WRITE magazine

mjp

mjp

Founding member
Joseph K said:
How do you think Buk came across Write? Issue in a library and submitted after reading a copy? Ideas?
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I think we touched on this before. The magazine was published during the time Bukowski was at LA City College, so a creative writing teacher or someone like that may have been informed by the publisher that a new magazine for amateurs was being published.

If it is ever found, I'm quite confident the Bukowski work in it would be crap. Still...
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
Before the Internet, one of the most common ways you found out about a little mag was in ads or listings of items received in other magazines. He may have heard about it that way. Not too many titles made their way into libraries -- mostly just the big quarterlies, the prestigious reviews. Write was likely too amaturish to be purchased by most libraries, although I could be wrong on that, not having see a copy.
 
marina del rey

marina del rey

I came across an interview that Kevin Ring of Beat Scene did with Buk in late 1990.
Ring: Can you recall the first thing you had published and how you felt about it?

Buk: No, I can't recall. Can remember my first major publication, a short story in Whit Burnett's and Martha Foley's Story magazine, 1944. I had been sending them a couple of short stories a week for maybe a year and a half. The story they finally accepted was mild in comparison to the others. I mean in terms of content and style and gamble and exploration and all that. Got another story accepted about that time in Carese Crosby's Portfolio and after that, I packed it in.
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The fact that he stipulated his first "major" publication to be Story would indicate to me that there was at least one other 'minor' publication prior to that.

Not that it brings us any closer to Write, but still interesting.
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
Yup. This is something I discussed in the diss. We will never know if B. was just mis-remembering things in this interview for Beat Scene, or if he had been in other periodicals prior to Story... unless a copy of Write #2 turns up and solves this puzzle.
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
I agree. His wording "my first major publication" suggests he may have been published in several lesser magazines before STORY.

Write is probably not the sort of magazine that libraries would have actively sought out, but it could turn up as part of a collection of some writer or editor/publisher's books and papers.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
"Internet detectives have been searching for years..." [Link deleted, article and website are gone.]
 
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Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
Nice piece.

"So, was Bukowski, a fledgling writer, just artificially padding his resume in that one publication?"

I really doubt that. If Bukowski were to make up a magazine, he'd give it a more lively title. He'd call it "Witch's Tit" or "Horehound of Hell" or something like that.

"Write" is such an obvious, cornball amatuer name that it rings true. I bet there was an exclamation point after it: "Write!" To denote the excitment of the writers.
 
roni

roni

What still sounds like a problem (to me) in the original statement is, that IF he was in the same 'WRITE'-magazin, that We know of, it should've been AFTER the 'Story' publication.
But this is an option, that we've ruled out for sure, right?

"I was FIRST published in 'Story' in 1944. SINCE THEN, a story and poem in 'Write'."
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
roni said:
...it should've been AFTER the 'Story' publication.
But this is an option, that we've ruled out for sure, right?
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Yes.

The last issue of Write appears to have preceded Bukowski's appearance in Story by two years. So if he was in Write it would be his first publication (aside from the letter to the editor in the L.A. City College paper).
And his blurb above would be incorrect.
And it would be even more valuable than we previously thought.
And we'll probably never find it anyway.
;)

But if it does exist it would be a hell of a thing to see. It would be a hell of a thing to see a copy of a copy of scan of a copy for that matter...
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
What still sounds like a problem (to me) in the original statement is, that IF he was in the same 'WRITE'-magazin, that We know of, it should've been AFTER the 'Story' publication.
But this is an option, that we've ruled out for sure, right?
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According to that bio, yes. According to other sources, no.

It's great to see this thread coming back to life every few months...

FYI, I kind of gave up on this one. I tried to find it -and I tried hard since I did get a copy of the first issue- but there comes a time when you just have to move on.
 
