Chamblee54

This content was published February 21, 2025. … At 1838, February 19th 2025, I shut the cover on Didion & Babitz. Say what you will about author Lilliane O’Lick, she is one helluva storyteller. D&B was easy and fun to read. The book ends with a description of Joan Didion’s memorial, a star-studded celebrity event. Page 339 had one final bit of tackiness: “On the day Joan’s obituary appeared in the New York Times, journalist and podcaster Maris Kreizman took to Twitter. “I want to believe that Joan Didion lived an extra week out of spite so that she could officially outlive Eve Babitz.” p.339
The dedication page to Eve’s Hollywood mentions Steve Martin (the car.) The car is a 1965 VW, which Mr. Martin gave to EB. She later said “Linda Ronstadt was his girlfriend and I was his girlfriend and we were both doing him wrong.” EH was released in March 1974, about the same time I saw Mr. Martin open for Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at the Great Southeast Music Hall. Nobody in the Nitty Gritty crowd had any clue who this white suit wearing banjo player was. John McEuen kept stumbling into the microphone, saying “this guy cracks me up.” p. 215
”Huntington’s disease (HD) is named after George Huntington, who described it among residents of East Hampton, Long Island in 1872. It is a hereditary neurodegenerative disease.” HD claimed both EB, and her father, Sol Babitz. EB was aware of her fate for many years. The most famous victim of HD was Woody Guthrie. Many speculated that son Arlo would get HD, but he never did. “Woody’s most productive time artistically was in the 5 years immediately preceding the onset of overt symptoms of HD. I hypothesize that subclinical HD may have been an important driving force behind Woody Guthrie’s creativity.” p. 244
We know little about LOL. She was 32 in 2010, and went to Princeton, after doing high school somewhere else. LOL has the same last name as her Manhattan Doctor husband, but leaves no clues about her maiden name. We do have “A note my older boy, Ike, left on my pillow Valentine’s Day 2020” “DEAR MOM YOU AR WORM AND COTULY AND YOU HAD SEX WITH BREAT ESTIN ELIS BUT DONT TRY TO HIDE IT FROM ME NAW LETS GET DOWN TO BUSINESS I WANT TO GO TO THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM THIS WEEKEND AND I WANT NO ARGUING ABOUT IT”
Page 290 marks the return of Bret Easton Ellis. EB tuned in to “Less Than Zero,” which made BEE a star before he was old enough to (legally) drink. EB compared BEE to Jim Morrison, … another way that People Are Strange. BEE met EB for dinner about this time. There is no word on whether BEE was EB’s dessert. This was about the time AIDS was becoming obnoxious, and EB decided to tone down the whore-of-babylon act. The bi-leaning-gay Paul Ruscha had been a long playing EB boyfriend, which probably has nothing to do with any of this.
On May 7, 2000, JD appeared on In Depth, a PBS talk show. After a polite discussion, and a chance to promote here most recent book, the show was opened up to callers. One of the callers was EB, who introduced herself as “a friend of Joan’s from Hollywood.” JD dropped her stone face once, when EB said that JD’s house “was the first time I ever saw Spode china.” JD did not show much pizazz in that brief clip. I don’t know about the rest of the show, because I am not bored enough to watch it. JD was never known as a vibrant personality. p.306
There may be one defining difference between author and subject. EB wrote a piece about her near-fatal fire titled “I used to be charming.” Recently, LOL did an interview promoting D&B. “I always think of the last line of a Salinger short story, “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.” … “I was a nice girl once, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?” I think about that all the time, because I used to be so polite. And now I’m just used to getting yelled at and told I’m a jerk or to go away. I just don’t mind at this point.”
Page 332 has EB in her final years. In 1997 EB was badly burned, and never fully recovered. That story is available elsewhere. By the time Donald J. Trump was President, EB had become a talk radio consuming conservative, to go with HD. LOL went to California frequently to have lunch with EB, and talked to her on the phone. In one of these conversations, EB asked “Where can I find a blouse the same shade of blue as Melania Trump’s eyes?” When I asked AI that. I found a description of the Ralph Lauren dress FLOTUS wore to her first inauguration. ““She looked simply flawless.” … This is the final installment of D&B. Part one is available. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the featured photograph in June 1940. “Brooklyn NY. Red Hook housing development. Jimmy Caputo, seven years old, and Annette, three years old, at their nightly prayers.”
