Bukowski On Why Most Writers Are Boring

I keep a bunch of Bukowski sketches on our walls. There’s an edge they remind me of. A nudge to “take it there.” 

Just. Say. It. 

Not necessarily up to 11. Not necessarily straight to hell. But it’s the rush of standing on the edge of something that makes it interesting. 

In this interview,  Buk talks about how as life goes on, stuff “takes on a repeat.” You see the same life crap over and over again. Everybody is swimming in repeats. Death suddenly doesn’t even seem so bad (“OK baby, it’s time”). 

A snippet of him thinking in poems and making his interviewer stand on the edge with him:

Did you ever read Malcolm Lowry’s “Under the Volcano?”

Yeah I did, and I yawned myself to shit. 

Why?!

Why? Because like any other writer there’s no pace, there’s no quickness in his lines. There’s no life, there’s no sunlight. When you write your words must go like this, [gesturing] “bim bim bim, bim bim bim.” Each line must be full of a delicious little juice. Flavor. They must be full of power. They must make you LIKE to turn a page. What these guys do, they say, “Well, in blah blah blah, dah dah dah, there was a porch chair, the flies were walking around,” You see, they’re too leisurely. They’re setting up the scene for the grand emotion, and when they get to the grand emotion there isn’t any.  

He goes on. The message is everywhere – you can’t bore the reader AND you can’t bore the writer. Life is boring enough as it is. Get some stakes in there and shake people into remembering they’re alive.

I’m saving this clip here for a creative pep talk when I need it. If you feel like he was being a little rough on the interviewer, A. you’re right, he was, but B. watch to the very end when he gets to drinking with him, it’s pretty sweet. 

(Bonus quote:“It’s nice to die of alcoholism, it’s very glorious. But if you write dull shit, it doesn’t matter what you die from.” Oh Buk.)