Bulwer-Lytton 2014 Part Three
This is part three of the chamblee54 exhibition of the 2014 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Parts one, and two, were previously published. There will be a part three, sometime. The writers will be forgiven. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
He was a stolid man, prone to excessive and extended bursts of emotionlessness; but when Maurice loved, he loved with the passion of a dog itching its face against the grain of a firm pile carpet.
Stephen Sanford, Seattle WA
Cole kissed Anastasia, not in a lingering manner as a connoisseur might sip a glass of ‘82 La Pin, but open-mouthed and desperate, like a hobo wrapping his mouth around a bottle of Strawberry Ripple in the alley behind the 7-11. — Terri Meeker, Nixa MO
The Contessa’s heart was pounding hard and fast, like an out-of-balance clothes washer, which can get that way if you mix jeans with a lot of light things, though the new ones have some sensor thing to counteract that or shut off, but the Contessa’s heart didn’t have anything like that, so she had to sit down and tell Don Rolando to keep his hands to himself for a while. — John Hardi, Falls Church VA
The young lovers’ lips latched to each other not unlike the way in which two coital snails would, with much slime and suction, frothing as if someone had just poured salt on them.
Peter S. Bjorkman, Rocklin CA
His ex-wife’s personality was like chocolate – not the smoky, tangy, exquisitely rich and full-bodied type, but the over-sweet, tooth-cracking, factory-processed, made-with-vegetable-oil kind that leaves one with diabetes and an aneurysm the size of a grape. — Shalom Chung, Hong Kong
It seemed fair to say that her werewolfism was putting a strain on their relationship, the way she had earned the ire of the neighbors by devouring their pets and howling far past the bedtimes of their children, but bring it up to her, and she’d just snarl, “Why do you keep harping on this?” around a mouthful of the Smiths’ cat. — Eva Niessner, Cockeysville MD
Raoul’s deep slate eyes sucked Natalie in, and there she remained lodged like the wadded knee-hi clogging the tube of her Hoover Electrosuction Model 612 that once belonged to her grandmother, or some other dead relative, its vacuum bag so overstuffed with gunk, shed skin cells, and insect exoskeletons it nearly exploded like Natalie’s heart bursting with love for Raoul.
Wendy White Lees, Ho-Ho-Kus NJ
Over KFC, Raul broke up with Sheila a second time (the first time shrinking her heart until it was only fit for a tiny doll), tearing what was left of her heart to shreds, like the shreds of coleslaw now clinging to Raul’s beard; a fitting analogy since the aforementioned doll Sheila was thinking of was a Cabbage Patch doll. — Amelia Kynaston, Las Vegas NV
Pet detective Drake Leghorn ducked reporters at the entrance to the small hobby farm and headed down to the tiny pond where a lone goose was frantically calling for her mate and he wondered why – when so many come to look upon the graceful mating pair – why would someone want to take a gander?— Howie McLennon, Ottawa ON
Six months old, and already their love had picked up memories like lint, which, now that Maddie thought about it, was appropriate, since she and Brian met at the laundromat, when Maddie found herself hampered by a stubborn washing machine coin slot, but then snickered at the thought of being “hampered” while doing laundry, and then found herself explaining her snicker to the nearest laundromat patron, who turned out to be Brian and who, better yet, turned out to have a sense of humor even, well, dryer than her own. — Kirsten Wilson, Superior CO
Some stories are so compelling they almost seem to write themselves, but not this one.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island WA
Bulwer-Lytton 2014 Part Two
What follows is part two of the 2014 rendering of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. The opposite of pro is con. In some systems of logic, this makes the opposite of contest is protest. Maybe someone needs to protest this abuse of the english language.
Yesterday was the overview.. Today is the first part of contest selections. If you go to the contest page, you can see all the entries that the “Grand Panjandrum” saw fit to expose. This collection was whittled down, and divided into three parts.
Here is another description of the contest. It is the intro to the 2012 post at chamblee54. When all this is over, there will be more pictures, from The Library of Congress. They were taken by Dorothea Lange, as part of the Farm Service Administration project.
Once upon a time, there was a writer named Edward Bulwer-Lytton. While some of his product is acceptable, Lord Lytton is responsible for the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”. Years after his timely demise, an English professor, at San Jose State University, chose to name a contest for bad writing after Lord Lytton. Scott Rice recently overcame his embarrassment to announce the selections of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
PG has written about BLFC before. The announcement of a new crop of perps is a good excuse for text to go between the pictures. This post is written in the style of Margaret Mitchell. After the 4800 word clunkathon published yesterday, the contest selections will be edited.
