Mack Derouac

[BicycleTragedy]

Thanks for taking the bait, sucker. You're making this too easy. It's like shooting pompous twats in a barrel.

Sure, I took the bait, and I knew it was bait, because I've read enough of your posts to know you're too intelligent to have innocently and unknowingly left such an open-door comment.

If I hadn't taken the bait, I can assume you'd have left an equally snide remark in the opposite direction.

Look the point is, I know you run this show or at least have a heavy hand in it and obviously you are very intelligent and much more knowledgeable about Bukowski than me. I'd like to think I'm learning very quickly, given everything I've absorbed over the last ten or eleven months, but I'll defer to you, and in the meantime continue to enjoy picking up everything I can get by the guy because -and maybe this is all we have in common- I love his writing, which is, or should be, the only reason any of us are here.

YOU are the one who has gotten defensive, initiated insults, baited me, all that crap. Which is fine: it's the internet. But what joy do you get out of it? You're a mod here, so it's OK to be a troll since you sit in the control room?

Griffith doesn't have a YMCA. Gary does, and Hammond has two, but not Griffith.

Run along. You are dismissed.

But I like it here, can I stay? And do you have a vacancy for a back-scrubber?

 

[james]

;););)

 

[BicycleTragedy]

He shouldn't have left the show, but that fuck shouldn't have thrown the bottle. So I don't know.

 

[mjp]

YOU are the one who has gotten defensive...

¿qué? I've just been cracking jokes. You must be thinking of another forum.

But I like it here, can I stay? And do you have a vacancy for a back-scrubber?

I'm old, but I can still reach my back. I could use a ball washer, though (you know...like in golf). But if you can handle the job - it's a big one - it's yours.

 

[Gerard K H Love]

So, problem solved. Now let's get back to the stimulating conversations.

 

[mjp]

The subject of being my ball washer may be stimulating to some. Maybe someone even wants the job, but now you are discouraging them, like some sort of naysayer or Negative Nelly!

There is no place for negativity on these discussion forums! I thought that was clear. If you want to talk shit, go to Literary Mary. I think they even have a forum called "Talk Shitty To Me." It's somewhere between the pog collecting and bicycle repair forums.

 

[JimmyLane]

I think Bukowski saw Kerouac as competition, a threat to his market share, much as he apparently dismissed Ginsberg for the same reasons. I don't take it too seriously.

Nothing Bukowski could say about Jack would lessen my high opinion of Kerouac. Jack could write sloppy shit (as could Bukowski), but when he was on his game, he was great. Tristessa is a pure classic.

Tristessa, hell yeah! I'm also thinking Subterraneans, except for the big glaring prose spots that go windy-obscuro---or is that prose-poetry, I'm not sure? Somebody here mentioned Vanity Of Duluoz being a gem---I'll go with that and add, if I may with some reservation, Kerouac's The Scroll Version, if only for a gander at the actually unedited first sentence---and, if we're to take one of the writers of the intro, comparing it to a car engine that misfires before taking off. The myth of Dean and Sal alive and well in Twilight Series-America, ahhh.

"I first met met Neal not long after my father died..."

I too think ol' Buk was being a sort of sourpuss about Jack.

 

[Koya Volkovich]

I know Kerouac wasnt greatly appreciated by some of you guys on here...

(by the way...i'm back...have been reading for months working night shift but havent been fussed about replying!)

but goddamnit...i love kerouac...picked OTR up at 16, read the fuck out of it, read The town and the city...which i also like...then Dharma Bums, Big Sur, Visions of Cody and so forth...

Kerouacs early stuff is amazing at a certain time in your life, and i think if you read it then it stays with you as you get older...granted i'm moving onto his more 'out there' stuff...but it still sticks with you...

I just read 'catcher in the rye'....i may have like dit had i read it a few years ago...to be honest i thought it was balls...but im not going to piss someone else off because they like it...

MJP, i know i dont have any kind of standing in this place, but i think you've gone in too hard and too fast on poor Bicycle...most of us here are used to your brand of humour and general demeanour...seems to me if i had gotten a MJPing when i just arrived i'd probably just shit myself and run...

