“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
If that quote isn’t enough to push you out of the grind, I dunno what is. As much as the guy was an incredible writer, there’s one thing though that really irritates me. And that’s the imprint he’s left behind on literature and readers. Not the words, but the attitude he’s left behind.
Writers wanna be him and loads reckon they actually are the reincarnation of Buk. A lot of em call themselves ‘the next Bukowski’ or ‘this generation’s Bukowski’ or ‘UK’s answer to Bukowski’ or something like ‘my girlfriend who has no self-esteem and tries to impress me at every opportunity so I won’t punch her again reckons I’m the next Bukowski’ or ‘the really crappy tagline on the book I self-published which has sold two copies says I’m the next Bukowski, so I am’, but all of these conceited, imbecilic remarks create an elevated sense of self-worth that plagues too many people who want to write but simply can’t write for shit although they think they can because they’re directly copying off Buk’s style. The thing is, Bukowski actually lived what he wrote. He did it all. He drank, he fucked, he went on benders, he got in fights, he’d bully and pour his hate for the world into his women — through slurred, binged-up sentences and spiteful kicks and slaps — and he’d use his real-life experiences as influences on his writing.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8KJiay6EI0′]
Most of these self-proclaimed ‘Bukowski’s’ also do these things. They’ll drink and they’ll shag and they’ll do the rest of it but they won’t do it because it’s in their genes. And they won’t do it to the level Bukowski did. They’ll do it because Bukowski used these aspects of his life as influences and memories for which he’d use as writing material. The words were him. Every adjective, every noun, every phrase, every paragraph was how he saw his life. And these ‘fake-Bukowski’s’ also think because they try to live a lifestyle like he did that they’ll write like him. And they won’t. They want to be him and they want to have a lasting legacy like him. But they won’t. They can’t. They weren’t destined to.