When the dead moose floated into view the famished crew cheered – this had to mean land! – but Captain Walgrove, flinty-eyed and clear headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose. — Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island WA
As he girded himself against the noxious, sulfurous fumes that belched from the chasm in preparation for descent into the bowels of the mountain where mighty pressure and unimaginable heat made rock run in syrupy rivers, Bob paused to consider the unlikely series of events that had led him to become the Great God Vulcan’s proctologist. — Stan Hunter Kranc, State College PA
Finally after ninety-seven long days adrift Captain Pertwee was rescued, mercifully ending his miserable diet of rainwater and strips of sun dried Haddock which was actually far ghastlier than it sounded what with George Haddock being his former first mate. — Phillip Davies, Cardiff, U.K.
Hard-boiled private dick Harrison Bogart couldn’t tell if it was the third big glass of cheap whiskey he’d just finished, or the way the rain-moistened blouse clung so tightly to the perfect figure of the dame who just appeared panting in his office doorway, but he was certain of one thing … he had the hottest mother-in-law in the world. — Carl Turney, Bayswater, Victoria, Australia
“One cannot easily shake off old habits,” was all that retired Detective Tim O’Hara could say when, after rifling through the dead old man’s pockets (which, as he expected, were all empty), inspecting his throat, and forcing open his cold, stiff hand to get his fingerprints, he was gently but firmly pulled away from the coffin by his brother Harry and piloted out of the parlor under the perplexed stares of uncle Mel’s friends and relatives. — Jorge Stolfi, Campinas, SP, Brazil
When the CSI investigator lifted the sheet revealing the mutilated body with the Ginsu Knife still protruding from the bloody chest, Detective Miller wondered why anybody would ever need two of them, even if he only had to pay extra shipping and handling. — Brian Brandt, Lansdale PA
After years of Dame Gothel’s tyrrany, Rapunzel was only seconds from freedom, until, with an agonized scream, the prince plunged to his death in the thorns below, grasping a handful of detached blond strands–the golden stair having been irreparably weakened by the deficiency of Vitamins B3, B6, and B7 in his love’s new celiac-friendly diet. — Kevin Hogg, Cranbrook BC
With her interest in dime-store cowboy novels finally fading and Christmas just days away, little Lizzy Borden sat quietly in the corner and crossed “tomahawk” off her Christmas list, writing instead the word AXE, carefully in her best penmanship, which made her mother and father so proud.
Frank McWilliams, Telford PA
It was a bright and cloudless day, as young Lizzie hummed a cheerful tune to herself, whilst drying and replacing the last knife on its hook, and reminiscing how Mother and Father Borden (lying bleeding in their respective pools of blood upstairs) had been so inappropriately cross with her, such a short while ago. — Carl Turney, Bayswater, Victoria, Australia
Roger proved unable to select a bedspread, due to his raging ennui; however, he was able to purchase an assault rifle, which is probably why his wife left him, although it may have been the ferrets.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island WA
Little Altars Everywhere
Little Altars Everywhere is a book written by Rebecca Wells. LAE was written before Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, with the same characters.
Arguably, you should read Little Alters before you read Divine Secrets. Life does not work that way. Many saw the Ya-Ya movie who will never even know there were books. In PG’s case, he heard about Ya-Ya long before he found it at a yard sale. A few months later, while trolling the shelves of the Chamblee library, he thought to look under Wells, and found Little Alters.
A central character is Viviane Abbott Walker. Mother of four. Ya-Ya. Alcoholic. Catholic. Does not have a problem with hitting children. According to one son, a child molester. In Ya-Ya, we learn that her true love is killed in World War II. There are some other weird scenes during her childhood. Maybe she is a monster, but she came by it honestly. In Little Alters, all you see is the drinking, the religion, and the bad behavior.
These books are set in Louisiana. This apparently is another world, one that is incomprehensible to others. Atlanta is full of former Louisianans, and is a bit whacky in it’s own way. Thornton LA is a place that works all five senses.
Miss Wells writes about the smells. The cold cream on Vivi’s face, when she crawls in bed with Little Shep. The way Willetta’s smells, like Lipton tea and Ajax. The dark waters of the bayou, full of stuff you don’t want to know about.
Smells are said to be the sensation that goes directly to the brain, without a filter. The direct connection to the animal heart. To know how something smells is to know the essence.
