He once nursed an injured cat to health and wrote a poem about it. "This to me is his element, just as much as sitting in his typing room," she said.Ĭurator Sue Hodson says writer had his soft side. She says this research library, with its literary treasures and just a short drive from the racetrack, is a perfect place for Bukowski's papers. "And then I'd come over here, spend the afternoon in the garden, and then go meet him just before the ninth race, and make a little bet, watch the race and drive on home to San Pedro." "I would drive up and drop him off at Santa Anita racetrack," said Linda Lee Bukowski. Linda Lee Bukowski says the writer liked to gamble and bet at the racetrack, while she spent time at the Huntington Library gardens. It was taped by producer Jon Monday, who has since released the recording on DVD under the title The Last Straw. Several readings were recorded on videotape, including his last in 1979 in Redondo Beach, California. As a result, she says they were often raucous affairs. She says he was shy and disliked speaking in public, so he often drank to get through public readings. The writer's widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, says her husband's legendary love of drinking has been exaggerated. Bukowski wrote the screenplay, based loosely on his own life.Īnother Hollywood admirer, Matt Dillon, starred in the film Factotum, based on a book by Bukowski that was also partly autobiographical. Rourke played the writer in the film Bar-Fly. He was among them for much of his life."īukowski also found fans in Hollywood, and counted among his friends the actors Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke. "He also wrote about the cast-offs of society, the prostitutes, the pimps, the drunks, the gamblers, the lay-abouts. "He wrote about common men and women, people who just wanted to survive in an unforgiving world," she said. He was published by small literary presses, but Hodson says Bukowski gradually built a following of readers. He drank heavily at times, but became a prolific author and recounted his experiences in autobiographical novels and poems. Hodson reminds listeners that Shakespeare also reveled in low-brow humor in many of his plays.īukowski had an abusive childhood, and as an adult, he moved from one menial job to another while devoting himself to writing. And they are not that far off from what Bukowski was writing about sometimes." If you look back at earlier British and American literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, some of the Canterbury Tales are extremely raw. "We are a pretty conservative institution, yet he is not as big a stretch as we might think initially. "Bukowski was so rough-edged, and so much of the Huntington, we are staid, we are traditional, we are old-fashioned," said Hodson. Sue Hodson, the curator of literary manuscripts, says that surprises people. The Library is also home to the collected papers of Los Angeles writer Charles Bukowski, and through February 14, it will house an exhibition containing Bukowski memorabilia, first editions and photographs. The Huntington Library is home to many literary treasures - first editions of Shakespeare, a Gutenberg Bible, Benjamin Franklin's hand-written autobiography, and the Ellesmere Manuscript, an early copy of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The writer died in 1994, but, an exhibition at the Huntington Library celebrates his legacy. Bukowski lived in Los Angeles and wrote about the city's ordinary people and its underside - its prostitutes, pimps and alcoholics. Charles Bukowski has been called one of the most original voices in modern American literature.
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