Don’t tell me about insanity. I wrote a short story about a man who murdered a blanket that fell in love with him and appeared to look at him and follow him around. “Very believable,” wrote back the first mag, “but this man appears too bizarre.” Or this is the condensation of it. I do not believe in writing a short story unless it crawls out of the walls. I watch the walls daily but very little happens.

The review mentioned in the next letter was among the very earliest published recognitions of Bukowski’s work. R. R. Cuscaden’s “Charles Bukowski: Poet In a Ruined Landscape” appeared in Satis, no. 5. Cuscaden, editor and publisher of Midwest magazine, brought out Bukowski’s Run With the Hunted (1962).

[To Ann Bauman]

June [20?], 1962

Yes, Sibelius later went into hiding and shaved his head; I’m told he was a handsome and vain man, and age bothered him, but for it all

he wrote the long-striding line

stepped around the mountains

and died.

It is 26 minutes before 9 a.m. and I am out of beer. [* * *]

I include herein Satis an English magazine that has printed a couple of poems that fall into the non-uplifting category. You can get the other kind anywhere. Also, a review of my 3 books by Cuscaden. It is a good damned thing I do not wear a hat or I could not get it around my head after reading these reviews.

Darling, this is the trap: BELIEVE YOU ARE GOOD WHEN THEY TELL YOU YOU ARE GOOD AND YOU ARE THEREBY DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. dead forever. Art is a day by day game of living and dying and if you live a little more than you die you are going to continue to create some pretty fair stuff, but if you die a little more than you live, you know the answer.

Creation, the carving of the thing, the good creation is a sign that the god that runs you there inside still has his eyes open. Creation is not the end-all but it is a pretty big part. End of lecture #3784. [* * *]

Corrington, a poet then teaching at Louisiana State University, was to write the introduction to Bukowski’s first Loujon Press book, It Catches My Heart in Its Hands, which would finally appear in the fall of 1963. Bukowski notes, “An early booster of my work.” He adds that their long correspondence “stopped after he wrote his novel and went to Hollywood.”

[To John William Corrington]

June 24, 1962

IN KIND OF A NUMB STATE LATELY? I mean, me. THE END OF THE SOUL. mebee. Anyhow, just crawling out of the sack and looking around, that’s about where I am at. They’ve machine gunned me down to this nub. good. cigarettes, cigars, candy?