Downloading

[TowerOfSong]

Bukowski's great, and definitely worth reading; but it helps if you have a strong stomach and a Black Sense of Humour. 
I enjoyed 'Women' , 'Tales of Ordinary Madness' and 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man'.
Around the time of 'Barfly', another couple of films were made based on his stories, which were probably better; 'Tales...' and 'Crazy Love'. Haven't seen anything made since then.

[robweb]

Urpal - Bukowski for starters would be:

Post Office
Women
Factotum

And then read

Ham on Rye - you can then really understand how he became like he was. It's my favourite book by him/

There is a Bukowski reader that's OK called Run With The Hunted. I would ignore most of the poetry.

After Bukowski you can then try Ask the Dust by John Fante. He was one of Bukowski's heroes

[robweb]

when we all know PC is a right-wing invention and doesn't actually exist 

Armando Iannucci in the Observer last week:

"Though I'm as against restrictions on free speech as anyone, I've always felt that political correctness is mostly correct. It's the reason we don't use words such as spastic, nigger and poof in railway station Tannoy announcements."

Nicely put though I am ashamed to say how much I regret this now I think about it.

Did you see the Pryor article in Word?

[Adam]

After Bukowski you can then try Ask the Dust by John Fante. He was one of Bukowski's heroes

Fante is one of my favourites.  i've read a biog that inevitably confirms him as a dastardly boozer but the novels are wonderful.  'Ask the dust' is the 3rd of 4 books about the same character Arturo Bandini.   You can now buy all four in a single wrist-knacking volume, in the UK at least, or go for the 4 in sequence -

wait until spring bandini
the road to los angeles
ask the dust
dreams of bunker hill

1930s LA is something of an obsession of mine.  I've read a lot about it and around it and can confirm that these really are great books.  They're on the money, particularly the last two.

[Cassiel]

 

1930s LA is something of an obsession of mine.  I've read a lot about it and around it and can confirm that these really are great books.  They're on the money, particularly the last two.

Hotwalker would be right up your street then Adam, I reckon.

Ask the Dust is great. read somewhere that is being turned into a film, and bizarrely they have recreated 1930's LA in ...er, Capetown. Good news is that it's written and directed by Robert Towne (Fante always wanted him to do it, pace Chinatown). The rest of you look away now...

...Colin Farrell is playing Arturo Bandini.

 

[Urpal]

Hotwalker would be right up your street then Adam, I reckon.

I was gonna say exactly the same thing.

Why the particular fascination with 1930's LA, adam? Apart from "why not?" of course.

Thanks for the Bukowski/Fante reading guides everyone. At this rate, we'll soon be able to compile a Triffids forum favourite writers poll. I don't suppose many fan sites are so literary as to contemplate such a thing.

[Adam]

You know, I had such a heavy weekend, I don't even remember posting that    It just about stands up the next day but I'd remove the 1930s qualifier.  I'm just fascinated by Los Angeles, everything about it, mostly arising from the fact that it shouldn't exist.  It defies all the laws of human settlement - no natural water supply and a dozen different ways for it to be wiped out at any minute but it's still grown from a few thousand people to 16 million since 1850.  The whole thing is built on arrogance and criminality and is heading for disaster and no one seems to care.  I love it.

[Urpal]

Interestingly Leonard Cohen as an LA resident made a similar observation in typically poetic terms in an interview with Jools Holland on Later about 10-15 years ago. I'll see if I can find the tape and post a transcript of his thoughts.

Switching to San Francisco for a moment, I watched "Dig!" for the first time over the weekend and would recommend it to anybody interested in music (even if, like me, only casually interested in Dandy Warhols/Brian Jonestown Massacre). Side-splittingly funny - sometimes intentionally. Oddly, I thought it was the best ad that BJM could have hoped for (despite painting them as a bunch of loveable from a safe distance headcases). A definite contender for nomination as a favourite zany comedy under the "Another fine mess..." thread.

[Urpal]

As promised earlier, this was Leonard Cohen's eulogy to Los Angeles extemporised during a BBC TV interview about 15 years ago:

"I love Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a terrific place to live, you know, because it’s right on the edge of destruction. The ground itself is trembling, the landscape is about to blow apart, the social fabric is about to tear and many novelists have documented the fragmentation of the psyche. It’s a place right at the edge of things, where everything is about to fall apart; and it’s a very nourishing place to be for that reason".

[Adam]

Yep, that's it, the point about the authors is a good one.  Fante, Chandler, Ellroy, Nathaniel West, Bukowski, plenty more I can't think of right now; loads of great restless twitchy literature that couldn't have come from anywhere else.

There's a couple of really good books by a sociologist at UCLA called Mike Davis, 'City of Quartz' and 'Ecology of Fear'.  the fomer ties up a history of the local entertainment industry with a social history of the city; the latter looks at the many ways by which LA could be destroyed and how this prospect looms large in the arts produced locally.  Not for the faint hearted reader but really useful if you want to try and unravel the thread LC is pulling at there.

[robweb]

...Colin Farrell is playing Arturo Bandini.

 

Ahhh  fuckit.

[robweb]

You may also want to read the fantastic Iceberg Slim novels - Pimp and Trick Baby in particular. Tales from the 'hood - written in LA but based in 40s Chicago. Iceberg is a touchstone for a lot of west coast rappers.

[Urpal]

Urpal - Bukowski for starters would be:

Post Office
Women
Factotum

I've been reading Post Office over Christmas...

He could be called a gutter poet or something like that.  He documents the seamier side of drinking and wastrel living, but from an odd perspective.  He liked it.  There's no Orwellian drive to expose how awful things are for the working man.  He simply took joy in women and drinking and bar fights and living like a bum. All the stuff that people now make a fortune writing about overcoming, he revelled in. 

None of this would make him interesting at all, were his writing shit.  It isn't.

That's a great summary, syd.

He seems to lie somewhere between Hubert Selby and Jim Thompson to me....and, unlike most of his tall storied experiences, that's not an easy lay

The first person character of his novel occupies roughly the same antithetitical comic relationship to the Big Lebowski as James Bond to Austin Powers.

[potr]

i am totally guilty of downloading.
But i feel justified in doing so. basically because i download to reproduce my vinyl collection, which being poor, i am unable to convert to a portable format at this point in time.

If i again become rich and can afford an aletrnative(paying) option i would.

I wonder how people that bought cassettes which broke and/or vinyl in this way also feel.

[Eke]

Australian court in shock sensible decision shock.

Old news to some of you I guess but just made it to the BBC news over here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8498100.stm