The People Look Like Flowers at Last by Charles Bukowski

Author:Charles Bukowski
Format: epub

dog

is much admired by Man

because he believes in

the hand which feeds

him. a

perfect

setup. for

13 cents a

day you’ve got

a hired killer

who thinks

you are

God. a

dog can’t tell a Nazi from a

Republican from a Commie from

a Democrat. and, many times,

neither can I.

239

the hatred for Hemingway

I gave Hemingway’s last book

Islands in the Stream

a bad review

while most others gave him

good reviews.

but the hatred for Hemingway

by the unsuccessful writer

especially the female writer

is incomprehensible to me.

this unsuccessful female writer was in a rage. I had tried to explain why I thought

Hemingway wrote as

he did.

that life-through-death bit, she said,

is not at all unique with

Hemingway. what else is our

whole Western culture about? it’s the same story over and over

again. no news

there!

that’s true, I thought, but . . .

shooting lions only meant shooting

himself? she asked. does it? does

it? not when those lions were unarmed and he was coming at them with a rifle and

didn’t even have to

come close. really! poor little Heming-

way.

240

it’s true, I thought, the lions don’t carry

rifles.

the Spanish tradition. I can see Goya because he comes through as real and complete, she said. I can’t see Hemingway as anything but an old Hollywood movie acted out by . . . what’s his name? that Cooper who was a friend of his—the High Noon guy. oh wow! she doesn’t even like his friends,

I thought.

you learn about death by dying

not by looking at it,

she said.

that’s true, I thought, but then

how do you write about it?

you say Shakespeare bores you, she said— the fact is

he knew far more than Hemingway—

Hemingway never got to be more than a

journalist.

taught to write by Gertrude Stein, I thought. he told you what he saw, she said, but he didn’t know what it meant—how things really

relate . . . he never

explained.

241

that’s strange, I thought, that’s exactly what I

liked about

him.

you talk a lot of typical

crap, she said.

what a shame, I thought,

she has such long beautiful

legs. well, Goya was all right too,

but you can’t go to bed with

Goya.

well, all right, I thought, Hemingway pulled those big fish out of the sea and endured a few wars

and watched bulls die and shot some

lions;

wrote some great short stories

and gave us 2 or 3

good early

novels;

on his last day

Hemingway waved to

some kids going to school,

they waved back, and he never touched the orange juice sitting there in front of him;

then he stuck that gun into his mouth like a soda straw and touched the trigger

and one of America’s few immortals

was blood and brain across the walls and ceiling, and then they all smiled,

they smiled and said,

242

ah, a fag! ah, a coward!

yes, he took advantage of McAlmon

he took advantage of everybody

and he didn’t treat Fitzgerald right

and he typed standing up

and he was once in a mental

hospital,

and Gertie Stein, that friggin’

dyke,

maybe she did

teach him how to

write.

but who convinced him that it was time to die? you did, you

dirty

fuckers.

243

looking at the cat’s balls

sitting here by the window

sweating beer sweat

mauled by the summer

I am looking at the cat’s balls.

it’s not my choice.

he sleeps in an old rocker

on the porch

and from there he looks at me

hung to his cat’s balls.

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