Little Alters is a collection of chapters. Each one tells a different story. Each one is told in a different voice. There is no beginning and end, but a big bulge in the middle. Life is short but wide.
Two of the chapter stories are told by Willetta and Chaney. They are a black couple that lives on the farm, and work for the Walkers. Miss Wells tells their story in the voice of old, country black people. Some might say this is not proper, for a white woman to try and talk like a black man. It is done with compassion and accuracy. Whether Miss Wells should do this is up to the individual to decide.
Little Alters can be a dangerous book for lunch hour reading. One day, PG was in a mid summer funk. The chapter that day was Big Shep’s story. He was on the local draft board during Vietnam. Neighbors came to him. They begged him to keep their sons out of that war. Sometimes he could help, sometimes he could not.
One of the ones to go was Lincoln. He was Chaney’s younger brother. During the Tet offensive, Lincoln was killed. The story of Big Shep going to the funeral home was not cheerful, nor should it be.
This book report is written on a monday morning. At this point in his life, PG gets up early. In many ways, the best part of the day is the couple of hours before going down Buford Hiway to the place days are spent. Little Alters will soon be returned to the Chamblee library. There is no telling what will replace it. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Football Player Flotus
PG is an old fogie. An example might be last night. He stayed home, listening to stuff on the internet, and working on pictures. Facebook can bring a sample of the real world into a boring life.
just another night of queens, fags and a 6 person lesbian restroom fight that resulted in a trash can catching on fire(?), shutting the bar down(?) leaving everyone to fight for their life and escape just in time to see a misplaced hetero trying to conceal the fact that he is puking his guts out in front of everyone with his beer still in his hand. …I feel so PG…
While this was going on, PG was listening to a podcast. Allan Gurganus was on yet another radio show, promoting yet another book. At 13:25 in the show, Mr. Gurganus says “I’m not an ironist. That’s why I’m worth reading.”
Twitter to the rescue. Retweeted by thefieldnegro HoodiesUpMusicLoud™ @MrMilitantNegro This is what racist dumbfuckery looks like: Was Michelle Obama really born as a man?
People in the spotlight are the target of rumors. It is part of the game. Some of them are far fetched. When the FLOTUS is a WOC, this nonsense becomes “racist.”
Here is the story: Shocking New Revelation about Michelle Obama: A Must Read, Christwire Exclusive. The story was in Christwire. CW is a satirical website, sort of like the Onion on crystal meth. A lot of people don’t get the joke.
The current edition of Christwire has a story, One Hit Wonder Cher Once a Peace Activist Now Promotes Hate & Violence. There is a picture. It shows what Cher might look like today, without the plastic surgery. She could have a new career in horror movies.
The FLOTUS story was picked up by the popup ad happy Examiner. In the best internet tradition, the comments are better than the story. “The First Yeti’s look is uncanny ~ Many wonder if she is a tranny ~ Perhaps she’s got a knack ~ To tuck her gear back ~ And carry it in her fanny?
Pictures by “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Local Souls
Local Souls, the most recent product from Allan Gurganus, is due back at the library today. PG is probably not going to finish it.
Mr. Gurganus is much loved by some. He is a good writer, who knows a lot of words. He plays the game well, with entertaining bookshow interviews, and snappy speeches at literary events. To the english department industrial complex, Mr. Gurganus is a star. This does not translate into being fun to read. Plays Well With Others was about a nightmare. Reading PWWO is suitably horrible.
PG was excited to see Local Souls at the library. The first novella is about a peculiar family arrangement. The young couple had moved to a suburb of Atlanta. On page 62, we learn the address: 110 Pickwich Drive, Collunus Heights, GA. According to wikipedia, and common sense, there is not, and never has been, a town called Collunus Heights, GA. This is the point where PG gave up.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Author Insults
These author insults were borrowed from flavorwire. HT to Andrew Sullivan The pictures are from The Library of Congress This is a repost.
25. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound “A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”
24. Virginia Woolf on Aldous Huxley “All raw, uncooked, protesting.”
23. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw “An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”
22. Joseph Conrad on D.H. Lawrence “Filth. Nothing but obscenities.”
21. Lord Byron on John Keats (1820) “Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.”
20. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad “I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.”
19. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling “Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.”
18. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen “Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.”
17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes “Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”
16. Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire (1864) “I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.”
15. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
14. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
13. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote “He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.”
12. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”
11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972) “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”
10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876) “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”
09. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
08. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger “I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”
07. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923) “Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’…. One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!”
06. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning “I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.”
05. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948) “I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”
04. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898) “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
03. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce “the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”
02. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922) “A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”
01. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928) “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”
Bonus. Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.”
Bonus two, a comment to the original post.: RomanHans Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Bonus Three, from Flannery O’Connor “I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
Uganda Be Kidding Me
Three weeks ago, PG found “Uganda Be Kidding Me” at the Chamblee library. It is due back today. The bookmark is on page 82. This book is not worth checking out a second time.
Last fall, a copy of My Horizontal Life appeared. It was a fun book. The comic boasting about alcoholic excess was fun to read. If you don’t think about the squalid reality behind the jokes, you enjoy it.
Apparently enough people enjoy the Handler schtick to make money. Some publisher gave her a contract, and needed product for the pipeline. Miss Handler went on a animal watching trip to Africa. Someone thought this would be a good excuse for a book. They were mistaken.
The routine is getting old. Maybe PG is just a retired drunk, lacking a sense of humor. At any rate, the book does not work. Alcoholic jokes are not funny to third parties.
Last fall, Miss Handler made an Atlanta stop on her book tour. One appearance was in a L5P bookstore. The facility was about the size of an SUV. There was a line of a hundred people waiting to get in. The book buyers probably need a shoehorn to get in that small a space with Miss Handler, her ego, and a cash register. Maybe Miss Handler lost some of the weight she gained in Africa.
During this year’s oscars, someone at Huffington Post let Miss Handler use their twitter account. The result was “Chelsea Handler slammed for Lupita Oscar tweet” Miss Handler lives the adage that there is no bad publicity. The two tweets that got the most attention: “Congratulations #lupita To pre order #ugandabekiddingme go to http://amzn.to/1pS4qpG #Oscars.” “Congratulations #12yearsaslave Go to Africa or buy #ugandabekiddingme http://amzn.to/1de1ka9 #aheadofthecurve #Oscars.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Caro, Necie, Teensy, and Vivi are the Ya-Ya sisters. They were kids together in Louisiana when the local movie theater had a Shirley Temple look-a-like contest. The Ya-Yas were kicked out for misbehaving. It was not the only time they got in trouble.
Sidda, the daughter of Vivi, is working on a play. Her mother is not speaking to her. Sidda wants to know about female bonding, and asks one of the ya-yas for help. A scrapbook arrives. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel is about what happens when Sidda looks through the book.
The book is like life… it is short, but deep. If G-d is hiding in the details, maybe people can as well. sometimes the best thing to do is tell one of the stories.
It was the last week that PG would be working at the retail giant headquarters. The cafeteria quit serving at two p.m. The morning chores had lasted past the cutoff time. The break room was full of loud people. PG decided to get out, and found the Waffle House on Atlanta Road.
After ordering lunch, PG stepped back in time. The Ya-Ya girls took a train to Atlanta. They were going to the world premiere of “Gone With The Wind.” They stayed at the house of a wealthy relative. Ginger, a maid, was the chaperone. She had to ride in the “colored” car.
The premiere of GWTW was a big deal. There was a costume ball at the municipal auditorium, which was not exactly a grand place. There was a choir from Ebenezer Baptist Church singing spirituals. One of the singers was ten year old Martin Luther King Jr.
One day, during breakfast, an Atlanta cousin said something rude to Ginger. Vivi threw a plate of food at the Atlanta cousin. The Atlanta relatives were glad to see the Ya-Yas leaving. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Positive Attitude Prattle
Somewhere along the line, the boss decides you have a “negative attitude”. From that point on, you are not allowed to complain. It is almost as if it were a gimmick to keep you in line.
A lady named Barbara Ehrenreich agrees that there is entirely too much positive attitude required of people. She wrote a book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. In one interview, she says “And again, you know, don’t worry about the world. Don’t ask the question about where the cancer comes from. Don’t ask why so many people are not employed, even in good times in our country. And it was the same sort of thing. And that’s when I began to think hey, this kind of operates as a way of quelling discontent, quelling dissent, you know, when you can’t say I’m mad about -whatever. You just have to swallow it and smile.”
Ms. Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. She found herself in a pink tsunami of cheerfulness. The pink teddy bears did not do anything for her spirits. The whole culture of happy talk, about a life threatening illness. grossed her out.
At one point, she was given a tote bag. In it were some crayons. I said, “This is really nice, but what’s with the crayons?” And this woman said to me, “Well, that’s in case you want to write down any of your thoughts.” And I said, “I’m a writer. I don’t use crayons.”
