came to be.  Twain started the book in 1876 and wrote 400 pages that he liked "only tolerably well, as far as I have got, and may possibly pigeonhole or burn" the manuscript.  Twain stopped the story about the time Huck and Jim exited the river.  He went on to write The Prince and the Pauper and Life on the Mississippi.  Seven years later, after taking a steamboat ride down the Mississippi, Twain was inspired to complete the novel.

Many have complained about the final portion of Huck Finn.  Through their journey down the river, Huck experiences Jim's humanity and a true friendship develops. But when the character Tom Sawyer enters the novel, Huck becomes passive and does nothing when Jim is captured.  All turns out well since Jim was already freed by his owner and Huck's pap is dead.  But the happy ending seems tacked on and is inconsistent with the complexity of the novel.  Hemingway wrote of Huck Finn, "If you read it, you must stop where…Jim is stolen from the boys.  This is the real end.  The rest is just cheating." (6" x 7", black ink print)

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born into a life of privilege and high-society connections.  Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, founded the Dictionary of National Biography.  Her mother, Julia Stephen, was a model who posed for pre-Raphaelite painters and early photographers. Her great aunt was Julia Margaret Cameron, a noted photographer.

Woolf's childhood was influenced by Victorian literary society.  Visitors to her home included Henry James, William Thackeray and her Godfather, James Russell Lowell.  Woolf had two brothers, a sister and multiple step siblings.  Her parents taught her at home while her brothers were sent away to be formally educated.  Woolf later came to resent this.

Woolf determined at an early age to become a writer.  Her most vivid memories were of summer holidays in St. Ives in Cornwall.  These experiences later informed her novel To The Lighthouse.

In 1891, Woolf's mentally disturbed half-sister Laura was institutionalized. Four years later, when Woolf was 13, her mother died of rheumatic fever. Woolf said the loss was "the greatest disaster that could happen."  The family fell into deep mourning and Woolf had the first of many mental breakdowns.  Her father's grief was intense and all-consuming forcing Woolf's half-sister Stella to care for the family.  Stella died of peritonitis in 1897.

Woolf took study courses in Greek, Latin and history at the Ladies Department of Kings College in London.  This brought her into contact with early reformers of women's higher education known as the "Steamboat Ladies."  Her studies were interrupted in 1904 when her father died of stomach cancer.  Woolf experienced a second mental breakdown during which she attempted to commit suicide by jumping out a window.  She was briefly institutionalized at Burley House, "a nursing home for women with nervous disorder."

Woolf's sisters sold the family house and bought a house in the hip Bloomsbury neighborhood of London.  Woolf came to know the writers and intellectuals who formed the Bloomsbury Group.  They included E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Woolf's future husband Leonard Wolff.  The group deeply influenced literature, art and economics and held modern attitudes toward feminism and sexuality.

Woolf began her writing career in 1905 at the age of 23 by contributing to the Times Literary Supplement.  A year later, her favorite brother Thoby died of typhoid fever.  Virginia and Leonard Woolf married in 1912.  They would remain together until Virginia's death.

Woolf's first novel The Voyage Out was published in 1915.  The story was about an Englishwoman's emotional and sexual awakening as she traveled abroad.  The book was an indictment of the political and sexual mores of modern England.  Woolf's writing style experimented with a stream of consciousness lyricism focusing on the psychological underpinnings of the characters.  She created visual impressions comparable to the writing of James Joyce and Joseph Conrad.

In 1917, Woolf and husband Leonard purchased a printing press and founded Hogarth Press in the basement their London home.  Hogarth became a respectable printing house that published Wolff's novels as well as work by T.S. Eliot and Sigmund Freud.  After the end of World War I, the Wolff's moved to Monk's House, a cottage in the English village of Rodmell.  Here, Woolf wrote all of her remaining novels including Night And Day (1919), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Orlando (1928) and The Waves (1931).

In 1922, Woolf met Vita Sackville-West, a married writer.  The two women began a love affair (with Leonard's knowledge and permission) that lasted nearly ten years.  The relationship inspired Woolf's novel Orlando, a fantastical biography in which the gender-switching hero's life spans three centuries.

