catch? fine, the critics say that I am non-cerebral. I think the same thing of them. I think that they are patsies to the dupe, playing some kind of con-game, not because I don’t understand their words but because I do. they and Grandma may call it carnal but I call it wet pussy and prostitution. I am as cerebral as any of them (at least so) and if they want to talk about Government or God or Plato or the Meaning of Man, or any of those useless things, have them pour me a couple of glasses of bourbon and I’ll take them up alleys they’ve never seen and roll them out of their minds. Everything is basically simple—especially the critics, especially my critics. and, thus, having unloaded this load of come I move on to other things.

do you think, my son, that I will ever get a job teaching Creative Writing at the University of Columbia? I would very much like to fuck some young coeds or have them fuck me. [* * *]

I guess that so many problems come in upon a man that he finally dismisses them all and becomes a rock, the world is full of rocks. but the beer goes down down down. Wagner’s The Ring on now. Wagner goes good with me. Shostakovich. the Russians, the German in the Arts. The French, the English, the Spaniards do me little good. the Italians, halfway. why is it? of course, there’s Knut Hamsun. Norway? wherever the hell. [* * *]

Kirby Congdon was editor of Magazine (New York). A letter from Bukowski appeared in no. 3 (see below).

[To Tom McNamara]

October 25, 1965

[* * *] have you ever met Kirby Congdon? he seems bright enough to set torches to the world. almost seemingly classical, yet lived, and learned, and not to be bullshitted. I understand he is going to Key West or somewhere. there are so many good people I’d like to get drunk with, not so much as to talk myself, but to see them sitting in chairs and talking. Each man seems to come up with something good, something to make me laugh, and they do it so easily and with grace and honesty. Christ I am a pig, Mac, so often so tight, so often so untrusting.