August is unofficially Charles Bukowski month! What better time to bring back my posthumously written interview with Hank! So for those of you who missed it many months ago, here it is again.....
I would give a lot to interview the great authors of our time. Steinbeck, Bronte, Hemingway, Austen, Twain, London, Service, John McDonald, Robert Parker. But at the top of my bucket list would be Henry Charles Bukowski {1920-1994}. So I asked myself would it be so very strange or inappropriate to pretend what it might have been like? Post an interview with "Hank" Bukowski even though he's been dead nineteen years?
I imagine that I am sitting with him, in a corner booth, in some neighborhood dive. Old die-hard drunks sit up at the bar minding their own business. I fantasize that I can see roots growing from the seat of their pants into the seat of the bar stools. Wet, green tendrils curl around the stool legs. They don't speak. They stare into their empty glass or into their own smoky reflection in the mirror on the back wall. What do they see? A long-lost heaven? A near-by hell? Bukowski has already finished his first drink and signals the bartender for another. I am paying of course. (viewer discretion advised)
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Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?
A. Anywhere they'll leave me the hell alone. I'm not particular.
Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write?
A. A fifth of bourbon, a couple packs of cigarettes. Quiet. Enough paper, which can be a problem when I'm between jobs.
Q. What is your mode of writing?
A. A pencil or pen, I don't care. Paper. My Remington typewriter if it's not in pawn. [famous authors, Charles Bukowski, interviews, best selling authors] Sometimes the bartender will let me have the left over stubs of pencils from around the bar. Many years ago, this drunk in a suit was sitting next to me, over there at the bar. He was complaining that his company had bought something called a 'computer' and they were making him learn how to do his sales reports on it. He hated it but he said, 'I fear that it is the face of the future, Hank.' Goddamn machines, taking over the world and us bit by bit. I'll stick to my pencil and paper.
Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?
A. Listen, girl, I wish there were more times when I didn't 'feel creative'; didn't need to write. [More?] Visit http://www.writeratplay.com/category/a-writers-take/