In 1929, Woolf gave a series of lectures on the difficulties that female writers encounter because men hold disproportionate economic and legal power in society.  She published A Room Of One's Own writing "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."  The essay was seen as a feminist tract and became an inspiration to female writers everywhere. Woolf later published Three Guineas, an essay arguing that if women occupied positions of power there would be less war.

Woolf's two half brothers Gerald and George died in the mid 1930's.  Woolf revealed in a memoir that George and Gerald molested her and half-sister Vanessa when they were children.  Some Woolf biographers have suggested Woolf's breakdowns were influenced by this sexual abuse.

Woolf was criticized for her anti-Semitic views.  Early in life she wrote about Jewish characters as being dirty and physically repulsive.  A passage in her diary read, "I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh."  After marrying the proudly Jewish Leonard Wolff, Virginia's outlook changed.  She acknowledged the mistakes of her early ignorance and wrote, "What a snob I was for they [Jews] have immense vitality."  Woolf and husband Leonard feared the rise of 1930's fascism.  After Britain's entry into World War II in 1939, the Woolfs appeared on Hitler's blacklist.  They made plans to commit suicide if England was invaded.

During the Blitz of 1940, German bombs destroyed the Woolf's London home and the offices of Hogarth Press.  The couple took refuge in Monk's House. Woolf completed her final novel Between The Acts in 1941.  Stressed by her work and the war, she fell into a deep depression.  She was unable to write and feared she would not recover from her mental illness.

On March 28, 1941, Woolf donned an overcoat, filled her pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse behind her home.  She left behind a suicide note for Leonard.

"Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.  I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times.  And I shan't recover this time.  So I'm doing what seems the best thing to do.  You have given me the greatest possible happiness.  I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came.  I can't fight any longer.  What I want to say is I owe the happiness of my life to you."

Woolf's body was discovered three weeks later.  Leonard had Woolf cremated and the remains buried under one of two oak trees in their backyard that they named "Virginia and Leonard."  He placed a stone tablet on the spot engraved with the final lines from Woolf's novel The Waves.

"Against you I fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!  The Waves broke on the shore."  (6" x 7", black ink print)

Hemingway

"Man is not made for defeat.  A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
--The Old Man and the Sea

In 1954, Ernest Hemingway took his fourth wife Mary Welsh to Africa.  He chartered a sightseeing plane to show her the Belgian Congo and the glorious Murchison Falls.  While flying low over the trees, the plane struck a utility pole and crash landed in heavy brush.  Hemingway suffered a concussion.  His wife broke two ribs.

That night they camped in the bush waiting for a response to their distress call.  A passing plane saw the crash and reported no survivors.  Word spread around the world that Hemingway was dead.  The next day, Hemingway and his wife were found and picked up by a bush pilot.  Amazingly, the second plane caught fire and exploded during takeoff.  Hemingway slammed his upper body and head against the exit door to escape.  He suffered serious burns and a concussion severe enough to cause leaking cerebral fluid.

The injured travelers were taken by road to an Entebbe hospital.  Hemingway joked with journalists and spent weeks recuperating and reading his erroneous obituaries.  Restless and bored, he left the hospital and took Mary and his son Patrick on a fishing trip to Kenya.  A bushfire broke out and Hemingway fell into the fire to help extinguish the flames.  He suffered burns on his legs, torso, lips and arms.  He was ultimately diagnosed with two crushed vertebra, a ruptured liver and spleen and a broken skull.

Hemingway was no stranger to accidents and illness.  In 1918 he enlisted as a World War I ambulance driver on the Italian front.  While bringing chocolate and cigarettes to the front line he was struck by mortar fire.  Despite serious shrapnel wounds to both legs, he carried an Italian soldier to safety earning him the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery.  He underwent an operation and spent six months recuperating.