©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published January 29, 2019. … Ham On Rye is due back at the library today. I could not renew it, because someone else had made a request. This was going to be a snow jam day, but it did not even deliver a good drizzle. Going bonkers over an inch of snow is an Atlanta tradition, and I would not have it any other way. Which does not write this book report.
HOR is about the childhood of Hank Chinaski, who is really Charles Bukowski. It seems like a dreary affair. Hank Sr. is a sadistic asshole. He gets off on beating his son. Mother sits back and does nothing. The story is set in depression Los Angeles, which adds to the morbid ambience of the tale.
A discerning reader can see the roots of the acorn that grew into Charles Bukowski. One of his few childhood friends had a basement full of home made wine. Charles went down there, and made a life long friend. Before long, daddy put a padlock on the basement.
Someone who will write Notes of a Dirty Old Man needs to get out of grammar school first. At some point, a near fatal case of acne hit. Hank was going to the hospital, and receiving acne cures that made daddy seem warm and fuzzy. Eventually, Hank went on to getting drunk whenever possible, and then fighting the person who supplied the hootch.
For all the horny talk, there is little sex in HOR. Hank goes to get drunk with some kid who had a hot mother. The kid passed out, and mama came home. Hank hits on mama. She pulls her skirt up. Her pussy hair is half gray, and not pretty like her head hair. Hank decides to go home instead.
Hank graduates from High School, gets a job in a department store, and gets fired within a week. Hank bounces around, wins a pile of money in a drinking contest, gets kicked out of the family house, and gets kicked out of a Filipino boarding house. Hank starts talking the pre-Pearl Harbor pro German talk, only to discover that the Nazis he meets are idiots. The story ends with the announcement of Pearl Harbor. Hank does not enlist.
A story like this needs a one star review. “I can handle depressing books. I actually steer away from anything too frothy. This one, I am afraid, would depress a circus clown after his best stage performance. Dark. Sad. No uplifting moments. I finished it, hoping it would have some redemption at the end. Wrong. Went from depressing to clinically depressing.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in August 1938.“Group of Negro women at revival meeting, La Forge, Missouri ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published September 15, 2018. … Post Office, a novel by Charles Bukowski, was on sale at a “Friends of the Chamblee Library” book sale. The author would not like this. You cannot complain when you died 24 years ago. I paid a dollar, and read the story. Hank Chinaski, the stand in for the author, got a lousy job at the post office in Los Angeles. For 196 pages, Hank drinks, works, screws, admires women’s bodies, drinks, bets on horses, fights with supervisors, has hangovers, and drinks more. The story is easy to read, suggesting the helping hand of an editor.
PO stands for both post office and pissed off. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. To hear Hank tell the story, life at the PO was an endless cycle of sadistic bosses, and brain damaged co-workers. Administrative wanks rule over everyone. Somehow Hank made it through 11 years as a clerk. The institution survived. Mr. Bukowski perished in 1994. The headstone reads “Don’t Try.”
‘I Never Saw Him Drunk’: An Interview with Bukowski’s Longtime Publisher is an interview with John Martin, the owner of Black Sparrow press. Mr. Martin thought Hank was the next Whitman, and started Black Sparrow (initials are not always convenient) to distribute Hank’s product. When Hank quit the post office in 1969, Mr. Martin agreed to give him $100 a month. This later became $10,000 every two weeks, with more at the end of the year.
“How did his first novel, Post Office, come about? This is a good story. So we made that deal in December for $100 a month—early December, as I recall—and so he gave notice to the post office, and his last day there was going to be December 31. He said, “OK, I’m going to work for you on January 2, because January 1 is New Year’s Day and I’m going to take that as a holiday. We thought that was really funny. About three or four weeks went by, I think it was still in January, or at worst the first week in February, and he called me—oh, and I had told him earlier, “If you ever think of writing a novel, that’s easier to sell than poetry; it would help if you could write a novel”—so he called me up at the very end of January or the first week of February, out of the blue, and said, “I got it; come and get it.” I said, “What?” And he said, “My novel.” I said, “You’ve written a novel since I saw you last?” And he said, “Yes.” I asked how that was possible, and he said, “Fear can accomplish a lot.” And that novel was Post Office.” The novel includes a near fatal party in that month.