The promotional interviews quoted here were conducted in 2009. This was before the Susan G. Komen foundation hired Karen Handel. During the Planned Parenthood meltdown, some unflattering things came out about the SGK foundation. It probably did not help Ms. Ehrenreich’s attitude.
So the book happened. PG has not read it, but has seen a few reviews and interviews. The New York Times has a great review. It says “America’s can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating culture of positivity that bears little relation to genuine hope or happiness.”
One interview has a stomach churning comment. It should be noted that this is the lady talking, and that there is no confirmation of this. “Yeah. And here’s something that really horrified me that I learned recently and put in the book, is that some breast cancer support groups expel people who go into metastasis and who are clearly going to die. You can’t be in the group because just your presence might bring other people down.” (A google search of the phrase “breast cancer support groups expel people who go into metastasis ” shows little support for this story. Two front page results involve Barbara Ehrenreich interviews. Skepticism should not be limited to positive motivation.)
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Hank Chinaski Lives
In the next quarter century, the surplus grew, thanks to Bukowski’s nearly graphomaniacal fecundity. “I usually write ten or fifteen [poems] at once,” he said, and he imagined the act of writing as a kind of entranced combat with the typewriter, as in his poem “cool black air”: “now I sit down to it and I bang it, I don’t use the light / touch, I bang it.”
As could have been predicted, it started with a post at Dangerous Minds. The feature was about the late Charles Bukowski, who was called Hank by those who knew him. The writer/drunk had always been a bit of a fascination to PG. Out of the millions of useless drunks feeding the urinals of planet earth, at least one will turn out to have had literary merit.
A trip to Google city is made, and quotes from the bard are found, along with the wikipedia page. All of this leads to a New Yorker piece about the gentleman. After nine paragraphs, and two poems, there is the phrase that set off PG…graphomaniacal fecundity.(spell check suggestion:nymphomaniac)
As best as we can figure, g.f. means that Hank wrote a lot of stuff. This is a good thing. PG operates on the notion that if you keep your quantity up, the quality will take care of itself. Hank seems to agree, spitting out product “like hot turds the morning after a good beer drunk.” He seemed to take pride in doing what Truman Capote said about Jack Kerouac…he doesn’t write, he types.
If you google the phrase graphomaniacal fecundity, you can choose from 71 results. The top six apparently quote the article in New Yorker. A blogspot facility called poemanias quotes the paragraph from the New Yorker, with the title “On Bukowski’s afterlife”, while Fourhourhardon reprints the entire thing. Neither provide a link back to the original.
Goliath and Petey Luvs Blog take the same copy-paste approach. The first tries to get you to pay for more reading material. This forum also does the control A-C-V approach, but yields this comment : “He was a contemporary of the Beats, but not quite one of them because he was darker and not as willing to smoke a joint and sing Phil Ochs songs on the lower east side.” The truth is, Hank hated marijuana, and had the classic alcoholic attitude about it. So it goes. Keep and share copies the complete New Yorker feature, but has some other thumbsuckers about Mr. Bukowski.
It is a truism that new media borrows content from old media. Stories, told orally from genration to generation, are compiled into books, which are then made into movies. Plastic panels try to look like wood. The newest new media that old fogey PG knows about is twitter. People tell little stories in 140 characters or less, which go around the world in seconds. With this abundance of media, there are not always enough messages to feed the beast.
On twitter, there are people producing twitter feeds from dead authors. Maybe these wordmongers went to a place with internet access. Kurt Vonnegut (three hours ago) “Busy, busy, busy”. Mark Twain (three hours ago) “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint”. Brautigan’s Ghost (twenty two hours ago) “I cannot say to the one I love, “Hi, flower-wonderful bird-love sweet.”
The deceased content maker best suited to twitter might be Conway Twitty. One slow day two years ago, Yahoo asked peeps Do you think Conway Twitty would have used Twitter? ~ He gave them the idea ~ I think Twitty would tweet, Twitter would be Conway’s, way of of communicating to the world, Twitty would be tweeting his little Twitty head off, ~ I better send out a Twitty Tweet ~ Cute, but a serious answer, probably. A media hound, he’d want to get his name plastered everywhere. ~ If he did that would have made him a ‘Twitty Twitter” ~ Who cares, he’s a twit anyway”.
