The senseless, tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by John Martin’s Black Sparrow Press

Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...

Fuck knows how they would get along reading Irvine Welsh or James Kelman and will they take their app to a Harold Pinter or David Mamet play like Glengarry Glen Ross or "Death of a Fucking Salesman" as it's called. It's the same well intentioned people from Idaho ( that being a state of mind not just an American location) that keep the ALA busy at Banned Books week, if you look up their Classics that have been challenged, it would break your fucking heart, truly! We all laugh at the ridiculousness of watching tv and hearing the bleeper in overdrive, it fools no one, but I am not so sure this clean reader thing is as innocuous. But, whilst waiting for the insert profanities app; which is surely on the way, I purchased this, A faithful and yet modern update of Shelley's Frankenstein, Here's a snippet:

"And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fucking fashion?"
"Fuck yes":wb:
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
Looks as though the Clean reader app has an uphill struggle now, since Inktera removed its bookstore in March, apparently.Still available however.
Having seen a photo of the Idaho couple,I feel bad, they look nice enough, not nutcases at all.
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
Just the sweary ones and Flanders isn't the worst person in the world really (I think less of Inktera) and should they have an epiphany at least the original work of the writer was still there.Question is who is doing the Martin/Bukowski Restore App with permanent option.
 
d gray

d gray

tried to do his best but could not
Founding member
are you joking?

can't believe you're defending/excusing/whatever any of that shit...

hopefully you're joking.
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
:)Course I'm not joking, Nedward Flanders is a babe, under that green jumper lies a rippling torso of steel. Even has his own tribute band - Ned Zeppelin (three cds and a world tour).
The Clean App; as hilarious as a Swearing App would be. But you get radio and explicit versions of music. Taking home a book and scoring out every word that begins with the letter P is crazy, you own the book - not the words - but if they want to do that in the privacy of their own home on a tablet, is it really so bad? The company who developed it and have now cut and run deserve the scorn and clearly it's an App that none but a few want. Different kettle of fish to the subject of this thread, I think.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Skygazer said:
The company who developed it and have now cut and run deserve the scorn...
Click to expand...
Scorn for what? Being a business and doing what businesses do? As a business do you have to share the beliefs of everyone you work for or serve?

I would think it's not uncommon to get involved in something and think, "Well, this is weird, but whatever, it's just a job." and then change your "whatever" opinion when everybody says, "This is awful, what the hell were you thinking?" Would you rather they stand behind the idiots who paid them to build it and go down in flames with them? What would be the point of that? For an app that less than a thousand people use? You should be praising them for having common sense, something most businesses lack.

What this all boils down to is religious fundamentalists trying to bend the evil world to fit in to their point of view. If you think there's nothing wrong with that, imagine taking it to the extreme and rather than just altering the entertainment of the secular world, the fundamentalist start killing the writers who they consider to be sinners or contrary to their beliefs - oh wait, they already do that in some parts of the world, don't they.
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
Maybe more market research, or checking out some of the writers' opinions would have killed it before it got started, instead of jumping out when it became too much of a hot potato for them to handle.
 
F

Faramir

Businesses really only believe in one thing, profits.

They wouldn't have done the market research because of the ridiculousness of the app. "say, how would you like an app to go on your e reader that replaces all the swear words with nice clean ones that don't offend a handful of people living in the bible belt?"
"Hahahahahahahahaaaaa! That's a good one! Hahahahaaaaa! *slaps thighs then wipes a tear away, walks off still chortling*
"I don't think this is going to take off".

I can see some religious fundamentalist reading some hardcore thriller in bed one night about the criminal underworld, and just after reading yet another brutally violent part where the poor guy who ratted out the head honcho screamed a few choice words as he was getting his fingers sawn off or something, closing their book, sighing, looking off into the distance with a knitted brow, then his wife saying "what's wrong dear?"
"Oh gosh, there is just sooo much swearing in this book!".

I wonder what the late great Frank Zappa would have thought of clean reader, haha.
 
BukFan Brad

BukFan Brad

Would it be possible to have a book or a zine out of some of Buk's original work (especially the most distorted stuff) before any changes were made by editors? I'd love to get hold of a zine or a book of Buk's poems as they were written, before any changes were made by publishers.
 