In 1927 while honeymooning in France with his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer, Hemingway contracted Anthrax.  A few months later in Paris, he pulled a skylight down on his head thinking he was pulling on a toilet chain.  This left him with a permanent scar on his forehead.  In the early 1930's, Hemingway took writer John Dos Passos elk hunting in Montana.  After dropping off Dos Passos at the train station, Hemingway crashed his car and broke his arm.  The surgeon bound the bone with kangaroo tendon.  Hemingway was hospitalized for two months and it took more than a year for the nerves in his writing hand to heal.

In 1933, Hemingway and Pauline went on safari to East Africa.  The trip would inspire Hemingway's short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro and his story collection Green Hills of Africa.  The trip also gave Hemingway a bout of amoebic dysentery causing a prolapsed intestine.  He was evacuated by plane to a Nairobi hospital.

In 1944 while in London to write about World War II, Hemingway was involved in another car accident.  He suffered a concussion and a head wound requiring 50 stitches.  He traveled to Normandy with a head bandage to witness the D-Day landing from an ocean borne craft.  He also found himself under fire at the Battle of the Bulge.  The stress caused him to be hospitalized with pneumonia.

In 1945 he returned to Key West, Florida.  Guilty about his failed marriage to third wife Martha Gellhorn, he began drinking heavily.  One night after too many daiquiris, he had another car accident.  He smashed his knee and suffered the third of many concussions.

Hemingway fell into a deep depression as his literary friends began to die.  He'd lost W.B. Yeats in 1939, Scott Fitzgerald in 1940 and Sherwood Anderson and James Joyce in 1941.  Gertrude Stein died in 1946 and his long-time Scribner's editor Max Perkins died in 1947.  Hemingway began to suffer headaches, weight problems and tinnitus.  He was subsequently diagnosed with diabetes.

From late 1955 to early 1956, Hemingway was bedridden.  His doctors urged him to stop drinking to heal his damaged liver.  He disregarded the advice.  He became ill and was treated for high-blood pressure and arteriosclerosis.

By 1959, Hemingway was having trouble organizing his thoughts.  Always the master of brevity and concise prose, he lost control of his writing.  He was commissioned by Life Magazine to write a 10,000 word article on bullfighting.  He submitted a 40,000 word opus.  He asked writer A.E. Hotchner to help him trim and organize the piece.  Hotchner found Hemingway to be "unusually hesitant, disorganized and confused."  His eyesight was failing him, he'd become anxious about money and he was paranoid that the FBI was monitoring his movements. (J. Edgar Hoover had in fact opened a file on him during WWII.)  He drank more heavily to combat the pain from his lifelong injuries.

In 1960, hearing that Fidel Castro wanted to nationalize property owned by Americans, Hemingway and his wife Mary left their beloved Finca Vigia ranch in Cuba and moved to Ketchum, Idaho.  Hemingway became seriously ill and retreated into silence and despair.  He checked into the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Doctors diagnosed him with a psychiatric illness and treated him with 15 rounds of electroshock therapy.  In early 1961 he was "released in ruins."

Hemingway had always been plagued by suicidal thoughts.  His father Clarence had committed suicide with a gunshot to the head in 1928.  Hemingway commented at the time, "I'll probably go the same way."  Like his father, Hemingway had been diagnosed with the genetic disease hemochromatosis. This caused the inability of the body to metabolize iron resulting in mental and physical deterioration.  Hemingway's sister Ursula and brother Leicester also committed suicide.  Years later, Hemingway's granddaughter Margaux would take her own life.

In the morning hours of June 2, Hemingway awoke early, careful not to wake Mary.  He donned his favorite dressing gown that he called his "emperor's robe" and entered the basement where he kept his guns.  He removed his favorite gun, a double-barrel 12-gauge Boss & Co. shotgun.  He inserted two shells into the gun, walked into the upstairs foyer, put the barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger.  The story reported to the press was that Hemingway "accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun."  Months later, Mary admitted the death was suicide.

Hemingway had been a swashbuckling, hard-drinking adventurer.  He was a hunter, a pugilist, a war hero and a writer who defined his time and mastered his craft.  In 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.  He opted not to travel to Stockholm.  Instead he sent a speech to be read which defined the writer's existence.  "Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.  Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing.  He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness but often his work deteriorates.  For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."  (5" x 6", black ink print)

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was known as master of the macabre. His gothic stories dealt with death, decomposition, reanimation and premature burial. He was the inventor of the detective fiction genre, an early contributor to the science fiction genre and one of the first know American authors to make a living strictly from writing.

