"Чарльз Буковски. Дневник последних лет жизни (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

all the time. Lovely, lovely. And Aldous Huxley... brain power to spare. He
knew so much it gave him headaches.
I would stretch out on my starvation bed and think about these fellows.
Literature was so... Romantic. Yeah.
But the composers and painters were good too, alway going mad,
suiciding, doing strange and obnoxious things. Suicide seemed such a good
idea. I even tried it a few times myself, failed but came close, gave it
some good tries. Now here I am almost 72 years old. My heroes are long past
gone and I've had to live with others. Some of the new creators, some of the
newly famous. They aren't the same to me. I look at them, listen to them and
I think, is this all there is? I mean, they look comfortable... they
bitch... but they look COMFORTABLE. There's no wildness. The only ones who
seem wild are those who have failed as artists and believe that the failure
is the fault of outside forces. And they create badly, horribly.
I have nobody to focus on anymore. I can't even focus on myself. I used
to be in and out of jails, I used to break down doors, smash windows, drink
29 day a month. Now I sit in front of this computer with the radio on,
listening to classical music. I'm not even drinking tonight. I am pacing
myself. For what? Do I want to live to be 80, 90? I don't mind dying... but
not this year, all right?
I don't know, it just was different back then. He writers seemed more
like... writers. Things were done. The Black Sun Press. The Crosbys. And
damned if once I didn't cross back into that age. Caresse Crosby published
one of my stories in her Portfolio magazine along with Sartre, I think, and
Henry Miller and I think, maybe, Camus. I don't have the mag now. People
steal from me. They take my stuff when they drink with me. That's why more
and more I am alone. Anyhow, somebody else must also miss the Roaring 20's
and Gertrude Stein and Picasso... James Joyce, Lawrence and the gang.
To me it seems that we're not getting through like we used to. It's
like we've used up the options, it's like we can't do it anymore.
I sit here, light a cigarette, listen to the music. My health is good
and I hope that I am writing as well or better than ever. But everything
else I read seems so... practiced... it's like a well-learned style. Maybe
I've read too much, maybe I've read too long. Also, after decades and
decades of writing (and I've written a boat load) when I read another writer
I believe I can tell exactly when he's faking, the lies jump out, the slick
polish grates... I can guess what he next line will be, the next
paragraph... There's no flash, no dash, no change-taking. It's a job they've
learned, like fixing a leaky faucet.
It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if
it wasn't always there.
In my mind I saw Gorky in a Russian flophouse asking for tobacco from
the fellow next to him. I saw Robinson Jeffers talking to a horse. I saw
Faulkner starting at the last drink in the bottle. Of course, of course, it
was foolish. Young is foolish and old is the fool.
I've had to adjust. But for all of us, even now, the next line is
always there and it may be the line that finally breaks through, finally
says it. We can sleep on that during the slow nights and hope for the best.
We're probably as good now as those bastards back then were. And some
of the young are thinking of me as I thought of them. I know, I get letters.