The campaign to save Bukowski's De Longpre bungalow

Gerard K H Love

Appreciate your friends
Seriously, you new guys need to look around at the wealth of information that exists right here at the tips of your fingers in this web site. Please do not take it for granted. I sometimes forget how lucky I am to have access to this.;)

It's a good thing.
 
authorial intent counts for nothing

But not everyone was thrilled to see the home landmarked. The poet's widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, said she did not think her husband would have appreciated seeing a fuss made over the house he rented.

with all due respect to linda lee, and to bukowski himself more importantly, their opinion is noted but not relevant. a published author loses control of his work the minute it is out there in the public domain. he's sold it, it's gone. people buy it, they live it, they breathe it. it becomes theirs. no-one can tell me not to travel thousands of miles to look at a house one of my favourite authors lived in just because the author would not have liked it.
for example, leonard cohen realised when he heard vietnam servicemen singing "suzanne" that he no longer 'owned' the song.
like it or not, you can't keep artistic expression (and associated ephemera and locations) precious if it is out there and means something to the audience for which it was most certainly intended.
 

Johannes

Founding member
But not everyone was thrilled to see the home landmarked. The poet's widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, said she did not think her husband would have appreciated seeing a fuss made over the house he rented.
with all due respect to linda lee, and to bukowski himself more importantly, their opinion is noted but not relevant. a published author loses control of his work the minute it is out there in the public domain. he's sold it, it's gone. people buy it, they live it, they breathe it. it becomes theirs. no-one can tell me not to travel thousands of miles to look at a house one of my favourite authors lived in just because the author would not have liked it.
for example, leonard cohen realised when he heard vietnam servicemen singing "suzanne" that he no longer 'owned' the song.
like it or not, you can't keep artistic expression (and associated ephemera and locations) precious if it is out there and means something to the audience for which it was most certainly intended.[/QUOTE]That's true, but it's not about keeping anything precious at all, and, by the way, artistic expression or works of art and the house the woman or guy lived in while producing said stuff are two completely different things, at least to me. While it's perfectly understandable why somebody would like to have a look on B.'s bungalow (I'd like to have one myself) it's also perfectly understandable that somebody is or might not be too comfortable with that idea, especially B. himself (maybe) or his widow or family.

But all that, as we see, matters little anyway. There are "Bukowski tours" and the delongpre bungalow is rather famous now.
 
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mjp

Founding member
with all due respect to linda lee, and to bukowski himself more importantly, their opinion is noted but not relevant.
You left out the relevant part of that quote:

Bukowski said she was sickened by earlier proposals that the house serve as a residence for writers and artists. "That would be repulsive to Hank," she said, using the writer's nickname. "It would be against all his natural human ways to have little writers and poets in bungalows together, little Bukowskis running around."

I think that was more to the point of her statement.
 
Does anybody know where was he living by the time he died in 1994? I mean, the address?? I don't know if ther's any post saying that, but I'd be really grateful if someone can tell me that. Thanks
 
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