Poe was born in 1809 in Boston. His mom died shortly after his birth and his father abandoned the family. He was taken in by John Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant from Virginia though he was never formally adopted. He was raised to be a businessman.  Instead, Poe dreamed of being a writer like his hero the British poet Lord Byron.

Poe attended the University of Virginia but was given little money by his foster father to pay his bills. He turned to gambling to survive and he quickly accrued large debts. He was so poor he burned his furniture to keep warm. Poe dropped out of college after one semester. He returned to Richmond to find his fiance engaged to another man. Heartbroken, he joined the army.

In 1827 Poe published his first book of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems, attributed with the byline "By a Bostonian." Only 50 copies were printed and the book garnered no attention. Poe traveled to Baltimore and moved in with his Aunt Maria Clemm and his young cousin Virginia.

By the early 1830's, Poe began publishing short stories. His work slowly gained acclaim but he remained in poverty. Poe turned his attention to prose and literary criticism. His literary criticism was so scathing he gained the nickname "Tomahawk Man" and he was said to write with "prussic acid instead of ink."

In 1835, Poe married his cousin Virginia. (He was 26, she was 13.) Poe became editor of several journals and his literary output increased. In 1845, Poe wrote his most famous poem The Raven. He became an overnight success though he was only paid $9 dollars for the poem's publication.

In 1847, Poe's wife Virginia died of tuberculosis. (Tuberculosis claimed his wife, his birth mother, his older brother and his foster mother.) Despondent, Poe was unable to write for months and he turned to drinking. He moved to a cottage in the bronx and continued to struggle financially. His stories were more popular in Europe than America and they were translated into French by Charles Baudelaire.

By 1849, Poe was drinking heavily and wandering the streets delirious. Though the story of Poe's final days is complicated, he disappeared for five days before he was found in the bar room of a public house wearing clothes that were not his own. He died at Washington College Hospital surrounded by strangers. The exact cause of his death is unknown. (His death has been attributed to alcohol, cholera, heart disease, rabies, tuberculosis and suicide.)

The Mystery Writers of American present an annual prize called the Edgar Award named after Poe for best writing in the mystery genre. (6" x 7", black ink print)

Hunter Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson was born in 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. His father died when he was just 14 driving his mother to alcoholism and leaving the family in poverty. Hunter found escape in athletics and petty crimes.

At age 16, he was jailed for 60 days for robbery which prevented him from graduating high school. Aimless and desperate he enlisted in the Air Force. After serving two years, he took night classes in creative writing. In 1961, he hitchhiked across country and landed a job as security guard at Big Sur Hot Springs (which later became the Esalen Institute).

In 1963 he married Sandra Conklin and the two settled in San Francisco. Thompson immersed himself in California drug and hippie culture and began writing for the Berkeley underground paper The Spyder.

In 1965, The Nation paid Thompson to spend a year riding with the Hell's Angels and writing about his experiences. The Angels demanded a share of Thompson's fees. When he refused they gave him a savage beating. His subsequent book Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs became a huge success. This led to well-paying writing gigs with the New York Times, Esquire and Harper's.

In 1967, Thompson and his wife bought a home in Woody Creek, Colorado. Thompson was deeply affected by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and the police beatings of protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention. His words became more political and incendiary and his writing style became personal, rambling and manic. The journalist Bill Cardoso labeled this new subjective style as Gonzo Journalism.

In 1971, Rolling Stone hired Thompson to write about the killing of journalist Ruben Salazar by the LA Sheriff's Department. Thompson decided to leave racially-charged Los Angeles and drive to Las Vegas with Mexican-American activist Oscar Acosta. Thompson's impressionistic account of this road trip became his greatest book, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. The novel is a hilarious drug-filled, hallucinatory rumination on the failure of 1960's counterculture and the "death of the American Dream." Accompanied by expressionistic illustrations from artist Ralph Steadman, Fear And Loathing made Thompson a literary sensation.