Joseph K

Joseph K

Are there any examples of poems previously published in lifetime collections being Martinized in posthumous collections or is only uncollected/unpublished poems that get that treatment?
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
The Crunch was published in Love is a Dog From Hell and then in What Matter Most, and they are different versions. Both are different from the original small press publication.

http://bukowski.net/poems/crunches.php

There are a couple other poems that Martin re-published in posthumous books (I don't know what they are offhand), maybe because he didn't realize he'd published them when Bukowski was alive. Or he just didn't care. Or he preferred his own versions.
 
BukFan Brad

BukFan Brad

zobraks said:
It's been done.
You'll find more here.
Click to expand...

What a great idea.

The point being that if the poems are not being published as they were originally typed by Buk, if major changes were made by editors, then can they be considered genuine Buk poems?

This could have legal implications for, not only the Buk estate, but for publishers in general.

There may be a loophole here.
 
mjp's attorney

mjp's attorney

Well, I must say that's it's tremendous to see another attorney here in our midst. I look forward to discussing casework and legal precedent with you @BukFan Brad.
BukFan Brad said:
if major changes were made by editors, then can they be considered genuine Buk poems?
Click to expand...
It's wonderful to see you intelligently pose a question they've been asking around here for almost 10 years. Your legal training has, of course, qualified you to pose it in a sound and refreshing manner that none of these non-lawyers could ever manage. Kudos, my esteemed colleague, kudos.
 
Joseph K

Joseph K

Please could someone post me the quote verbatim from Buk's letter regarding Martin's changes to "Women"? I need it for a review and I don't have my copy of the letters to hand. Thanks in advance...
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
The Bukowski to Gerald Locklin Letter March 15 1979 is on page 260 of Living on Luck Vol 2.
But if you log back in and scroll to first page of this thread, Pogue's post of Aug 23rd has a scan of the letter Joseph, if that's what you are looking for.
 
Chrisw

Chrisw

There is also a letter to Carl Weissner (January 15, 1979) in the On Writing collection (which I'm reading now). Buk writes that, re: Women, "John Martin and I are at it - I claim he has inserted too much of his writing into the novel.... I really feel he has changed my wordage too much, sometimes every other sentence...." And there is lots more.

It's irritating, maddening and sad. Thankfully, the truth about Martin and his "editing" is out now!
 
Chrisw

Chrisw

True... but at least for me, I was one of those who just thought the later Buk was different from the earlier Buk, or that the posthumous Buk was somehow "leftovers." It was only the work of MJP and this forum that explained all for me. I'm thankful.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
It's been discussed here pretty much since the forum started, and even before that, when the Bukowski.net stuff lived on a different site. People have been talking about it for a long time, even pre-Internet.

I think it was changes/improvements to the database here (or just the database itself) that made the scope of the problem a lot more evident, along with the availability of easily searched electronic versions of the poetry collections. Those things kind of go hand in hand with making more of an issue of it in the past couple years.

Generally speaking, the Internet is responsible. It's more difficult to keep secrets when the amount of available information increases as dramatically as it has in the past 20 years. Those invested in keeping secrets (of all kinds) didn't see that coming, so there's been a lot of disruption, to use a term Internet geeks and marketers are so fond of.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Pogue Mahone's scan of "writer's block" in the "find what you love..." thread had me searching the poetry collections for "jabbering," which brought me to "an empire of coins," which was in both The Roominghouse Madrigals, and Betting on the Muse.

The changes start at the title, which is de-capitalized in Betting on the Muse, and they continue from there. I'll include the changed lines here, but I think the point is, I've had Betting on the Muse on the list of "safe" books, but that was based on only 12 manuscripts.

Judging by this single poem though - that was previously published by Black Sparrow, so we can safely assume that it was not rewritten by Bukowski - I think Muse belongs on the dirty list.

These are the differences:

empire.png
 
Chrisw

Chrisw

This is a bummer... Perhaps a coincidence, though I doubt it, that Betting the Muse ranks dead last by a long way in poetry collections as voted by members here.
 
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