Mr. Martin has a take on Hank which differs from his image. “Hank was not comfortable among people, in a crowd, even at a small gathering; he was a real loner. He wanted to get up in the morning, have a quick breakfast with his wife, read the paper, leave the house about noon, go to the track, come home at 6:00, have dinner about 7:00, go upstairs at 8:00, and write until two in the morning, and he wanted nothing to interfere with that routine. … he was the most polite man I’ve ever known, and the most honest man I’ve ever known. He was so deferential and polite and so concerned for your comfort, and whether you were happy or not, when you were with him.”
“I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can’t.” This may be the best line in PO. There are a lot to choose from. PO is a guilty pleasure. It is sexist and misogynistic to the max. The writing is basic, and easy to consume. It is tough to believe that Hank wrote this in a month by himself, but it is also tough to believe that someone that ugly got laid all the time. If only Hank could have combed that face.
I have written about Hank one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times, with some reruns thrown in for efficient blogging. I have written two poems about Hank. (A B) B is basically A in sonnet form. Never mind that Hank hated rhyming poems, to say nothing of posting the lines over pictures of dogs. Hank was a cat person, as if rhyme scheme blasphemy was not enough.
@bukowski_quote is a twitter facility dedicated to distributing 240 character bits of Buk. These tweets/quotes (twoats) have been packaged as two more sonnets, published in two parts each. (C D E F) Sometimes, I see this is a bit of post mortem cultural appropriation. The Hank of Tales of Ordinary Madness would have hated seeing his work used this way. How the millionaire, wine sipping Hank felt is a good question. Then, I found a quote that made me feel better.
“I got into Bukowski about five years ago on a trip to New York from North Carolina. I swallowed Ham on Rye in a single sitting while riding in the back of some clunker-type Honda thing racing north on I-95 in what I think was June of 2005. Since then I’ve read all of his novels and much of his poetry (which is a lot, do you know how much poetry he wrote?) and don’t give a shit about the literary ball bags at the Vice office who say he’s a boring, repetitive, pompous, fake-macho, southern-California-weather-system-addled boozehole, partly because I agree, and partly because I don’t read him for some sort of illumination on the haggard life of the proletariat. I just see his writing as a quick source of thrills, spills, and funny things to call women that you’re angry at but also still want to fuck.”
A book report about Post Office would not be complete without one star reviews. patricia neumannon August 8, 2014 “One star for the fact that this was even published. I was offended by Mr. Bukowski’s low regard for women. Pehaps his target audience is adolescent boys, who might twitter at Bukkowski’s vulger attempt at humor.” Auntie Mon September 1, 2014 “A book about a pathetic, selfish White man? No thanks.” gammyrayeon February 8, 2013 ” … The narrator Henry Chenaski is a low-life alcoholic who spends his life getting drunk, having sex with girlfriends and chance acquaintances, and betting at the race track, all while working at the post office. Finally he resigns from the post office. End of story. All this is written in an arrogant tone, as if the narrator feels himself to be superior to all the other characters, especially to his fellow workers. Bukowski has stated that the novel is autobiographical, and he seemed to take pride in the tumble-down life that he led. I have known guys like this–he is every drunk or drug addict who ever excused his addiction as an indication that he is too intelligent and sensitive to deal with the angst of living among the clods and drudges. Alcoholism is not hilarious and entertaining, even to the alcoholic, eventually. And it is not hilarious and entertaining to read about.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marjory Collins took the social media picture in August 1942. “New York, New York O’Reilly’s bar on Third Avenue in the “Fifties”” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

I found How To Choose A Guru, by Rick Chapman at a yard sale in 1978. HTCAG is a look at spirituality of all sorts. A special emphasis is placed on Meher Baba. HTCAG was republished as Introduction to Reality.
