That's It. A Final Visit With Charles Bukowski

Gundolf S. Freyermuth

That’s it.

A Final Visit With Charles Bukowski

FUEGO

That’s It is an intimate and informative portrait of Charles Bukowski. Based on the very last interview he gave, the book combines reporting with literary criticism. It renders a final and lasting picture of Charles Bukowski and assesses his importance as a writer. A must read for Bukowski fans.

... a gentle, bright, captivationg declaration of love for an old poet who, toward the end of his life, gained more lightness and learned how to play better than ever with his myths and masks.

(German news magazine Der Spiegel in its 1996 review of the German edition of That's It)

Preface @ E-Book Edition (2011)

This book was originally written in English in 1994/95, directly after my last encounter with Charles Bukowski.

Charles Bukowski and Gundolf S. Freyermuth in San Pedro, 1993

In 1996 a German translation was published as a coffee table book, together with many of Michael Montfort’s best Bukowski photos or BukShots as ‘Das war’s.’ Letzte Worte mit Charles Bukowski (Hamburg 1996).

An English version came out in 2000.

This e-book edition now presents a slightly improved version of the original text and - as an epilogue - for the first time in English a portrait of Bukowski’s favorite photographer and friend Michael Montfort, written in 2004 for the yearbook of the German Bukowski Society.

Gundolf S. Freyermuth

Canyon Creek Ranch, AZ

Summer 2011

Preface (2000)

When the blare of yellow finally swept over Charles Bukowski and enveloped him forever, as he had foreseen in the last paragraph of Pulp, a man greater than life died. Someone who challenged my understanding of this sad and glorious world as only two or three others have.

Many of those who met Charles Bukowski can and will say the same. But most of his readers never met him. And to them my confession about Bukowski the Man might sound like the uncritical adulation of a fan. They may think I was unduly impressed by someone who, in his last years, rose from being an outcast to a celebrity.

In my experience, however, Charles Bukowski was the exact opposite: a minor celebrity, though a major writer - and an extraordinary person. Hence, before I pay my dues to the people who made this book possible, let me tell you a few things about myself. It might prove my point that it was not Bukowski the Celebrity that left such a lasting impression on me.

When I met with Charles Bukowski for the last time in 1993, I was 38 years old and had been a professional writer for almost 15 years. I had written half a dozen non-fiction books and two novels and I had just started a third. To pay the bills, I had also dabbled in other, less solitary work. For five years, I had taught literature at Berlin’s Free University, and I had slaved as a reporter since the early 80s.

In that line of work - profitable, but uncomfortable for a shy writer like myself - I had interviewed quite a few nice and intelligent people. And even more who were not-so-nice and not-so-intelligent, but famous - actors and actresses, rock stars or, for that matter, best-selling authors. Though I had become a bit jaded and tired over the years, quite a few of the many men and women I met managed to amaze me in one or another strange way.

There was, for example, Jerry Lee Lewis. He drove a shimmering Redneck-Rolls Royce with spurs for hubcaps through a hot Memphis night and stopped to make his young wife pump gas at a self-service station. This, by the way, was in 1985 and only a few days before I met Charles Bukowski for the first time.

There was Andy Warhol. He frantically signed everything within his reach - my notes, my bare arms, the poster of a truckers convention that’s now hanging in front of my desk – while he kept non-answering most of my questions with dead-pan retorts like: Please, ask the janitor. He knows so much more about this place than I do … This place being Warhol’s legendary factory.

And there was Hunter S. Thompson. He was so sweet and nice and courteous, basically as calm as a hurricane’s eye, that he almost scared me to death during that long and fuzzy night that we spent in his kitchen cum office consuming mostly legal stuff in almost illegal quantities.

Several others, of course, stood out from the many people a busy reporter interviews year after year. Weird, wonderful and singular geniuses like Chuck Berry and Umberto Eco, Robert de Niro and Billy Wilder, Traci Lords and Tom Wolfe. But only a few of them made a real difference by changing my view of the world, of courage and honesty, of life and death, of everything.

One was Hans Sahl, who during World War II had helped many others to flee the Nazis before he himself escaped to New York. He died in 1990 virtually unknown in this country where his only novel as well as his heartbreaking and intelligent and cold-blooded memoirs have never been published.

Another writer who has become more than an interview subject is Curt Siodmak, author of the classic Donovan’s Brain. Curt will turn 98 this summer, and his sharp insight and unforgiving memory have forever shaped my view of Germany, where I was born, as were Hans Sahl, Curt Siodmak - and Charles Bukowski.

