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Item Details
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| Heading: |
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| Author: |
Bukowski, Charles |
| Title: |
Bukowski’s unpublished love letters to Linda King (all that are known). A collection of 60 typed letters by Charles Bukowski, plus 13 poems relating to Linda King and an early draft manuscript chapter used for his 1978 novel Women |
| Place: |
Los Angeles, et al. |
| Publisher: |
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| Date: |
1971-82 |
| Item # : |
181200 |
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| Sale Number |
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354 |
| Lot Number |
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2 |
| Sale Name |
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| Beat Literature Library of Stephen Ronan & Charles Bukowski Collection of Thomas Groff |
| Sale Date |
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04/26/2007 |
| Price realized |
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$ 69000 |
| (Includes 20% Buyer's Premium) |
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| Description: |
| Material housed in two binders within archival sleeves. Items measure: 11x8½. Black binder contains 120 total leaves, including: 60 typed letters (all but 4 signed), two of the letters typed on one sheet, scattered inked holograph corrections, notes, marks, etc.; fifteen are 2-pages, seven are 3-pages, four are 4-pages, three are 5-page, and one is 6-pages. Begins January 18, 1971 (signed “Hank”) and concludes “late Augie 1982”. With 47 letters dating January to September 1971; 12 letters from May to 1972; and 1 letter from late August 1982; most dated by type but several dated by hand. Extra inked note to 6 of the letters, 4 of which include at least one drawing (1 with several small drawings). Some highlights: Feb. 2, 1971 (3-pages) with poem and drawing of a man sitting drinking beer in red ink; June 18, 1971 (4-pages) with Picasso-like drawing of a square dog with flower and sun; June 27, 1971 (3-pages) with Bukowski’s blood in dashed straight line on final page: “Shit, maybe I’ve had enough women. I ought to lay the deck down. I had, for 4 years, until you came along. Now I don’t want to lay it down. I’m hooked and it’s glorious, it’s the finest thing that has ever happened to me…[then sex details] Linda bitch… I love you more than 5,000 airplanes flying over Redondo Beach. Christ, I’ve got to stop this somewhere. I’ve written myself into a hard-on. Ridiculous. What can I do with it? It won’t reach to Utah, you know that. Masturbation is cheating. I’m saving that juice for you. Please let me know everything. I can feel the shut of. [Then streaks of Buk’s blood]. I can feel the shut-off. look how lousy my blood looks. it needs you. tell me about how your blood feels about me. LOVE!!!.. Bukowski (signed in pencil); 9-11-71 (2-pages) to William Packard: “the sculptress and I split. She claims I can’t…write of suffering after I climb out of bed with her. She also claims I never wrote her a love poem. Everything has come down to my writing; what first attracted her, she now objects to. I didn’t put up much of a defense. I grow weary. Some things…needn’t be explained. I took her god damned head that she did of me [Buk’s bust] – which started the whole motherhumping mess…”; May 15, 1972: “This is a difficult letter to write. I am going with another woman [Liza Williams]. She is very kind to me. I believe she loves me…She helped me over a very rough period after you left me. I might not have made it otherwise. I owe her a great deal. But I don’t lover her, Linda. not yet, maybe not ever…She says she is going to kill herself if I leave her. She was here the night you phoned and she ran out into the streets. Neeli [Cherry] and I had to go out and look for her. I found her. Later on she asked me, ‘What will you do if she comes back?’ ‘She’s not coming back,’ I said, ‘it’s over.’…I just rec. my advance copy of the City Lights book. It looks fine…I hope you have luck with Lyle Stuart, I really think you wrote a good book. Love, Buk”; May 24, 1972 (2-pages) with drawings and a long inked note on verso: “I think of your hair- tickling my note – squeezing that white shit out of my pores – as we melted together like a miracle as the rest of the word ground out its hard way, I love you so much, I loved you so much, I still love you so much, even though you are not here and I remain, again, old and ugly” and front of letter begins: “dearest dearest Linda: it endures, it endures beyond everything. I am entrapped within you forever…I love you, woman, I love you. Nobody else works toward me. It’s all a total farce…Liza beat at the door…I don’t know what to do with her. Linda, this is your monster too. YOU TAUGHT ME HOW TO MAKE LOVE!