And yet, as we’ve previously noted here at Open Culture, into Bukowski’s gravestone are chiseled these words: “Don’t try.” “It took Bukowski years and years of writing and toiling and trying to finally have circumstances work out in his favor so he could gain traction and find success as a writer,” says the video’s narrator. He did so without the prospect of success anywhere in the offing, at least not before he reached middle age. It was only a few years before he went back to work at the post office, but this time he kept writing, putting in the real work at the typewriter before each shift at the day job. After a period spent “bouncing around the United States, doing short-term blue-collar jobs while writing hundred of short stories,” none of which broke him into the literary big time, came a highly unproductive period of blue-collar jobs without the accompanying writing.Īt the end of a writing-free decade, Bukowski “nearly died from a serious bleeding ulcer.” This got him back on track, as brushes with mortality tend to do: he subsequently quit his job at the post office and returned to writing full-time. According to the Pursuit of Wonder video essay above, Bukowski dropped out of college halfway through in order to write. If Charles Bukowski were alive today, what would you ask him? Best to avoid the standard questions put to writers about how or why they chose to become writers - not just because Bukowski would surely respond with a few colorfully choice words of dismissal, but because he embodied the lack of choice that characterizes the life of every serious creator.
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