"Чарльз Буковски. Дневник последних лет жизни (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автораweeks now. And none of them has yet picked a winner. And they bet the short
odds too, I mean between 2 to 1 and 7 or 8 to 1. That's maybe 45 races times 3 selections. That's amazing statistic. Think about it. Say if each of them just picked a number like 1 or 2 or 3 and stayed with it they would automatically pick a winner. But by jumping around they somehow managed, using all their brain power and know-how, to keep on missing. Why do they keep coming to the racetrack? Aren't they ashamed of their ineptness? No, there is always the next race. Someday they will hit. Big. You must understand then, when I come from the track and off of the freeway, why this computer looks so good to me? A clean screen to lay words on. My wife and my 9 cats seem like the geniuses of the world. They are. 2/8/92 1:16 AM What do the writers do when they aren't writing? Me, I go to the racetrack. Or in the early days, I starved or worked at gut-wrenching jobs. I stay away from writers now -- or people who call themselves writers. But from 1970 until about 1975 when I just decided to sit in one place and write or die, writers came by, all of them poets. POETS. And I discovered a curious thing: none of them had any visible means of support. If they had books out they didn't sell. And if they gave poetry readings, few attended, say from 4 to 14 other POETS. But they all lived in fairly nice apartments and seemed to have plenty of time to sit on my couch and drink my beer. I had gotten the reputation in town of being the wild one, of having parties where untold things gappened and crazy women danced and broke things, or I threew people off my porch or there were police raids or etc. and etc. Much for the magazines to get the rent and the booze money, and this meant writing prose. But these... poets... only wrote poetry... I thought it was thind and pretentious stuff... but they went on with it, dressed themselves in a fairly nice manner, seened well-fed, and they had all this couch- sitting time and time to talk -- about their poetry and themselves. I often asked, "Listen, tell me, how do you make it?" They just sat there and smiled at me and drank my beer and waited for some of my crazy women to arrive, hoping that they might somehow get some of it -- sex, admiration, adventure or what the hell. It was getting clear in my mind then that I would have to get rid of these soft toadies. And gradually, I found out their secret, one by one. Most often in the background, well hidden, was the MOTHER. The mother took care of these geniuses, got the rent and the food and the cloghing. I remembered once, on a rare sojourn from my place, I was sitting in this POET's apartment. It was quite dull, nothing to drink. He sat speaking of how unfair it was that he wasn't more widely recognized. The editors, everybody was conspiring against him. He pointed his finger at me: "You too, you told Martin not to publish me!" It wasn't true. Then he went to bitching and babbling about other things. Then the phone rang. He picked it up and spoke guardedly and quietly. He hung up and turned to me. "It's my mother, she's coming over. You have to leave!" "It's all right, I'd like to meet your mother." "No! No! She's horrible! You have to leave! Now! Hurry!" I took the elevator down and out. And wrote that one off. |
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