Virginia Woolf’s Handwritten Suicide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)

in Letters, Literature | August 26th, 2013

handwriting-virginia-woolf-10921544-600-870

It seems like a very mor­bid and inhu­man prac­tice to treat the sui­cide note as a piece of lit­er­a­ture, even if the author of said note is a writer as famous as Vir­ginia Woolf. And yet, why not? I can antic­i­pate all sorts of eth­i­cal objec­tions hav­ing to do with decen­cy, and I share some of those sen­ti­ments. Let us not for­get, how­ev­er, that death has often been a lit­er­ary occa­sion: the long tra­di­tion of record­ed last words ranges from deathbed con­fes­sions to the strange­ly the­atri­cal genre of the gal­lows speech (see Socrates, Anne Boleyn, or John Brown). Like those unfor­get­table fig­ures of his­to­ry, Vir­ginia Woolf’s last script­ed words are pored over by lay read­ers and schol­ars alike (see, for exam­ple, pages on Woolf’s final words from Smith Col­lege and Yale).

Woolf’s death, in March of 1941, occa­sioned the third of her sui­cide let­ters, and yes, it feels unseem­ly to linger over her last piece of prose. Per­haps it is the mode of death, sui­cide still being a soci­etal taboo, thought of as trag­ic even when it’s under­tak­en calm­ly and ratio­nal­ly by some­one ready to leave this world. And in many cas­es, espe­cial­ly those involv­ing men­tal ill­ness, death seems so need­less, so extreme. Such was the case with Woolf, who drowned her­self after a long strug­gle with what would prob­a­bly be called today bipo­lar dis­or­der. Her sui­cide note, writ­ten to her hus­band Leonard, is a haunt­ing and beau­ti­ful doc­u­ment, in all its unadorned sin­cer­i­ty behind which much tur­moil and anguish lie. See a scan of the hand­writ­ten note at the top, and read the full tran­script below. Direct­ly above, you can hear a dra­mat­ic read­ing of Woolf’s note, such a wrench­ing mis­sive because it is not a farewell to the world at large, but rather to a trust­ed friend and lover.

Dear­est,

I feel cer­tain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through anoth­er of those ter­ri­ble times. And I shan’t recov­er this time. I begin to hear voic­es, and I can’t con­cen­trate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have giv­en me the great­est pos­si­ble hap­pi­ness. You have been in every way all that any­one could be. I don’t think two peo­ple could have been hap­pi­er till this ter­ri­ble dis­ease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoil­ing your life, that with­out me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this prop­er­ly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the hap­pi­ness of my life to you. You have been entire­ly patient with me and incred­i­bly good. I want to say that — every­body knows it. If any­body could have saved me it would have been you. Every­thing has gone from me but the cer­tain­ty of your good­ness. I can’t go on spoil­ing your life any longer.

I don’t think two peo­ple could have been hap­pi­er than we have been.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vir­ginia Woolf and Friends Dress Up as “Abyssin­ian Princes” and Fool the British Roy­al Navy (1910)

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

“A Haunt­ed House” by Vir­ginia Woolf

Find Works by Vir­ginia Woolf in Our Col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Did Hollywood Movies Studios “Collaborate” with Hitler During WW II? Historian Makes the Case

in History | August 26th, 2013

As any­one who watch­es the His­to­ry Chan­nel can tell you, sto­ries about the Sec­ond World War still fas­ci­nate. Sto­ries about Nazi Ger­many specif­i­cal­ly seem to fas­ci­nate more than they ever have before. Com­bine that with the cur­rent Amer­i­can desire to gaze upon the dark side of its own once-beloved insti­tu­tions, and Har­vard his­to­ri­an Ben Urwand may have a hit on his hands when his book The Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Hol­ly­wood’s Pact with Hitler comes out next month. (Read an excerpt here.) Emory Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an Deb­o­rah Lip­stadt uses an even more apt term: “I think what this guy has found could be a block­buster.” She is quot­ed in an arti­cle by the New York Times’ Jen­nifer Schuessler on Urwand, his dis­cov­er­ies, and his book. “On page after page,” Schuessler writes, “[Urwand] shows stu­dio boss­es, many of them Jew­ish immi­grants, cut­ting films scene by scene to suit Nazi offi­cials; pro­duc­ing mate­r­i­al that could be seam­less­ly repur­posed in Nazi pro­pa­gan­da films; and, accord­ing to one doc­u­ment, help­ing to finance the man­u­fac­ture of Ger­man arma­ments.”

As if Urwand’s find­ings about these deals between Hol­ly­wood stu­dios and the Third Reich won’t cause enough of a stir by them­selves, his per­spec­tive on them has already fired up an aca­d­e­m­ic con­tro­ver­sy. Schuessler quotes Bran­deis’ Thomas P. Doher­ty as call­ing Urwand’s use of the word “col­lab­o­ra­tion” a “slan­der” and men­tions, by con­trast, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Steven J. Ross’ forth­com­ing book which tells “the lit­tle-known sto­ry of an exten­sive anti-Nazi spy ring that began oper­at­ing in Los Ange­les in 1934, financed by the very stu­dio boss­es who were cut­ting films to sat­is­fy Nazi offi­cials.” You can read a fuller cri­tique of Urwand’s argu­ments from Doher­ty at the Hol­ly­wood Reporter. At the top, you can watch that pub­li­ca­tion’s brief con­ver­sa­tion with Urwand him­self, in which he explains and defends his use of the word “col­lab­o­ra­tion” — which, he says, the Hol­ly­wood exec­u­tives in ques­tion used them­selves. Final­ly, just above, you can hear more from Urwand in Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press’ clip about The Col­lab­o­ra­tion. As with most mod­ern research into World War II, the book no doubt rais­es more his­tor­i­cal and moral ques­tions than we can answer, though I do doubt that any­one who reads it will ever watch pic­tures from Hol­ly­wood’s Gold­en Age in quite the same way again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Redis­cov­ered: The First Amer­i­can Anti-Nazi Film, Banned by U.S. Cen­sors and For­got­ten for 80 Years