…I’ve told her that I don’t love her [Liza] and that I love you…She’s known from the beginning that I can’t help or stop loving you and I’ve never lied to her about that. From that time you poked that brown eye around that camera, I FELT IT. Something just jumped around inside of me and it said, this is it, this is it…it was just as if I had been locked in cakes of cement and then all the cement broke away and you rushed in…”; May 27, 1972: “There’s no way I can get you out of my mind and soul. I had to tell Liza…When I made love to you it was making love to everything, the body was just part of it. Listen, Lu, you are NEVER GOING TO FIND A MAN WHO LOVES YOU AS MUCH AS I DID AND AS I DO NOW. Anytime you say o.k. I will come running…Everything and anything you do affects me straight down on in…Writing as much as I do has sharpened me to such a point that I am vulnerable to almost everything. In other words, I am fucked up…”; letter “Tuesday” [circa late 1972]: “It’s a sad breakup but I guess you’re right—we can’t make it. You see all these things in me that you don’t consider o.k. and I see all these things in you that I consider unfair. all right.” Then jumps to late Aug. 1982 catching up on things, about Ham on Rye, had to call Michael Montfort to get her P.O. Box, “I drink good wine now which is better for my health,” “I don’t need a woman. I can die alone with my 3 cats. They’ll find me on the stairway one day, stiffened as a board in my torn shorts. It’s worth it…[signed] Hank.” Also, 5 poems, one titled snake and spiders with inked note on verso: “Linda I love you so much – terribly – that even the word doesn’t fit, sense. You are the best thing that ever happened to me – no matter now. L[ove] Buk.” Other poems include: girl in a miniskirt reading the Bible outside my window (2-7-71); Poem for an Errand Boy in the Year 1941; bullshit pain; and Hey, Dolly. And a 1 leaf “Song of the Liberated Male” with quote by Buk’s character Henry Chinaski followed by dialogue (not signed). * Blue binder contains 30 typed leaves of writings all relating to Linda King, including an early draft manuscript chapter titled: The Great Lover, on 14 carbon pages with scattered holograph corrections by Bukowski. This is an early version of material that would later become part of his 1978 novel Women. Also, 8 signed poems (7 are dated, all but one are carbon however those are the only ones known to be signed and dated), and includes: Robinson Jeffers and Love (12-3-72) [where Bukowski considers suicide - revealing how he really feels about Linda, the "sculptress"]; A Bit of Light for the Toad (8-15-73) on 3 pages (carbon plus 6 lines added in type signed by Bukowski on final page signed over the type), which helps sum up their relationship issues; finish (9-5-73) on 3 pages; you’ll be moaning and groaning in your poems (7-9-74); I made a mistake (2-7-76) type not carbon; love (9-23-67); head jobs (6-28-78) on 5 pages; and Love Song (for L.K.) (not dated). |
| Incredible intimate details between Charles Bukowski and Linda King, these are the entire known surviving Bukowski love letters to Linda King. The only extensive love letters Bukowski has ever written of this nature; truly a unique and important archive. The core of Bukowski’s undying love for Linda written in the language of true lovers using extremely graphic descriptions. Because of possible objections from the estate, these letters may remain unpublished. The earliest dated letters, which go more than half way in, describes in full their sex life and Bukowski’s love for Linda. She was his great love after leaving the post office and embarking on a full-time writing career. She gave ample inspiration for many of his greatest writings. She is also fictionally portrayed as Lydia in his major novel Women. In 1973, Linda accompanied Bukowski to the famed San Francisco City Lights poetry reading filmed by Taylor Hackford. This is also the same Linda referred to in the 2003 John Dullaghan documentary film, Born Into This, where Bukowski breaks down in pain about his past love. In these letters here, Bukowski also writes about his previously failed marriage, his concerns about his daughter, suicide, poetry readings, other authors, drinking, gambling at the horse races, etc., etc., etc. |
| Condition: |
| Approximately 38 various leaves with chiefly tan dampstains ranging to very minor to affecting nearly the whole page, a few offsetting spots, some with wrinkles, light edge wear, both envelopes worn; second leaf of Feb. 4 1971 letter torn in half & tape repaired; some leaves just good, others very good or fine, but most are near fine. |
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