HTCAG can be a frustrating book. The main focus is on finding a “perfect master”, and the path to enlightenment under his guidance. If one is not inclined to this level of dedication, you can be left feeling inferior. This is similar to the despair people feel when they think they are going to go to hell, because they don’t have the correct ideas about Jesus.
HTCAG takes a look at spirit from the perspective of all religions. A central concept is the avatar, the idea of God become man. (This was long before the movie with a similar title.) The avatars of recorded history include Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad. Some say Meher Baba is the modern avatar.
Mr. Chapman has a knack for phrasing. There are expressions that I remember from reading HTCAG in 1978. They are still there, 47 years later.
Creation “First, there was God. Then, there’s you. Then, there is God.”
Speculation “The average person’s speculation about consciousness …
has “the stink but not the weight of his turd”
Evangelism “An authentic Master will encourage you to let your life itself be his message.”
Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds “Don’t be sidetracked by elaborate creeds and doctrines- the truth is as simple as it is profound. From the ancient teachings of Zoroaster to today, these three principles have been the heart of the message of every God realized Master.”
Books “Excellent guides until you find the Way.” Abu Sa’id
Books Part Two “… the scriptures of the past compare to the writings of a present-day Perfect Master just about the way that dust compares to honey.”
Satan Worship “If you have been toying with the thought that any form of Satan worship can lead you to higher consciousness, sober up by reading the story of Dr. Faustus. There are many paths to enlightenment, but this back alley isn’t one of them.”
Sex “A real guru never has any form of sexual relations with his followers. If a person posing as a guru tries to seduce you in the physical sense, then you can have no clearer indication that he is a phony, a pathetic and hypocritical collection of unresolved desires.”
Truth, Old and New “One time the Buddha was approached by a young man who was skeptical about Gautama’s renowned divine status. “Does the Blessed One teach a path that is new and original?” One of the Buddha’s close disciples, Sariputta, turned his gaze from the Master to the skeptic and replied, “If the Blessed One taught a path that was new and original, He would not be the Blessed One!”
Several of these quotes were available in copy/paste form at Meher Baba Information. These quotes may be difficult to find at the “improved” website. This site says that Rick Chapman is a follower of Meher Baba, and met him in 1966. This relationship is never made explicit in HTCAG. A glowing chapter is devoted to Meher Baba, and this information is not surprising. Still, HTCAG would be more upfront if this connection was clearly spelled out.
Meher Baba was born February 25, 1894 with the name Merwan Sheriar Irani. The name Meher Baba means “compassionate father”. From July 10, 1925 until his death January 31, 1969, he maintained silence, and communicated by gestures that were interpreted by his followers. Meher Baba believed that he was the avatar of our age.
With all of it’s human imperfections, HTCAG is a valuable book. It is easy to read, will expose you to ideas about spirit, and get you to think. When you grow up in the Christian tradition, one can be aware of a spirit within. At the same time, you get tired of the obsession with life after death. HTCAG teaches that there is more to God than scheming to live after you die.
This is a repost. It is written like Vladimir Nabokov. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in June 1941. “Commission merchant examining produce at fruit warehouse. Chicago, Illinois” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published September 21, 2015. … It started out slowly. I saw a tweet. It was a promotion for a blog post, featuring William Seward Burroughs reading The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe. WSB has a great voice. The wealthy Missouri background, filtered through years of high class schooling, and low class abuse, comes through whenever WSB spoke. In the helpful links, there was an opportunity to hear an audiobook of WSB reading Junky. As with other addictions, you begin slowly, and do not realize you have a problem until you are helpless to deal with it.
Junky is the first book that WSB published, using the pseudonym William Lee. It is reputed to be semi autobiographical. In Junky, WSB wallows in the gutters of New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City. For this armchair degenerate, whose worst vice is peanut butter sandwiches, Junky is a glimpse into a picturesque alternate reality. With the aid of a copy friendly peedeeoueff edition, we can enjoy samples of the nightmare.
