"Чарльз Буковски. Дневник последних лет жизни (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автораone and the son-of-a-bitch just starved to death.
I got down to my car, got my jacket, put it on, took the escalator back up. That made me feel more like a playboy, a hustler-leaving the place and then coming back. I felt as if I had consulted some special secret source. Well, I played out the card, had some luck. By the 13th race it was dark and beginning to rain. I bet ten minutes early and left. Traffic was cautious. Rain scares the hell out of L.A. drivers. I got on the freeway behind the mass of red taillights. I didn't turn on the radio. I wanted silence. A title ran through my brain: Bible for the Disenchanted. No, no good. I remebered some of the best titles. I mean, ot other writers. Bow Down to Wood and Stone. Great title, lousy writer. Notes from the Underground. Great title. Great writer. Also, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Carson McCullers, a very underrated writer. Of all my dozens of titles the one I liked best was Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts. But I blew that one away on a little mimeo pamphled. Too bad. Then the freeway stopped and I just sat there. No title. My head was empty. I felt like sleeping for a week. I was glad I had put the trash cans out. I was tired. Now I didn't have to do it. Trash cans. One night I had slept, drunk, on top of trash cans. New York City. I was awakened by a big rat sitting on my belly. We both, at once, leaped about 3 feet into the air. I was trying to be a writer. Now I was supposed to be one and I couldn't think of a title. I was a fake. Traffic began to move and I followed it along. Nobody knew who anybody else was and it was great. Then a great flash of lightning crashed above the freeway and for the first time that day I felt pretty good. 9/30/91 11:36 PM So, after some days of blank-braining it, I awakened this morning and there was the title, it had come to me in my sleep: The Last Night of the Earth Poems. It fit the content, poems of finality, sickness and death. Mixed with others, of course. Even some humor. But the title works for this book and this time. Once you a title, it locks everything in, the poems find their order. And I like the title. If I saw a book with a title like that I would pick it up and try to read a few pages. Some titles exaggerate to attrat attention. They don't work because the lie doesn't work. Well, I'm done with that. Now what? Back to the novel and more poems. Whatever happened to the short story? It has left me. Here's a reason but I don't know what it is. If I worked at it I could find the reason but working at it wouldn't help anything. I mean, that time could be used for the novel or the poem. Or to cut my toenails. You know, somebody ought to invent a decent toenail clipper. I'm sure it can be done. The ones they give us to work with are really awkward and disheartening. I read where a guy on skid row tried to hold up a liquor store with a pair of toenail clippers. It didn't work there either. How did Dostoevsky cut his toenails? Van Gogh? Beethoven? Did they? I don't believe it. I used to let Linda do mine. She did an excellent job -- only now and then she got a little piece of flesh. Me, I've had enough pain. Of any kind. I know that I'm going to die soon and it seems very strange to me. I'm selfish, I'd just like to keep my ass writting more words. It puts the glow in me, tosses me through golden air. But really, how much longer can I go |
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