Hunter followed this up with Fear And Loathing On the Campaign Trail about his time covering the 1972 presidential campaign. Thompson became a vicious critic of Richard Nixon whom Thompson described as a man "who could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time." After Nixon's death, Thompson wrote "he was evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand."

In 1980 Thompson and his wife divorced. Thompson became more isolated and fixated on firearms. His substance abuse continued and his behavior became increasingly erratic. In 1981, he was arrested for drunk driving and "raving" at a Colorado state trooper. He visited Jack Nicholson's house with a massive amplifier and broadcast the sound of a pig being eaten alive by bears while shooting a 9mm semi-automatic rifle at Nicholson's home.

In the 80's, editors began critiquing the quality of Thompson's work. Celebrities like Bill Murray and Johnny Depp made movies of Thompson's books which fueled the "gonzo myth" but Thompson continued to struggle. In 1990, he was accused of sexual assault at his Colorado home. Charges were dismissed though a search of his property turned up drugs and a stash of dynamite. In 2000, Thompson accidentally shot his assistant Deborah Fuller after "mistaking her for a bear" (she lived).

In 2005, plagued by numerous chronic and painful medical conditions, Thompson took his own life by shooting himself in the head. At his funeral his ashes were shot out of a massive cannon with red white and blue fireworks while Norman Greenbaum's song "Spirit In The Sky" played in the background. Johnny Depp paid for the funeral expenses. (5" x 6", black ink print)

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac was a novelist and poet who became the face of the Beat Generation. Born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac began writing at age 12. He carried journals everywhere, scribbling personal notes, poems and thoughts.

In high school, Kerouac was a star football player earning him a scholarship to Columbia University. During freshman year, he broke his leg playing football. He quit the team and dropped out of school. He enlisted in the navy but served only 8 days before being diagnosed with a "schizoid personality" which led to an honorable discharge.

Kerouac returned to New York and moved in with an old girlfriend, Edie Parker. He worked odd jobs as a short order cook, railroad brakeman and construction worker. During this period, Kerouac met Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs and other odd characters who became synonymous with the Beat Generation. (Kerouac coined the term "beat" to describe a person with little money and few prospects.)

In 1945, Kerouac was diagnosed with phlebitis in his leg connected to his old football injury. He was confined to a bed in his parents home next to his father who was dying of stomach cancer. He began writing, fueled by benzedrine and coffee. The result was The Town and the City, an 1,100 page novel about his boyhood in Lowell and the junkies and intellectuals he met in Greenwich Village. The novel was published to poor reviews sending Kerouac into a deep depression.

In the winter of 1948, Kerouac went on a road trip with Neal Cassady driving across the country at light speed. They visited old friends, all night cafes, broken down bars and forgotten towns. They acquired food, money and gas by whatever means possible. Kerouac and Cassady arrived in San Francisco in 1949, broke and exhausted. Reflecting on his trip with Cassady, Kerouac experimented with a frenetic, benzedrine-fueled writing style he called "Self-Ultimacy." He would fall into a deep trance and write with chaotic speed, channeling spontaneous prose that jibed with the ethos of "first thought best thought." His writing style was influenced by the jazz music of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and the concept of breathing in Buddhist meditation. Kerouac's words had an inherent rhythm and cadence, especially when spoken aloud.

Kerouac completed the first draft of On the Road in three weeks. He typed on a teletype roll, a single-spaced, unbroken paragraph resulting in a 120-foot long scroll. On the Road was published by Viking in 1957. The book became a bestseller and Kerouac became an overnight sensation. To Jack, the novel was simply about "two Catholic buddies who roamed the country in search of God." To the world, the book changed the face of literature and spawned the 60's hippie movement. Teenagers began hitchhiking across country, experimenting with drugs and sex and scrawling spontaneous poetry in dogeared journals. Ironically, Kerouac turned his back on the hippies and flower children ("It's politics, not art").

