For what it is worth, William Burroughs (Naked Lunch etc.) was the grandchild of the founder of the Burroughs computer company. As far as I know, the later Bill didn't profit much, if anything, from this.
So yeah, seems like despite some unfortunate liquidation choices by his parents just before the depression, they still retained enough wealth to make certain lifestyle choices easy...
> His parents, upon his graduation, had decided to give him a monthly allowance of $200 out of their earnings from Cobblestone Gardens, a substantial sum in those days.
> It was enough to keep him going, and indeed it guaranteed his survival for the next twenty-five years, arriving with welcome regularity. The allowance was a ticket to freedom; it allowed him to live where he wanted to and to forgo employment. [1^]
And $200 in 1937 gets you a fair bit of freedom (roughly $4500 in today's money) - sure, it's not private jet money but notable. And would have gone pretty far in Mexico and Tangier.
It's a long time ago that I read about this, but I think he got money from his parents, who owned something of a tourist shop. I think they divested any shares they had in Burroughs long before this. In any case Bill (Naked Lunch) didn't have any shares in the company, and more or less parasitised his parents - but who amongst us can say that we haven't done that? certainly not me.
Divested doesn’t mean they didn’t inherit their wealth from it. Most people do not parasitize from their parents after reaching adulthood; it is in fact the status quo. You might want to be a bit more embarrassed about it.
Burroughs was also one of the great comic monologuists, in March 1975 he was asked by Harper’s Magazine (along with others including Ronald Reagan, who had just finished his last term as governor of California) to contribute an essay on the topic “When Did You Stop Wanting to be President”, it’s a funny essay but delivered best as a monologue: https://youtu.be/ir0JDok2TDE?si=W7JExK7VeMbL9Ky-
The US has a lot of people that were from affluent families and sort of drifted away. Another fascinating person is Huntington Hartford. He inherited most of the wealth of the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. He funded the Gallery of Modern Art at Columbus Circle in NYC in the 1960's. He later became a heroin addict. His daughter found him in NYC being looked after by someone who was supporting them by selling off his art, one painting at a time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Hartford
I was going off the fact the article linked to an archive page of the New York Public Library, so I assumed they had some connection to New York and decided to make a pun when naming their kid.
Its more common than you'd think. I used to know a guy whose middle name is "Brusch" and last name is "Rohde"..."Bush Roadie".
Off topic, somewhat: Bukowski’s work - especially the late work - will always be bound, for me, to a boy I knew when I was 16/17 who I’ll call Martin.
Martin was very thin, short, with an already-receding hairline, flaking skin, and tiny, black, always-shifting eyes.
Martin was also very mean: a defense against the bullying I’m certain he endured most of his life. My best friend and I tried to hang out with him. We were weird kids too, and liked strange people, but Martin would never be pleasant or sincere with us. Sometimes he wouldn’t even tolerate our company.
I remember he loved horseracing, and gambling on it (underage).
One day, at a teenage house party - some parents out of town - Martin got far too drunk. He was lying on his side, vomiting onto a friend’s parents’ upholstery, sobbing. He was sobbing because he had been in love for years with a family friend - a pretty girl who was in one of my classes - but who would never, ever love him back, because he was so hideous, and because his personality, or the surface of it, was so abhorrent. That probably he should just kill himself, he thought, etc etc.
I’d just read a late Bukowski poetry collection and loved it the way you love Bukowski when you’re 16/17. I remember it was ‘The Last Night of the Earth’, so it would have contained the poems the article talks about Bukowski typing into his new computer.
I’d read that collection, and the yearning - from a place of perceived ugliness - and the beauty in that - I guess moved me, and made me think of Martin.
So I bought Martin a copy (it was expensive - £18, I think, which was a lot more back then, especially if you’re 17) and quietly gave it to him. I wanted him to see what I saw: that there was a nobility and dignity and a romance in his adoration of this girl, and in his ugliness.
Martin took the book, confused at the gift (kind of a gay thing to do), and then I didn’t see him for weeks. As if he was avoiding me.
When I finally did see Martin, he was so angry. So angry that it surprised me. He was a mean guy but I’d never seen him quite so angry.
He was angry that I’d seen him in the poems. He was angry at the poems themselves. He said he’d never been more insulted in his life.
