Charles Bukowski: Madness is Never Ordinary

“In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of “sadism” it is because it exists, I didn’t invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds.” — Charles Bukowski

“‘Would you suggest writing as a career?’ one of the young students asked me.
‘Are you trying to be funny?’ I asked him.
‘No, no, I’m serious. Would you advise writing as a career?’
‘Writing chooses you, you don’t choose it.’”

“There’s a lot of murky downgrading of Hemingway now by critics who can’t write, and old ratbeard wrote some bad things from the middle to the end, but his head was becoming unscrewed, and even then he made the others look like schoolboys raising their hands for permission to make a little literary peepee. I know why Ernie went to the bull-fights – it was simple: it helped his writing. Ernie was a mechanic: he liked to fix things on paper. The bullfights were a drawing board of everything: Hannibal slapping elephant ass over mountain or some wino slugging his woman in a cheap hotel room. And when Hem got in to the typer he wrote standing up. He used it like a gun. a weapon. The bullfights were everything attached to anything. It was all in his head like a fat butter sun: he wrote it down.”

STORY: Dirty Realism: The Anti-Social Satire of Charles Bukowski

With me, the racetrack tells me quickly where I am weak and where I am strong, and it tells me how I feel that day and it tells me how much we keep changing, changing ALL the time, and how little we know of this.”

STORY: Bukowski’s ‘Born Into This’ – Treachery, Hatred, Violence, Absurdity

Writing by Charles Bukowski

often it is the only

thing between you

and impossibility.

no drink,

no woman’s love,

no wealth

can

match it.

nothing can save

you

except

writing.

it keeps the walls

from

failing.

the hordes from

closing in.

it blasts the

darkness.

writing is the

ultimate

psychiatrist,

the kindliest

god of all the

gods.

writing stalks

death.

it knows no

quit.

and writing laughs

at itself,

at pain.

it is the last

expectation,

the last

explanation.

that’s what

it is.

from blank gun silencer – 1991

Buy Tales of Ordinary Madness, by Charles Bukowski

Photo from Joe Nolan’s Insomnia

Opening quote from Bukowski’s response to the Dutch banning “Madness” in 1985 — Boing Boing

Updated 9 January 2024