Kerouac despised his newfound fame. After getting beat up outside a New York bar, he began to fear the public. He grew estranged from Neal Cassady and his old 'Beat' friends. Jealous novelists attacked Kerouac in the press. (Truman Capote famously said, "That's not writing, it's typing.") Kerouac continued writing and publishing novels (Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Visions of Cody) but none garnered the acclaim given On the Road. He continued abusing drugs and alcohol and his writing and vitality suffered. In 1961, Kerouac moved to Big Sur in an effort to kick drinking and rekindle his writing talents. Instead he had a mental breakdown and returned to San Francisco to drink himself into oblivion (chronicled in Big Sur).

Beaten and lonely, Kerouac left California to live with his invalid mother in Florida. He never learned to drive and his house had no phone. He spent his days listening to jazz music and drinking Johnny Walker Red and cheap wine. He remained deeply religious, devoted to his unique brand of Buddhist-tinged Catholicism. When friends insulted God or religion he would respond, "Ah, Jesus died for bums like you." In 1969, after a night of heavy drinking, Kerouac hemorrhaged and was rushed to the hospital. He died the next morning at the age of 47. In 2009, the original manuscript of On the Road sold at auction for $2.4 million. (5" x 6", black ink print)

Bukowski

When I was a college student, I had the habit of checking my friends bookcases to see what they were reading.  I'd see books by Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Herman Hesse. Looking on a lower shelf, tucked away in a corner, I'd often see well-worn titles by Charles Bukowski.  The message was clear: high-brow reading is necessary but Bukowski is what I really want to read.

Charles Bukowski was a poet of the profane.  Time called him "laureate of the lowlife."  A student of the gritty streets, he wrote about the shadow side of America. Prostitutes, dingy bars, human cruelty, lonely trysts.  He was a brutal drunk, a misogynist, a self-admitted louse.  But he was a prolific writer and at times a sensitive poet with a twisted sense of humor.

Born in Germany in 1920, Bukowski grew up in Los Angeles son to an abusive, alcoholic father.  He began writing (and drinking) in his teens.  He struggled for decades, toiling as a postal worker until 1969.  He was a private person who loved cats and valued his solitude.  "I don't hate people...I just feel better when they're not around."

Los Angeles was Bukowski's milieu and creative muse.  Many of his fabled haunts have long since been torn down but some locations remain intact and provide a unique view into the life of LA's literary son.

Post Office Terminal Annex, Downtown LA

Bukowski worked as a letter-filing clerk for 14 years.  During this period he penned a column called Notes of a Dirty Old Man for a local weekly The LA Free Press.  He felt the post office was killing him slowly and poisoning his desire to write.  Black Sparrow Press Publisher John Martin offered Bukowski $100 a month for life if he would quit his job and dedicate himself to writing.  Bukowski finally quit in 1969.  He documented his experiences in his first novel Post Office written at age 49.

Pink Elephant Liquor Store, East Hollywood

Located at Western & Franklin, the Pink Elephant was where Bukowski picked up his booze and bidis (Indian cigarettes).  His favorite drinks included Cutty Sark (for his boilermakers), Riesling white wine, Vodka & 7-Up and Miller Beer. He despised Coors calling it the worst beer in America.  After Bukowski tallied a number of DUIs, the Pink Elephant delivered liquor to his home.

Bukowski famously wrote about his drinking in the novel Women: "That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink.  If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."

5124 De Longpre Avenue, Hollywood

This is the bungalow Bukowski rented from 1963-1972.  This is where he formally became a writer and where he fathered his only child.  Bukowski wrote the novels Post Office and Factotum at De Longpre and the location was the setting for his novel Women.

In 2007, developers attempted to demolish the site and build condominiums. Preservationists and celebrities like Johnny Depp intervened and the location became a historical landmark.  Bukowski himself probably wouldn't care.  After all, he said of his own writing, "When I die they can take my work and wipe a cat's ass with it.  It will be of no earthly use to me."