There are four Twitty Twitter feeds. @ConwayTwitty (Oct. 21,2009) “The Conway Twitty Musical is getting great reviews in Branson!!! . @TwittyTweats (January 12, 2012) “In Twitty City, it never snows. All the men wear gold medallions and blazers. And the women never cry. Unless you hold them.” @Conway_Twitty (February 20, 2012) “My cock is an amphibious assault vehicle” @conwaytwittier (April 28, 2012). “@JasonIsbell How’s the English weather treating your hair? I had the hardest time keeping my pompadour in tiptop shape there.” @twittybirdmoda is written in Japanese.
The original concept for this post was to spotlight twitter feeds borrowing material from Charles Bukowski. Hank is the beer bard of Los Angeles. He is a hero to many. Out of the millions of worthless drunks populating bars, at least one could write poems. It gives you hope for mankind.
The front page of a google search for “charles bukowski on twitter” yields eight feeds. The original plan was to ignore any that were not updated in 2012. An exception will be for @hank_bukowski (Yeah it’s good to be back). (January 25, 2009) “Yesterday I met Adolf H. in hell. He is fuckin stupid.” “too lazzy these days, too drunk to twitter”.
With the 2012-only rule in effect, we are left with three Bukowski thieves. @BukowskiDiz (May 1) “Curiosidades sobre Charles Bukowski http://migre.me/8UhRf“. @bukquotes (May 8) “all the mules and drunken ladies gone the bad novels march…”. ~ “I always read when I shit and the worse the book the better the bowel movement.” @bukowski_lives (one hour ago) “Basically, that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a double repost.
Atlanta Rising
Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City 1946-1996 is on the shelf at the Chamblee library. This book is a history of Atlanta in the modern era, written by former fishwrapper scribe Frederick Allen. This is a repost.
The story begins in 1948. AR is weighted more to the older part of the story. The main text is 248 pages. On page 124, Ivan Allen has just built a controversial roadblock on Peyton Road, which would be in 1962. The further along in the story, the fewer details are included. The first big story is when Georgia had two governors. This is one of the best descriptions of the two Governors controversy around, and does not mention Ben Fortson’s wheelchair cushion.
The mayor at the start of the story is William B. Hartsfield. “Willie B” was a leader in creating the Atlanta Airport, and in building it into the powerhouse it is today. He was mayor until 1961, when Ivan Allen Jr. moved into the office.
AR has many moments of unintentional irony. When you read a book 18 years after it was written, and fifty years after the events in the book, you see things that could not have been imagined before. In 1960, many of the political-business elite thought it was time for Mr. Hartsfield to retire. Among his shortcomings was an indifference to sports. Mr. Hartsfield thought that a new stadium would be too great a drain on the city’s taxpayers. Fifty four years, and three stadiums, later, the power elite is going to build another stadium. Atlanta Stadium cost eighteen million dollars. The Blank bowl will cost over a billion. (In the past year, a plan to move the Braves to Smyrna was announced.)
One of the big stories here is civil rights. Atlanta came out of that struggle looking pretty good. It was a combination of image conscious businessmen, enlightened black leadership, and a huge helping of dumb luck. In 1961, the city was under federal pressure to integrate the schools. The state was firm in opposition, and the city wasn’t crazy about the idea anyway. Then, another federal court ordered the integration of the University of Georgia. Since the people would not stand for messing with their beloved University, the state laws forbidding integration were quietly repealed. The city schools were integrated with a minimum of fuss. (The book tells this story much better than a slack blogger.)
The controversy about the 1956 model state flag was going full steam when AR was written. The book has some legislative records, which for some reason never made it into the fishwrapper. There is no clear cut answer as to why the legislature changed the state flag. It was mentioned that at the national political conventions, you could not have a written sign, but you could wave a state flag. This controversy provided a diversion from gold dome crookedness, and hopefully has been laid to rest.
A man named Lester Maddox sold fried chicken, and ran for public office. AR describes Lester as looking a bit like an angry chicken. Through a series of constitutional convulsions, Lester was elected Governor in 1966. The state survived his tenure. In the seventies, when Jimmy Carter was running for President, Lester said a lot of rude things about Jimmy, helping the smiling peanut farmer get elected. In another turn of fate, Lester Maddox died June 25, 2003. This was two days after the eternal departure of Maynard Jackson, the first black Mayor of Atlanta.
The book ends with the 1996 Olympics looming over the city. Billy Payne led a smart campaign to secure the games for Atlanta. One of his moves was to keep Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner out of the action. After the 1980 boycott, and the Goodwill Games, neither person was popular with the I.O.C. The book was published before 1996. The Olympics were a blast.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
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