Tumblr-ing through L.A.

I have a Tumblr account, though I'm not sure why. I never update it. I hardly ever think about it. But two years ago, I uploaded a few photos revolving around a loose theme: favorite writers, and where they ate, slept or wrote. After my recent trip to L.A., I've added a few more. They're right here, in case you want to take a look. But seriously, don't expect much.

(Above: Charles Bukowski's favorite liquor emporium, the Pink Elephant. My friend Brett and I toasted Hank's memory with a couple of cold Millers, purchased here.)

Charles Bukowski Wrote Here

Welcome to 5124 De Longpre Avenue, in East Hollywood. The place is still there (as of this past weekend), but a November 2007 piece from L.A. Weekly suggests it may soon be torn down to make way for condos.

Howard Sounes described the place in his Buk biography:

[Bukowski] and FrancEyE moved into the one-bedroom bungalow, next to the sidewalk. The lounge had an old couch, a rickety coffee table and book shelves constructed from building blocks... The typewriter and typing table his parents had given him were by the window so he could watch people while he wrote.

And it was in that room where Bukowski wrote his first novel, Post Office, in about three weeks.

Your Late Thursday Hit of Bukowski

"Writing was strange. I needed to write, it was like a disease, a drug, a heavy compulsion, yet I didn't like to think of myself as a writer. Maybe I had met too many writers. They took more time disparaging each other than they did doing their own work. They were fidgets, gossips, old maids; they bitched and knifed and they were full of vanity. Were these our creators? Was it always thus? Probably so. Maybe writing was a form of bitching. Some just bitched better than others."

Hollywood
by Charles Bukowski
(Black Sparrow Press, 1989)

Charlie on Charles

Charlie Huston wrote a great post the other day about Charles Bukowski. It's one that Ecco Books should reprint in the front of every Bukowski novel, because it makes you want to run out and buy a bunch of Bukowski novels. And that's pretty much what I did this evening. I picked up Factotum, Women and Pulp, based on Huston's post, but also the first lines of each book. Check out Women:

I was 50 years old and hadn't been to bed with a woman for four years. I had no women friends. I looked at them as I passed them on the streets or wherever I saw them, but I looked at them without yearning and with a sense of futility.

How can you not continue reading? And then there's Pulp:

I was sitting in my office, my lease had expired and McKelvery was starting eviction proceedings. It was a hellish hot day and the air conditioner was broken. A fly crawled across the top of my desk. I reached out with the open palm of my hand and sent him out of the game. I wiped my hand on my right pants leg as the phone rang.

Dude, sold. I'm ashamed to say I've read more about Bukowski than his actual work, but I plan on fixing that situation over the next few days.

Though, as Huston cautions: "Don't read them too soon. Make sure you read them all before you walk in front of a car someday."