ANYWAY.........

hi again everyone...long time no see...


Oh and most importantly...

Bicycle....just let it go....the guys on here are sound...

it just takes a little time to get used to the dynamics...

As i think all the others would agree

(some of us still havent done that..hence my 45 posts...but that could be the excessive drinking and night working that i occupy my time with since i joined!)

Koya

 

[poptop]

From what I recall, I never got the impression that Bukowski considered Kerouac a bad writer or a competitor. What he objected to in one of his Free Press or Open City columns was the way Kerouac had put Neal up on such a g.d. idealistic pedestal - the unrealistic hero worship of the Beats, and consequently the pressure for Neal to conform to that literary distortion in the public eye for the rest of his life. I don't think Buk ever forgave Jack for setting Neal up like that, and the impact of Jack's book on his friend was evidently something Kerouac never considered, perhaps because he never thought the book would become the sensation it did. But it looked to me that his glorification of Neal became a suffocating prison.

I think the closest Buk ever got to the spirit of the Beats (while never being one himself) is that he had a soft spot for Neal. Right before Neal's death, Buk ran into him, shared a beer and a ride around the block, and soon wrote what I remember as a heartfelt, moving remembrance. At least it was real, and I thought it better than anything Jack or any of the other Beat writers could have done. That was the strange irony of it all: Buk was the one life had called upon to put the words down best, and the obit turned Neal back into a regular human being like the rest of us, rather than the personality-distorted, inflated-caricature that Neal had to suffer under after On the Road became such a surprising best-seller in the late "50s.

I myself was never much impressed with Neal, through no fault of his own; I simply felt that he'd been forced into being the consummate Beat prototype, the spontaneous adventurer, fearless at all times. It was painful to see how uncomfortable he was with the role (captured on film in an interview with a gushing Ginsberg), and the pressure of it all may have shortened his life - a fact that I feel Bukowski took great notice of out of fondness for Neal and their singular meeting. It's one of the best pieces I remember because you could see how far Bukowski was grounded in the humanity of reality, at least when compared to the glorification of Neal by the Beats. Nevertheless, I never considered each of these two great writers as having to be mutually exclusive of each other... I enjoyed them both tremendously for their flaws as well as their strengths.

 

[Stavrogin]

From what I recall, I never got the impression that Bukowski considered Kerouac a bad writer or a competitor.

I may have read wrong but "furry flotsam" brings to mind shit long unflushed (I take that as criticism of his writing, though i could be wrong). Personally speaking, Salinger resonated in grade school, Kerouac resonated in college, Bukowski resonates beyond. All three have their place.

 

[Dizzmatic]

MJP, I just signed up, I can already tell that Bukowski's deceased dick is so far up your ass that you can't see straight.

 

[mjp]

6,586 threads, you "just sign up" and head to one that's two years old just to try to insult me. Imagine that. And completely out of the blue. Incredible. What are the odds?

 

[Rekrab]

Why waste time with niceties?

 

[Dizzmatic]

Nope. Just started reading "Hollywood." Saw the chapter about Mack Derouac and searched on the internet and I found the forum with the first result.

But from this thread alone I can tell that your Bukowski worship is disgusting.

 

[Stavrogin]

Well then, kindly fuck off. Or unkindly if that suits you.

 

[Dizzmatic]

Why? What does any of this have to do with you?

 

[bospress.net]

are you here for any reason other than to troll?

 

[Dizzmatic]

I'm a Bukowski fan.......

 

[bospress.net]

A lot of Bukowski fans are not into forums. You can enjoy him without being on this forum. If the plan is to just insult people here, your career will be a short one.

Best,
Bill

 

[Dizzmatic]

I'll stay on the forum as long as want, thanks though. As far as my career goes, I never planned on having a career on a message board. And obviously, MJP gets along just fine insulting people, but I guess that doesn't matter as long as you worship Bukowski to very unhealthy levels. Still, I wonder what any of this has to do with you.

 

[bospress.net]

when you leave is not up to you...

