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5 years ago
today i bought my first digital camera so i could photograph
Uz Jsme Doma at the
Knitting Factory in New York City. i've been doing this on-and-off chronicle
ever since. today, life was sweet. sold a bunch of
stuff in the morning, then spent a lot of time on
the couch reading Pulp by Charles Bukowski. i first picked this up a year
ago and didn't like it. i think that's because i'd just read his powerful
autobiographical novels post office and ham on rye and wanted
more of the same. pulp, his last novel, was completed shortly before his
death in 1994 and is more a work of fantasy--an absurd detective tale written
in classic hardboiled private eye style. it's a pageturner, and i'd love
to turn it into a movie. it starts when Lady Death hires private dick Nick
Belane to ascertain the identity of someone she thinks is Celine, who has
somehow escaped her grasp. Bukowski's Celine is hilarious, a master of the
put-down. more clients follow, in the best film noir tradition, but with
bizarre and humorous twists. Belane's association with Lady Death proves
beneficial a number of times, but it is not without its price. I couldn't
put this down and the ending is a gutwrencher. Running gags like Belane's
"high" fee ($6 an hour) and his inability to get served in bars without a
hassle prove Buk's masterful comic touch, while slice of life digressions
take the reader places few writers go. for instance, a space alien laments:
"The earth. Smog, murder, the poisoned air, the poisoned water, the poisoned
food, the hatred, the hopelessness, everything. The only beautiful thing
about the earth is the animals and now they are being killed off, soon they
will be gone except for pet rats and race horses. It's so sad, no wonder
you drink so much." dedicated to "bad writing," pulp is anything but. |
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