Joseph K

Joseph K

Okay. I'm just bumping this thread because this piece gets under my skin. I know that if any of us had news on this we'd be on here telling all. So.... any new ideas?
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
One way "Write" may be found is when Google searching becomes smarter, uses artificial intelligent, so you can building more meaning into the results. Currently, if you search for "Write+Bukowski+magazine", you'll get a zillion hits. If you add "+amature", you'll also get porn listings. What is needed is the ability to search for website content that mentions Bukowski in the same context as a periodical called "Write Magazine" (or whatever it was called), and that mag was published during the 1940s, and it's not us talking about it here. The key is context, a way to zero in on the relevant content and filter out the garbage. Then you might find a mention of the publication with details on what issue, what date, page number, or a copy for sale on a bookseller's list, or a holding in a library, or biographical info on the editor that helps us track down a copy. The damned thing may even be posted in PDFs somewhere on-line, but how do you find it using current search engines? Not that I've tried any besides Google in years.
 
Joseph K

Joseph K

Yeah, that magazine title is a real bitch in the internet browser age.... It couldn't be any worse (unless it were called "Poems").
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Rekrab said:
when Google searching becomes smarter...
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Google has hundreds of specialized searches (scholar.google.com, etc.), and operators to do advanced searches through the regular google.com interface (try this for example: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "stooges" - it lists only WMA and MP3 files from the artist named at the end of the query).

Google can do a lot if you learn how to massage it.
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
I've done some "Advanced" Google searches but haven't really fully explored it. Does it have a NEAR function, where it only finds a term if it is within so many words of another term? Years ago, there was a now forgotten search engine that had that feature, and it was great at sorting out context. You could set the number of words that separated terms. I should spend some time and find out what Google actually will do.

Okay, I just used the Advanced search/Scholar search tool on the whole web and narrowed it down to 4 irrelevant websites. Maybe there's nothing out there now on this topic, although that could change some day. When you filter out everything on this forum, all the websites that talk about "how to write magazine articles", etc., there's nothing left about Buk in the old Write mag -- except I haven't actually checked the real name of the magazine, which was something about "...a magazine for amateur writers". So I'll need to recheck that later...
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Rekrab said:
Does it have a NEAR function, where it only finds a term if it is within so many words of another term?
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Not NEAR, specifically (Bing uses that, but I don't use Bing), but AROUND:

pizza AROUND(2) restaurant

will return pages with pizza and restaurant separated by two or fewer words. Note that AROUND must be written in all upper case and that the order of the search terms does not matter. Search terms can also be phrases, provided the phrase is enclosed in quotes.
 
Savageman76

Savageman76

I've been reading this forum discussion about Bukowski's Holy Grail off and on over the years. Recently I thought to check in, to see what was happening with the hunt. After seeing that the last post was June of 2011. I guess it's not going so well, huh?
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
I had completely forgotten about this: I did further research on Write and tracked down copies of all 3 issues. It took me a long time to locate a copy of Write #2, only to find out Bukowski was not in that issue. Yeah, too bad, really.

Anyway, that does not mean Bukowski was not published in Write --there might be yet another little called Write with his poems and stories.
 
Savageman76

Savageman76

cirerita said:
I had completely forgotten about this: I did further research on Write and tracked down copies of all 3 issues. It took me a long time to locate a copy of Write #2, only to find out Bukowski was not in that issue. Yeah, too bad, really.

Anyway, that does not mean Bukowski was not published in Write --there might be yet another little called Write with his poems and stories.
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cirerita said:
Quite the opposite! It pretty much means we've been trying to track down the wrong Write.
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It is great to hear someone finally tracked down a copy of Write Magazine #2. However, it’s also too bad it didn't have Bukowski's poems or/& story.

What are the chances that there is another magazine called Write and that it was in existence around the same time period that would contain Bukowski's early published work? Sadly, I believe the odds are not in our favor...
 
Purple Stickpin

Purple Stickpin

Responding to a post that's more than 10 years old is interesting; in this day and age of immediacy, it's almost the equivalent of writing a letter to Benjamin Franklin. Indeed, your input is important, but I had to smile when seeing that the original post from nymark was in April 2006. I'm going to pull On Writing out to read this, but it strikes me that perhaps Buk got the title of the publication wrong. Perhaps some derivative of "Write?"
 
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