Enclosed copy of Literary Times. I might suggest when book comes out you send them a review copy. Arnold Kaye over last night to interview me, I suppose a la Ben Hecht. He gave me the old bullshit about me being a legend, and he had a list of questions. I was fairly drunk and don’t remember what I told him. Some of the questions rather vapid like: “What effect does Mickey Mouse have on the American public and culture?” I don’t know if they are going to run the interview; I might have been fairly bitter and vulgar. The guy had just come from Zahn’s where Curtis had babbled on and on, I am told. At least I kept it short and hot. Anyhow, what with the horses and interviews and the bottle and being a LEGEND…I have not written any poetry lately, and this is how we go down the drain: doing everything but creating. There are enough traps in this world to kill a man before he becomes five years old.

At any rate I had sense enough to turn down an invite to be on a panel thing on the radio with Zahn and Kay and some editors. J. B. May etc. I still believe in more privacy and less talk. Badly hung over today but I see no broken furniture and my knuckles are not bruised so there was no fight. Good. May told this guy, “Bukowski’s kind of unfriendly.” These people don’t understand that the living takes time and that the talking about it is unnecessary. You do. I think that when they knock on your door you feel the same way I do. That’s why we pretty much get along.

Anyhow, going now.

I think the bastard took my pen.

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

Early March, 1963