the book was on the press, price of book and address of LOUJON PRESS given. Also several other books reviewed and a kind of eulogy for Creeley by Hirschman. Anyhow, we have been mentioned, and maybe a few sales because of it? It might pay to send Hirschman a review copy when the book comes out? [* * *]
The U. gave Corrington a grand ($1,000) to lay around and write so he wouldn’t have to teach Summer School. Well, this is o.k. if you can work it. Also, I think, a $2,500 advance on his novel. He’s now thinking about going to Europe. I guess they all do that. They start running around the world. (See Ginsberg, Corso, Kaja, Burroughs, etc., etc.) I don’t know quite what it means, but I’d rather side with Faulkner who g.d. figured there was more than enough just around his doorstep. This culture hunt smacks too much of a Cadillac sort of acquisition.
All right, hang in tough.
----
Corrington published “Charles Bukowski and the Savage Surfaces” in Northwest Review for fall 1963 .
[To John William Corrington]
[June 1963]
Don’t worry yourself shitty on the Northwest Review article, I understand, and I hold to the savage side with the honor of my teeth. I know damn well I don’t wax the golden poetic and I don’t try to because I believe it to be essentially outside of life—like lace gloves for a coal-stoker. On the other hand, I don’t believe in being tough because life is tough. I like my sunlight and beer and cigars and occasional pussy just like any matador or prelim boy, but there’s still room for a good symphony written in 1700 or 1800 or the disgust-strike of sadness at seeing a cat crushed flat by wheels upon asphalt. There’s room for things, and I once tried to straighten these things into REASON by reading Plato and Schope and F.N., Hegel, the whole host of boys, but I only found that they were tilting silver water, getting lost in it, and as long as I was getting lost I figured it might as well be in a cheap bar where I could listen to sounds that were not being written, and if I found love it was some other old dog’s bone. Because if the answer isn’t at the top, it isn’t at the middle, and you’ll find just as much at the bottom which was where I was at anyhow. It’s not so much savage as it is discarding the whole facade of knowledge and education and looking as directly as you can into your own sun. You can get blinded this way but at least a lot of it is your own doing. Like suicide or betting the 9 horse. The next cold drink is God, and the next cigarette isn’t cancer; it’s the next one after, the one you haven’t gotten to. And you realize all along that you are not getting very near anything, but if it’s not the razor, you toddle along like a kid shitting in its pants, and the game is corncobs and dollars and buttons and an occasional Easter candle. [* * *]
I get touches and hints of the book from Jon, and this man and his wife weave things like a golden dream, touching it, tasting it, adding, subtracting, loving, o loving, they touch again and again the thing they are working with, it takes design, it takes them, they heave to it like good steak or a visitation by the angels; these people are blessed beyond blessedness, and my unholy mad luck has made this work of mine fall into their hands and I look through the curtains, and the cars on the street and the people and the sidewalks have become real and carved and yet soft like pillows because these people have touched me with the wand. All my luck came at once, and it won’t last, I don’t want it to. There will be a time of looking back, and I am ready. I came out of absurdity and I will go back, back, but now now all the dogs and flowers and windows laugh with me, and it is a stirring a stirring like an approaching army marching or a butterfly coming out of the cocoon. [* * *]
I await the K. Review , and your probable 18th century sonnet. This is all right. The K. Review is good fat book, stirs with a
The U. gave Corrington a grand ($1,000) to lay around and write so he wouldn’t have to teach Summer School. Well, this is o.k. if you can work it. Also, I think, a $2,500 advance on his novel. He’s now thinking about going to Europe. I guess they all do that. They start running around the world. (See Ginsberg, Corso, Kaja, Burroughs, etc., etc.) I don’t know quite what it means, but I’d rather side with Faulkner who g.d. figured there was more than enough just around his doorstep. This culture hunt smacks too much of a Cadillac sort of acquisition.
All right, hang in tough.
----
Corrington published “Charles Bukowski and the Savage Surfaces” in Northwest Review for fall 1963 .
[To John William Corrington]
[June 1963]
Don’t worry yourself shitty on the Northwest Review article, I understand, and I hold to the savage side with the honor of my teeth. I know damn well I don’t wax the golden poetic and I don’t try to because I believe it to be essentially outside of life—like lace gloves for a coal-stoker. On the other hand, I don’t believe in being tough because life is tough. I like my sunlight and beer and cigars and occasional pussy just like any matador or prelim boy, but there’s still room for a good symphony written in 1700 or 1800 or the disgust-strike of sadness at seeing a cat crushed flat by wheels upon asphalt. There’s room for things, and I once tried to straighten these things into REASON by reading Plato and Schope and F.N., Hegel, the whole host of boys, but I only found that they were tilting silver water, getting lost in it, and as long as I was getting lost I figured it might as well be in a cheap bar where I could listen to sounds that were not being written, and if I found love it was some other old dog’s bone. Because if the answer isn’t at the top, it isn’t at the middle, and you’ll find just as much at the bottom which was where I was at anyhow. It’s not so much savage as it is discarding the whole facade of knowledge and education and looking as directly as you can into your own sun. You can get blinded this way but at least a lot of it is your own doing. Like suicide or betting the 9 horse. The next cold drink is God, and the next cigarette isn’t cancer; it’s the next one after, the one you haven’t gotten to. And you realize all along that you are not getting very near anything, but if it’s not the razor, you toddle along like a kid shitting in its pants, and the game is corncobs and dollars and buttons and an occasional Easter candle. [* * *]
I get touches and hints of the book from Jon, and this man and his wife weave things like a golden dream, touching it, tasting it, adding, subtracting, loving, o loving, they touch again and again the thing they are working with, it takes design, it takes them, they heave to it like good steak or a visitation by the angels; these people are blessed beyond blessedness, and my unholy mad luck has made this work of mine fall into their hands and I look through the curtains, and the cars on the street and the people and the sidewalks have become real and carved and yet soft like pillows because these people have touched me with the wand. All my luck came at once, and it won’t last, I don’t want it to. There will be a time of looking back, and I am ready. I came out of absurdity and I will go back, back, but now now all the dogs and flowers and windows laugh with me, and it is a stirring a stirring like an approaching army marching or a butterfly coming out of the cocoon. [* * *]
I await the K. Review , and your probable 18th century sonnet. This is all right. The K. Review is good fat book, stirs with a
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