One review of Junky is this Amazon One Star Comment. Dissapointing Tanya N. Miller March 22, 2014 “This is a book that goes nowhere. It ends up right where it started. Every line in the book is about getting drugs and doing drugs then getting off drugs and back on drugs again with some sex thrown in. The only reason why I finished this book is because of my compulsion to finish books that I start and the only reason why I picked it up in the first place is because I wanted to know just who William S. Borroughs was. What a dissapointment and what a total waste of talent.”
The story begins with a semi normal childhood. It gets interesting in New York, during the war. A person named Norton (“a hard-working thief … did not feel right unless he stole something every day from the shipyard where he worked) has a tommy gun he wants Bill to sell. When Norton arrives, he has “a flat yellow box with five one-half grain syrettes of morphine tartrate.” Bill tries one of the syrettes, then another, then another. Then there is an episode which is in the book, but not the video.
“Ronnie’s was a spot near 52nd and Sixth where musicians came for fried chicken and coffee after one p.m. We sat down in a booth and ordered coffee. Mary cracked a benzedrine tube expertly, extracting the folded paper, and handed me three strips. “Roll it up into a pill and wash it down with coffee.” The paper gave off a sickening odor of menthol. Several people sitting nearby sniffed and smiled. I nearly gagged on the wad of paper…. Mary selected some gone numbers and beat on the table with the expression of a masturbating idiot.”
The video picks up with Bill trying to sell marijuana. “Pushing weed looks good on paper, like fur fanning or raising frogs.” Tea heads turn out to be too much trouble. Bill swears to never sell pot again, but not before ranting about the drug laws. … Bill has a habit now, working mostly with prescribed medication. Doctors are known as croakers. Soon the croakers quit writing scripts, and Bill gets busted. Some technicality about giving the wrong address. The case drew a four month suspended sentence. Bill starts to sell junk.
His partner is a piece of work. “One of Bill’s most distasteful conversation routines consisted of detailed bulletins on the state of his bowels. “Sometimes it gets so I have to reach my fingers in and pull it out. Hard as porcelain, you understand. The pain is terrible.” This might be a by product of opiate consumption. … Before long, Bill thinks he is about to get busted, and leaves for Texas. By the time he gets near Lexington, he has junk sickness. He checks into an institution to receive the cure. We learn a new word… shmecker is a user of heroin.
Bill leaves the Lexington facility without completing the cure. The next stop is New Orleans . … “New Orleans was a strange town to me and I had no way of making a junk connection. Walking around the city, I spotted several junk neighborhoods: St. Charles and Poydras, the area around and above Lee Circle, Canal and Exchange Place. I don’t spot junk neighborhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like the dowser’s wand: “Junk here!”
WSB co wrote a musical, “The Black Rider.” The performer is Tom Waits, whose voice sounds like WSB. There is a song, Crossroads. This is probably not about Robert Johnson. In this song, we learn about a gun with magic bullets. In the moment of aiming, the gun turns into a dowser’s wand. The bullet goes where the bullet wants to go. Some say the magic bullet is a stand in for junk. When Junky was written, junk was not used as slang for peckers.
It has been noted that WSB is as queer as a crochet bathtub. This circumstance is not noted in Junky. But then, WSB does not speak well of drug addicts either. “In the French Quarter there are several queer bars so full every night the fags spill out on to the sidewalk. A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything living and spontaneous. The live human being has moved out of these bodies long ago. But something moved in when the original tenant moved out. Fags are ventriloquists’ dummies who have moved in and taken over the ventriloquist. …
… The dummy sits in a queer bar nursing his beer, and uncontrollably yapping out of a rigid doll face. Occasionally, you find intact personalities in a queer bar, but fags set the tone of these joints, and it always brings me down to go into a queer bar. The bring-down piles up. After my first week in a new town I have had about all I can take of these joints, so my bar business goes somewhere else, generally to a bar in or near Skid Row.” … Before long, Bill goes into a queer bar, and gets in trouble.
It seems to be a way of life, for someone who says that junk is a way of life. Maybe the magic bullet was aimed at him all along. … We are roughly half way through Junky. The attention span is maxxing out. In case we get druggie withdrawal, a podcast with Keith Richards is freshly downloaded. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These pictures are Union soldiers from The War Between The States. Much of the action in Junky takes place in wartime.