I had an hour to kill during BB’s trumpet lesson so I walked six blocks over to Hawthorne Avenue, intending to look for the Chicago Manual of Style. On the way over I passed a guy in the street selling skateboard parts, DVD’s, and books. He looked to be young, in his 20s, but he was selling Gen-X stuff, like The Year Punk Broke on VHS, a book of Life in Hell comix, and a couple of Nirvana DVDs, and Nirvana coffee table book. I offered him $5 for Live Tonight Sold Out on DVD even though I’ve seen it at least three or four times on VHS. I might get a DVD player, and then I might want to watch it again. Maybe it has special features.
Outside of Powell’s this white kid was freestyle rapping nonstop, about nothing, on the sidewalk. I dug desperately for money for him. The reason is, I know how hard it is to perform on a sidewalk. I’ve busked for coins just across the street, and I had my guitar with me.. this guy had nothing but his voice and words pulled out of the atmosphere. I gave him $1.32.
At Powell’s I paged through the Slash autobiography. Tempting, but honestly I am not sure I’m up for six zillion pages of bad boy rock n’ roll war stories. I got my own friends for that. Then I considered Barack Obama’s biography, but I surprised myself by not being sure I cared that much about Barack Obama’s life story. I’m more interested in his opinions and policies.
Then I saw Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories—I used to treat myself to one of those books every year at Christmas—usually short stories or essays, cause poetry compilations are just too random for me. Nowadays they’ve added titles like Best American Travel Writing, Best American Sports Writing, Best American Spiritual Writing, etc. I looked at some of it briefly and somehow it all seemed overblown. Pompous. Boring. Writing for the sake of writing.
I found the The Chicago Manual of Style, but it only available in hardback and cost $55. Maybe I can find it used somewhere else.
Next thing I knew I had wandered into the Bukowski section. It brought back a lot of memories, the books of poetry, and “Notes of A Dirty Old Man” published by City Lights, and my first boyfriend who introduced me to Bukowski in the mid-80s. And there was Post Office, which I considered buying since I haven’t read it in at least twenty years… and Factotum. I’d lent my copy of Factotum to cabdriver/writer Randy Collenberg back in 1999. It was an original Black Sparrow Press copy, printed on that beautiful thick paper with rich color and textured like a Pringles potato chip. Randy said “Oh yeah, Bukowski… some people tell me I write like him.” As I handed the book to him I thought to myself “I never get back the books I lend, but that’s ok, because he’ll like it.” Randy was dead a week later and sure enough, failed to return Factotum.
There were Buk books I’d read and loved, books I hadn’t read, books of letters. I was tempted by all of it but I can’t be out blowing money on books. “Library,” I said to myself, “there are books at the library.” The used Buk books were cheaper but not that cheap, and there was a chapbook called “The Day it Snowed in Los Angeles,” with Buky-cute drawings ala Kenneth Patchen meets John Lennon going for $40. I was both amazed and frustrated with myself, in a whole big world of books, and here I am back at Bukowski. He’s been gone, what, fifteen years now? There must be other decent writers out there… wasn’t there a guy who just committed suicide recently… I just read a Rolling Stone feature on him… he had three names… why don’t I know this stuff? I’m supposed to know stuff like this. Why do I keep coming back, always, to Charles Bukowski, John Lennon, and Kurt Cobain?
I mean, there are a few artists I like a lot, and then there are a few, very few, of whom I could read every word, every letter,… John Lennon, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Cobain… I never get tired of those guys…. so wtf? wtff?
I left empty-handed and confused.
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