LA Central Library, Downtown

As a young man, Bukowski spent many days in the Philosophy Room reassured by the thousands of books around him.  LAPL was where Bukowski discovered his literary idol John Fante (Ask The Dust).  "It was like finding gold in the city dump." Other literary influences included Celine, Sartre, Hemingway and Knut Hamsun. Bukowski devoured every book he could get his hands on and the library was where he developed an ambition to become an author.

Clifton's Cafeteria, Downton LA

Started in 1935, Clifton's remains the oldest surviving cafeteria-style eatery in Los Angeles.  Bukowski ate many meals here during the Great Depression.  In his novel Ham And Rye, Bukowski wrote "Clifton's Cafeteria was nice.  If you didn't have much money, they let you pay what you could.  And if you didn't have any money, you didn't have to pay."

Hollywood Park Racetrack, Inglewood

After he quit his post office job, Bukowski spent his days playing the horses to make ends meet.  He viewed this as "just another job" and he developed his own betting system in which he rarely lost and often ended up with a tidy profit. The track also provided a venue for Buk to observe humanity and meet shady personalities whom he wrote about in his Free Press column.

Other Los Angeles Bukowski haunts include Phillipe's Restaurant where Buk ate French Dip sandwiches, Olympic Auditorium where he took in boxing matches and Musso And Frank Grill where he schmoozed with studio executives and celebrities in his later years.

Bukowski published more than 60 books.  Hollywood has made multiple movies about him (Barfly, Factotum, Tales of Ordinary Madness).  His writing remains as popular as ever.  Bukowski died of leukemia in 1994.  His funeral was conducted by Buddhist monks.  His headstone features a graphic of a boxer and the zen-inspired epitaph "Don't try." (5" x 6, black ink print)

The Writer

Aram Saroyan is a renowned poet, novelist, playwright and biographer. His father was legendary author William Saroyan and his stepfather was actor Walter Matthau.

Aram came of age in the 60's and his early writings were heavily influenced by the Beat Generation. He met the beat triumvirate of Kerouac, Ginsberg & Burroughs and Aram's book Genesis Angels chronicles the life of beat poet Lew Welch. Saroyan's philosophy of writing owes much to Allen Ginsberg's exhortations of "First Thought Best Thought" and "Candor Ends Paranoia."

In 1967, Aram and his friend the poet Ted Berrigan traveled to Lowell, Massachusetts to interview Jack Kerouac at his home.  It was a few months before the summer of love and people were always showing up at the house to see the author of On The Road.  Kerouac's wife Stella was the gatekeeper and she tried to shoo Saroyan & Berrigan away.  After they insisted they'd come to interview Kerouac for The Paris Review, she finally let the men into the house.

By this time, Kerouac was a "bull-like ruin." Sitting in the darkened living room, Berrigan gave Kerouac a handful of Orbitrols (Kerouac called them "forked clarinets").  The two poets watched as Kerouac reminisced about his days with Neal Cassady riding around the country "free as a bee...We had more fun than five thousand Socony Gasoline Station Attendants."

Kerouac expressed his admiration for Aram's father, William Saroyan.  "I loved him as a teenager, he really got me out of the nineteenth-century rut I was trying to study, not only with his funny tone but with his Armenian poetic."

Kerouac played piano for the poets then composed a spontaneous haiku:

Sparrow

with big leaf on its back

windstorm.

Kerouac riffed on the origins of Buddhism and the impact of Zen on his writing.  "When a man spit at the Buddha, the Buddha replied, 'Since I can't have your abuse you may have it back.'"  Aram asked Jack the difference between Buddha and Jesus.  Kerouac said, "That's a very good question.  There is none."

As their meeting came to a close, Kerouac recited his poem Mexico City Blues.  He asked Aram to repeat the words after him, line by line:

Delicate conceptions of kneecaps.

Like kissing my kitten in the belly.

The quivering meat of the elephants of kindness.

When the poem was complete, Kerouac rewarded Aram by saying, "You'll do, Saroyan." To Aram, this was the equivalent of a literary knighting.

Currently, Aram teaches creative writing at USC. Aram's 2007 collection Complete Minimal Poems received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. His latest book is Door to the River: Essays and Reviews from the 1960s into the Digital Age. (5" x 7", black ink print)