Dear Purple Stickpin (I love that handle - one of Buk's most hilarious rants was about that purple stickpin fellow that was involved with one of his women - I think the wealthy Texan, brain sluggish, cannot remember),
Sorry about the ALL CAPS (it is indeed rude - but you are right, I am apoplectic about it, especially since I've been an apologist for Martin and I now realize that my perspective was, shall we say, somewhat distorted. Hat's off to MJP for shining the bright light where it needs to be pointed.
About Bruckner...he is definitely an acquired taste. Mahler is much more accessible. What Nowak did to Bruckner was eliminate (I almost used all caps, fie for shame - then I realized that there are tools here for emphasis - well duh!) the sections that he thought were superfluous. Now see, there's nothing wrong with doing one's own arrangement. Webern did that with Bach, for example. But the cards are on the table, so to speak. What makes Martin's meddling so malicious is that he is passing the poems of as being genuine Bukowski, when he has actually changed them. That is more than just plain wrong. It is blasphemous. Nowak may have changed some of the interpretative markings in the score, perhaps. For example, changing a mezzo-piano to a subito piano (medium soft to very soft), or perhaps a tempo marking. That would also be inappropriate, of course. But the worst thing is to simply cut what you don't like, and pass it off as genuine Bruckner. Same applies to Martin's shennanigans. What I saw in MJP's comparison made my blood pressure jump like a bottle rocket. Example: The original reads, "I don't suffer getting these words down" and the "revised" version reads "I don't suffer serious artistic cramps." That does not sound like Bukowski at all! That's not his voice! Holy shit! Christ, there goes my blood pressure again! I must say, I missed all of this, because I own very few of the posthumous publications. I was well aware that there were tons of poems that were left unpublished, but I somehow figured that the best ones made it to press before Bukowksi left us. Now I'm wondering about that. And yes, it does bother me that John Martin didn't imbibe. Not that he had to be a heavy drinker...but...teetotaler? I wonder how those meetings between them went? On the other side, of course, I know that Buk and Linda were mighty grateful to Martin for his remarkable business acumen. While the big sales were indeed in Europe, Martin's enterprise built a strong foundation - moreso than City Lights or Loujon could have ever come close to doing. But damn, couldn't he have just left well enough alone with the content of Buk's poems? Very disappointing, to put it mildly.
Well, I didn't say much about Bruckner. I'm a trumpet player, so one of things that brings me to Bruckner (and Wagner for that matter) is their use of brass on the orchestration pallet. Nothing against the string boys, I like that stuff too. BTW, Ravel is considered one of the finest orchestrators that ever walked this planet. Even the small ensemble stuff is tremendous. Check out his string quartet - do it with a tall Belgian abbey ale. You'll enjoy the experience, trust me.
