In this video, the Art of Improvement dives into a letter written by Charles Bukowski and the slavery of the 9 to 5.
Key Takeaways
In 1969, an offer came to hell Quit your job, and I’ll give you $100 a month for the rest of your life.
The offer came from John Martin, publisher and founder of Black Sparrow Press Charles Bukowski, still an unknown writer, had spent his last decade at a soul wrenching post office job. He wanted out.
In a letter at the time Bukowski wrote,
"I have one of two choices: Stay in the post office and go crazy. Or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I've decided to starve."
15 years later, Bukowski wrote a letter of gratitude to John Martin thanking him for funding his escape.
Hello John, Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from.
Even the people who tried to write about that or make films about it. They don’t get it, right. They call it 9:00 to 5:00. It’s never 9:00 to 5:00.
There’s no free lunch break at those places. In fact, at many of them, in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch.
"Slavery was never abolished. It was only extended to include all the colors."
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing Humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want, but fear the alternative worse.
People simply empty out, their bodies were fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly and the body, the hair, the fingernail, the shoes, everything does.
As a young man, I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions.
As an old man, I still can’t believe it.
What do they do it for? Sex, TV, An automobile on monthly payments, or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did.
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job. I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers.
"Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off Just like that, don't you realize that."
Now in industry there are vast layoffs, steel mills dead, technical changes, and other factors of the workplace. They are laid off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned.
- “I put in 35 years.”
- “It ain’t right.”
- “I don’t know what to do.”
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.
I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there. Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all.
It was a relief to get the sh*t out of my system and now that I’m here, a so called professional writer after giving the first 50 years away. I found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.
I remember once working as a packer in this lighting fixture company one of the packers suddenly said, “I’ll never be free.”
One of the bosses was walking by, his name was Morrie. And he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took has given me a kind of joy. The jolly joy of the miracle.
I now write from an old mind and an old body. Long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing.
But since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue.
And when the words begin to falter, and I must be helped up stairways, and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paper clip.
I still feel that something in me is going to remember, no matter how far I’m gone. How I’ve come through the murder, and the mess, and the moil to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
yr boy, Hank.