Why We Have So Many Bukowski Quotes on The Brothel and What it Says About Society

Why Do We Have So Many Bukowski Quotes on The Literary Brothel?
Klaus Varley

To answer to the title question: Charles Bukowski Selected Letters sits atop my toilet, along with an old issue of Entertainment Weekly that proclaims to list of the "Top 1000 best movies, TV Shows, Albums, Books and More of the last 25 years!" So it's either post a quote from Buk or EW. Buk usually wins.

But lets talk about EW.

Top 1000? By all calculations, a hundred movies, and a hundred shows, cds and books is only four hundred. That means there are six hundred "mores." What are these "mores?" Websites, video games, Broadway shows (there were 100 Broadway shows in the last 25 years?) and...more? Needless to say, I haven't gotten all the way through the issue.

But I did get through Bukowski's Letters, Volume II. Its cover doesn't sport Harry Potter, Beyonce, Bono, and Will Smith, (where are the Broadway actors? the websites?) but it has the goods. They're inside.

The words, baby, the words.

(Speaking of words, what you don't know about the paragraph before last is that I wrote "their inside," and moved on. If we were in a typewriter age, our zine would suffer. "Look at this guy; he doesn't know "they're from their." Let's get some comics and get out of this hippie book store.")

I originally started this entry thinking I wanted to write something about Bukowski, something about how I finished the second volume and am moving on to the third, something about how there's nothing like appreciating #2 when you're reading Bukowski.

But I can't even say it. I can't even make the joke...

Or can I?

I can.

You see, when I was talking about #2, I was talking about poo.

Done. With Bukowski. For today.

The top entertainment technological advancement of the past 25 years is the DVD player? Over the Mp3? Over CD ripping technology? What a debate.

-KV