I stopped trying to hang out with Martin so much after that. I felt bad that I’d hurt his feelings so much.
I check in every year or so using social media. Not to talk, just to look. The girl Martin was in love with is married now. Martin himself has grown into his age: he looked middle-aged then and it suits him better now that he’s approaching it. I think he does something in insurance.
I’ve always wondered: how many of the poems did Martin read? Was he so hurt because of Bukowski’s ugly author photo, and the content of the first few? And whether he read them or not, did he ever return to them, and find them beautiful? Or did Martin just throw the book away?
I hope he didn’t. Or, if he did, I hope he found another way than books of poetry to see himself better, now, compared to how he saw himself then.
>> On Christmas Day, 1990, Charles Bukowski received a Macintosh IIsi computer and a laser printer from his wife, Linda. The computer utilized the 6.0.7 operating system and was installed with the MacWrite II word processing program
Bukowski was born in 1920. Lived to be 73 years old.
So, the article is true, he used a word processor for the last few years of his life. Those poems, with a few exceptions, were not the good ones.
I was under the impression that much of his work was not "the good ones." He was popular among the fringe, mostly because it was "cool" to be a part of the non-conformist subculture. I read some of his stuff in the 1970's and it never grabbed me.
It's cool though that he adapted to computers. Some more modern authors still won't touch them.
"Ham on Rye" resonated with me as an adolescent. Interestingly the German title is "Das Schlimmste kommt noch", meaning "The worst is yet to come". I also liked "Post Office".
For what it is worth, William Burroughs (Naked Lunch etc.) was the grandchild of the founder of the Burroughs computer company. As far as I know, the later Bill didn't profit much, if anything, from this.
I dunno - seemed to low key have some casual wealth, being the one Beat who was always in a nice suit, had an extensive drug habit...
and all those trips to Interzone don't pay for 'emselves!
So yeah, seems like despite some unfortunate liquidation choices by his parents just before the depression, they still retained enough wealth to make certain lifestyle choices easy...
> His parents, upon his graduation, had decided to give him a monthly allowance of $200 out of their earnings from Cobblestone Gardens, a substantial sum in those days.
> It was enough to keep him going, and indeed it guaranteed his survival for the next twenty-five years, arriving with welcome regularity. The allowance was a ticket to freedom; it allowed him to live where he wanted to and to forgo employment. [1^]
And $200 in 1937 gets you a fair bit of freedom (roughly $4500 in today's money) - sure, it's not private jet money but notable. And would have gone pretty far in Mexico and Tangier.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs
[2]: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1937?amount=200
It's a long time ago that I read about this, but I think he got money from his parents, who owned something of a tourist shop. I think they divested any shares they had in Burroughs long before this. In any case Bill (Naked Lunch) didn't have any shares in the company, and more or less parasitised his parents - but who amongst us can say that we haven't done that? certainly not me.
Divested doesn’t mean they didn’t inherit their wealth from it. Most people do not parasitize from their parents after reaching adulthood; it is in fact the status quo. You might want to be a bit more embarrassed about it.
Not parasiting as an adult from one's parents? Certainly many not only here. Giving back is more the name of the game.
For those who want to get a feel for Burroughs dark art, here he is reading his poem, "The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGJ7Z6AEzpY
Burroughs was also one of the great comic monologuists, in March 1975 he was asked by Harper’s Magazine (along with others including Ronald Reagan, who had just finished his last term as governor of California) to contribute an essay on the topic “When Did You Stop Wanting to be President”, it’s a funny essay but delivered best as a monologue: https://youtu.be/ir0JDok2TDE?si=W7JExK7VeMbL9Ky-
The US has a lot of people that were from affluent families and sort of drifted away. Another fascinating person is Huntington Hartford. He inherited most of the wealth of the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. He funded the Gallery of Modern Art at Columbus Circle in NYC in the 1960's. He later became a heroin addict. His daughter found him in NYC being looked after by someone who was supporting them by selling off his art, one painting at a time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Hartford
I assume the name is a pun on Williamsburg.
Um, why?
I was going off the fact the article linked to an archive page of the New York Public Library, so I assumed they had some connection to New York and decided to make a pun when naming their kid.
Its more common than you'd think. I used to know a guy whose middle name is "Brusch" and last name is "Rohde"..."Bush Roadie".