For him, of course, I have written this book, a mixture of reporting, literary essay and personal memoir. However, not every gift is welcome. I deeply hope Hank would have liked it, but I have no way to know.

What I do know, though, is that you would not be reading this if it were not for the kindness and help of three people. I’d like to thank them in the order of their appearance in the rather long detour-history of this short book.

First, there was photographer Michael Montfort, The Man Who Shot Charles Bukowski as Salon magazine recently wrote in a review of a remarkable exhibition of Montfort’s BukShots. Michael and I have worked together on many assignments, and it was he who first introduced me to Bukowski, his long-time friend. As we drove home on the Hollywood Freeway after that very last interview and a quick dinner – Hank drinking herbal tea - Michael was blinded by his tears and almost killed us both.

After Hank’s death, a short account of my last visit with him ran in the German magazine I was working for at the time. But I couldn’t use most of the material I had collected. I felt that I owed it to Bukowski and to his readers to make the real thing available - though it was a frightening idea to attempt it in a new language. Michael encouraged me and helped me in every possible way with the research for this book.

As did Linda Bukowski. And she did much more than that. She led me to her husband’s grave and generously offered to read the manuscript. She corrected factual errors, and she added personal insights and information that no one but her possessed. In the end, Linda even went out of her way to recommend the manuscript to Bukowski’s publisher. Such help and encouragement no writer will ever forget.

Last but not least, Michael Montfort introduced me to Gary Eisenberg. Gary corrected the many grammatical and idiomatic mistakes a non-native writer is prone to make. I have had many editors in my writing life, and too many of them tried to fuck with copy as they say in journalism. Gary didn’t. He was a great editor, and he made this manuscript as good as anybody possibly could.

Habent sua fata libelli – books have their own fate. This edition ends a long journey. Of course, I’d love to quote here Black Sparrow’s rejection letter, as these letters tend to be pretty funny - at least, if you read them years later. (Trust me on this, I’m an expert. My second novel, for example, was rejected by 17 major German publishing houses, until it was finally picked up by a smaller one, garnered a prestigious German Mystery Award and was optioned by the inevitable producer.)

Unfortunately, I can’t quote such a rejection letter, as I never got one from Black Sparrow. Later, a 2000-word-excerpt from the book won the 2nd prize for feature articles in the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. And Buzz Magazine, once well-paying, but now defunct, published an almost identical excerpt. No book publisher, however, would take the little book.

Somewhere along the road, I translated the manuscript into German and sold it within days. In 1996, ‘That’s it.’ A Last Visit With Charles Bukowski became ‘Das war’s.’ Letzte Worte mit Charles Bukowski, a colorful coffeetable book with many of Michael Montfort’s best BukShots.

This electronic edition cannot include Michael’s pictures - or Gary’s beautiful BukShot gravures. I can only hope that some of the following words will succeed in making the account of my last meeting with Charles Bukowski as unforgettable for the reader as it has been for me.

Gundolf S. Freyermuth

Canyon Creek Ranch, AZ

Summer 2000

For Leon Who Was Born the Year Hank Died

I

Open Casket.

- Prologue -

"Death cancels everything but truth;

and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue.

It is a sort of natural canonization.

It makes the meanest of us sacred -

it installs the poet in his immortality,

and lifts him to the skies."

William Hazlitt

(on Lord Byron’s death)

"It doesn’t matter what happened.

What I write is what happened.

And guess what? I’m always the hero."

Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski, the prolific writer and poet laureate of Los Angeles low life, whose rough-hewn autobiographical poems, short stories, novels and 1987 film ‘Barfly’ chronicled his hard-bitten alcoholic youth, died Wednesday. He was 73, the Los Angeles Times reported on March 10, 1994.

Three days later, on a Sunday evening, Linda Lee Bukowski said, Let’s go and visit Hank.

Shortly before nine o’clock two cars, a beige Jaguar and a silver-gray Toyota, rolled up the wide driveway of the Green Hills Memorial Park in Palos Verdes. Linda Bukowski was accompanied by three men around fifty. They all were friends of her late husband: Dick Ellis, a physician and great storyteller, whose company the poet enjoyed in his last months; Michael Montfort, Bukowski’s favorite photographer; Carl Weissner, his German agent and translator.

The sun had set some time ago,