 

[Dizzmatic]

Yes, it is. Unless you or someone plans on banning me on no grounds, that's fine. I came in here to learn more about Bukowski's dislike for "Mack Derouac," and contribute to the topic, but noticed a certain poster's massive Bukowski dick riding, and decided to say something. Still don't understand why you're suddenly involved...

 

[bospress.net]

I'm just trying to help out a young Bukowski fan and steer you in the right direction and away from the evil world of drugs and loose women. I'm nice like that.

 

[Dizzmatic]

Way too late for that

Tristessa, hell yeah! I'm also thinking Subterraneans, except for the big glaring prose spots that go windy-obscuro---or is that prose-poetry, I'm not sure? Somebody here mentioned Vanity Of Duluoz being a gem---I'll go with that and add, if I may with some reservation, Kerouac's The Scroll Version, if only for a gander at the actually unedited first sentence---and, if we're to take one of the writers of the intro, comparing it to a car engine that misfires before taking off. The myth of Dean and Sal alive and well in Twilight Series-America, ahhh.

"I first met met Neal not long after my father died..."

I too think ol' Buk was being a sort of sourpuss about Jack.

I agree, I don't understand what the hate is for.

 

[bospress.net]

then just don't do more drugs than you can afford and use protection and you'll be ok...

 

[mjp]

I came in here to [...] contribute to the topic...

Well, you're doing a great job so far! Your "I agree" has crystallized everything, and now the whole subject really makes sense. I hope you stay here forever, and clear everything up for everyone.

I just wonder though, if you can spare the time away from your awesome blog where you write middle-school-report-quality reviews of 40 year old records. That worries me a bit. Hopefully you can do both. I will pray for your success, Goober.

 

[hoochmonkey9]

Kermit, not everyone likes Kerouac's writing. mjp doesn't. Bukowski didn't. I don't. these guys don't:

get over it. and yourself. realize when people don't like what you like it's not a big deal. like what you like and don't be an evangelist, it's annoying.

and if you had read the thread closely, you would've realized why mjp was so vocal in his "hate" of Kerouac.

 

[mjp]

mmmmm... cheetos

Right?

 

[Dizzmatic]

Well, you're doing a great job so far! Your "I agree" has crystallized everything, and now the whole subject really makes sense. I hope you stay here forever, and clear everything up for everyone.

I just wonder though, if you can spare the time away from your awesome blog where you write middle-school-report-quality reviews of 40 year old records. That worries me a bit. Hopefully you can do both. I will pray for your success, Goober.

Well, realizing now that this thread is a little more than dated, there is not much of a conversation going on about the topic. I would be happy to discuss Kerouac and Bukowski with anyone.

As for my blog, thanks a lot. Each of those posts took maybe 2 or 3 minutes each to write, and are put there for fun, nothing more, but in spite of that I have an extensive online audience that enjoys my middle school posts very much, over 1,000 visits this month, and counting.

I do find it disturbing that you would take time away from your thorough jerking off sessions with Bukowski photos you found on google images, to research more about me. I'm flattered, but again, deeply disturbed.

Kermit, not everyone likes Kerouac's writing. mjp doesn't. Bukowski didn't. I don't. these guys don't:

get over it. and yourself. realize when people don't like what you like it's not a big deal. like what you like and don't be an evangelist, it's annoying.

and if you had read the thread closely, you would've realized why mjp was so vocal in his "hate" of Kerouac.

You clearly missed the point. I never once attacked Bukowski for his "hate" of Kerouac, even though I don't find much grounds for it. You must have me confused with MJP, who is such a devout Bukowski dick rider, that he is unable to appreciate any writer that his god Bukowski found fault with.

With every new book I read by him, Bukowski is rising higher and higher on the list of my all time favorite writers. I have been burning the last of my paycheck on Ham on Rye, Post Office, Women, and now Hollywood (which is a fucking outstanding book so far). But at the end of the day, I still think Kerouac was a better writer than him.

I did read the thread closely, and I still don't realize why mjp is so vocal in his hate of Kerouac, other than maximum idol worship, of course.

Oh wait! Kerouac didn't work odd 9-5 jobs like Bukowski, he lived with his mother at the end of his life. He liked Eisenhower...

I see now, nevermind.

 

[hoochmonkey9]

no.