Off topic, somewhat: Bukowski’s work - especially the late work - will always be bound, for me, to a boy I knew when I was 16/17 who I’ll call Martin.
Martin was very thin, short, with an already-receding hairline, flaking skin, and tiny, black, always-shifting eyes.
Martin was also very mean: a defense against the bullying I’m certain he endured most of his life. My best friend and I tried to hang out with him. We were weird kids too, and liked strange people, but Martin would never be pleasant or sincere with us. Sometimes he wouldn’t even tolerate our company.
I remember he loved horseracing, and gambling on it (underage).
One day, at a teenage house party - some parents out of town - Martin got far too drunk. He was lying on his side, vomiting onto a friend’s parents’ upholstery, sobbing. He was sobbing because he had been in love for years with a family friend - a pretty girl who was in one of my classes - but who would never, ever love him back, because he was so hideous, and because his personality, or the surface of it, was so abhorrent. That probably he should just kill himself, he thought, etc etc.
I’d just read a late Bukowski poetry collection and loved it the way you love Bukowski when you’re 16/17. I remember it was ‘The Last Night of the Earth’, so it would have contained the poems the article talks about Bukowski typing into his new computer.
I’d read that collection, and the yearning - from a place of perceived ugliness - and the beauty in that - I guess moved me, and made me think of Martin.
So I bought Martin a copy (it was expensive - £18, I think, which was a lot more back then, especially if you’re 17) and quietly gave it to him. I wanted him to see what I saw: that there was a nobility and dignity and a romance in his adoration of this girl, and in his ugliness.
Martin took the book, confused at the gift (kind of a gay thing to do), and then I didn’t see him for weeks. As if he was avoiding me.
When I finally did see Martin, he was so angry. So angry that it surprised me. He was a mean guy but I’d never seen him quite so angry.
He was angry that I’d seen him in the poems. He was angry at the poems themselves. He said he’d never been more insulted in his life.
I stopped trying to hang out with Martin so much after that. I felt bad that I’d hurt his feelings so much.
I check in every year or so using social media. Not to talk, just to look. The girl Martin was in love with is married now. Martin himself has grown into his age: he looked middle-aged then and it suits him better now that he’s approaching it. I think he does something in insurance.
I’ve always wondered: how many of the poems did Martin read? Was he so hurt because of Bukowski’s ugly author photo, and the content of the first few? And whether he read them or not, did he ever return to them, and find them beautiful? Or did Martin just throw the book away?
I hope he didn’t. Or, if he did, I hope he found another way than books of poetry to see himself better, now, compared to how he saw himself then.
What a beautiful story, thanks for sharing.
>> On Christmas Day, 1990, Charles Bukowski received a Macintosh IIsi computer and a laser printer from his wife, Linda. The computer utilized the 6.0.7 operating system and was installed with the MacWrite II word processing program
Bukowski was born in 1920. Lived to be 73 years old.
So, the article is true, he used a word processor for the last few years of his life. Those poems, with a few exceptions, were not the good ones.
However worse those poems were, they were made worser Bukowski poems by posthumous editing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski#Poetry_edit...
I was under the impression that much of his work was not "the good ones." He was popular among the fringe, mostly because it was "cool" to be a part of the non-conformist subculture. I read some of his stuff in the 1970's and it never grabbed me.
It's cool though that he adapted to computers. Some more modern authors still won't touch them.
https://mashable.com/archive/modern-writers-technology
>> He was popular among the fringe, mostly because it was "cool" to be a part of the non-conformist subculture
He was popular among me, because when I worked in a factory doing manual labor in the 90's, his poems described the life I was living.
It was neither fringe, nor "cool", nor non-comformist, nor part of a subculture.
He was a good writer who wrote about what I was going through.
Burroughs was just fucking crazy. I liked his writing too. Not the cut-up stuff.
Exterminator!
Burroughs also wrote a lovely book on cats he met.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_Inside
I always liked that one. Naked Lunch grew on me, but was a bit tough when I read it for the first time. I was 13 back then.
bukowski wrote over 5,000 poems. he was bound to have some good ones and plenty of bad ones. also had a couple o' good novel/a hits.
"Ham on Rye" resonated with me as an adolescent. Interestingly the German title is "Das Schlimmste kommt noch", meaning "The worst is yet to come". I also liked "Post Office".
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