Charles Bukowski (Seamus Cooney, Editor), �Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978 � 1994�
Well, eight days and 11 books later, I�m back from Hawaii. Big frigging whoop. And I walk in to my house with two credit card bills waiting for me, as well as my instructions for paying back my student loan at $87.00 a month with a final payment due in November � of 2013.
And I�m applying for graduate school because? No wait, I know the answer for that: I want to be poor for the rest of my life. Where�s a rich widow when you need one?
I also came home to three books that I finished before I left, so before I begin the second annual Hawaii chronologies, lets just get this over with, shall we? Not like I�m asking your opinion.
This is the third volume of letters from Bukowski, dealing with his later-to-last years, and it�s undoubtedly the best. Buk is taking about things that I can remember or relate to � the LA riots, Iran-Contra, Reagan and Bush, as well as his fiction which by this time was much more prevalent than his poetry, which I�ve never liked.
There�s also many letters written about the film Barfly both behind and in front of the scenes. He kept his correspondence with numerous people almost to the point of his death, and these are very powerful to read as he outlines his mortality, fully aware that the end was nigh.
But really, what I wanted to se is if they would publish Buk�s letter to San Jose�s very own Nathan Nothin�, creator of the zine Eat Poop!
If you�ve never had the fortuitousness to meet Nathan, you�ve missed out one amazing guy. This was a guy who, though he must have been over 40 when I first met him over ten years ago, still sported a dirty mohawk. This has a tendency to look pathetic on some people, (like myself) but you knew Nathan was doing exactly what he wanted and fuck-all to anybody who didn�t like it.
More inspiring, Nathan had (and still has) the joir de vive that most of the apathetic scenester kids couldn�t muster in a lifetime. He set up shows, getting great bands and always concentrating on locals who needed help. He made recordings of the shows and passed out tapes for free. And of course, he had his aforementioned mag, which could alternate from the incredibly juvenile to absolutely brilliant from page to page.
The zine is still going, albeit only online as far as I know, and maybe not even there. And he does all this while juggling a wife and children.
Though not literally.
I think.
But I digress. I still remember when Nathan came up to me at a show, beaming with pride and bubbling about how Bukowski had answered a letter and gave Eat Poop! a poem. So while I was going through this anthology, I kept trying to remember when that issue came out, hoping I would see Nathan�s name and namesake in this book, which would be fitting for a guy who did so much for other misfits.
And then I found the letter in the section for 1991. It was a little longer than I remembered, but there it was. Except one thing was different: it was addressed to some guy named Maxwell Gaddis.
Now it�s more than possible that Bukowski had a stock response prepared, as he had a computer by this time (and won�t stop talking about it in his later letters). But there was one thing that bothered me.
At the end of Buk�s letter to Nathan, he trails off and then says, �Eat Poop, huh? Can you back that? There may be flies on some of you guys but there�s vultures on me.�
In this book, the magazine that Gaddis apparently published was called The Nihilistic Review, so this letter reads, �The Nihilistic Review, huh? Can you back that?� And then there is the comment about flies.
Now that doesn�t really make a whole lot of sense to me. And why would he talk, unprompted, about flies? Eat Poop! had (sorry, has) its own mascot in the form of Farley the Fly. What the hell did The Nihilistic Review have? Gnaley the gnat?
I have no way of proving this short of tracking down the editor Seamus Cooney, a professor of English literature, but I have the sneaking suspicion that Cooney decided to take the role as editor to new, disgusting highs and change the names of Nathan�s zine for the sake and sensibilities of the general public.
And if I�m right, I also think Bukowski would have dusted Cooney�s Irish ass with one punch had he found out.