Rare 1940 Audio: Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis’ Ulte­ri­or Motive for Spread­ing Anti-Semi­tism

The Mak­ing of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Ani­mat­ed Short

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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10 Essential Tips for Making Great Coffee at Home

in Food & Drink | August 26th, 2013

Perfect-Coffee-Cover

Michael Haft and Har­ri­son Suarez went to col­lege togeth­er, served in the Marines in Afghanistan, then, after return­ing home, stum­bled upon the world of spe­cial­ty cof­fee and began “an obses­sive quest to brew the per­fect cup.” That quest result­ed in the pub­li­ca­tion of an inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal book designed for the iPad. Per­fect Cof­fee at Home ($4.99) uses illus­tra­tions, inter­ac­tive graph­ics, videos and a sound­track to make the tuto­r­i­al “an immer­sive expe­ri­ence.” But you don’t need to foot the bill or have an iPad to improve your cof­fee mak­ing skills.

Over at The Atlantic, Haft and Suarez gave some free advice last week, pub­lish­ing an arti­cle where they, among oth­er things, enu­mer­at­ed 10 essen­tial tips for mak­ing cof­fee. They boiled things down to this:

  1. Buy good cof­fee beans. Prefer­ably whole beans, sus­tain­ably farmed, and roast­ed with­in the past few weeks.
  2. Grind your cof­fee just before brew­ing. They say, “it’s the num­ber one thing you can do to improve your cof­fee at home.”
  3. Store your cof­fee prop­er­ly. Keep the cof­fee in an air­tight con­tain­er, away from sun­light. Try to avoid freez­ing the beans, unless they’re going to linger for more than two weeks.
  4. Use a good amount of cof­fee, and the right pro­por­tion of cof­fee to water. The ide­al is what they call “The Gold­en Ratio,” 17.42 units of water to 1 unit of cof­fee.
  5. Find the right grind size for your cof­fee beans and aim for a uni­form grind.
  6. Con­trol the tem­per­a­ture of your water. Keep it some­where between 195 and 202 degrees. Boil­ing water can sour the cof­fee.
  7. If you get real­ly skilled, you can agi­tate the cof­fee dur­ing the brew­ing to con­trol the taste.
  8. Focus on tech­nique. And once you learn the right tech­nique, make sure you’re pre­cise and con­sis­tent.
  9. Use qual­i­ty tools. Buy the right bean grinder and cof­fee mak­er. Make a good invest­ment in your cof­fee drink­ing future.
  10. When exper­i­ment­ing with the brew­ing process, adjust only one vari­able at a time so you can accu­rate­ly track results.

The Atlantic arti­cle offers more detail than what we’ve high­light­ed above. So we’d encour­age you to give “How to Make Per­fect Cof­fee” a read. You can also find short video primers on the Haft & Suarez YouTube Chan­nel. If you have your own great cof­fee mak­ing tips, def­i­nite­ly share them with us in the com­ments sec­tions below. We want to know!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

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Fritz Lang’s M (1931)

in Film | August 25th, 2013

When Jean-Luc Godard asked the Aus­tri­an film­mak­er Fritz Lang in 1961 to name his great­est film, the one most like­ly to last, Lang did not hes­i­tate.

“M,” he said.

Made in 1931, near the end of the Weimar Repub­lic, M is Lang’s bril­liant link between silent film and talkies, and between Ger­man Expres­sion­ism and what would even­tu­al­ly be called Film Noir. It tells the sto­ry of a Berlin soci­ety caught up in hys­te­ria over a series of child mur­ders, and of the mas­sive mobi­liza­tion — by police and crim­i­nals alike — to catch the killer.

The Hun­gar­i­an actor Peter Lorre plays Hans Beck­ert, the men­tal­ly dis­turbed mur­der­er. Lorre worked on the film in the day­time while per­form­ing onstage in Bertolt Brecht’s pro­duc­tion of Mann ist Mann in the evenings. His strik­ing per­for­mance in M would cat­a­pult him to inter­na­tion­al star­dom.

The script was writ­ten by Lang and his wife, Thea Von Har­bou. It was inspired by a series of mass mur­ders, cul­mi­nat­ing in a sen­sa­tion­al case of ser­i­al child killings in Düs­sel­dorf. In a 1931 arti­cle, Lang wrote:

The epi­dem­ic series of mass mur­ders of the last decade with their man­i­fold and dark side effects had con­stant­ly absorbed me, as unap­peal­ing as their study may have been. It made me think of demon­strat­ing, with­in the frame­work of a film sto­ry, the typ­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of this immense dan­ger for the dai­ly order and the ways of effec­tive­ly fight­ing them. I found the pro­to­type in the per­son of the Düs­sel­dorf ser­i­al mur­der­er and I also saw how here the side effects exact­ly repeat­ed them­selves, i.e. how they took on a typ­i­cal form. I have dis­tilled all typ­i­cal events from the pletho­ra of mate­ri­als and com­bined them with the help of my wife into a self-con­tained film sto­ry. The film M should be a doc­u­ment and an extract of facts and in that way an authen­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a mass mur­der com­plex.

Although M was not a great box office suc­cess when it was released in Ger­many in 1931, the film grad­u­al­ly grew in stature and is now firm­ly estab­lished as one of the mas­ter­pieces of 20th cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma. The bril­liance of the film’s nar­ra­tive struc­ture, its clas­sic visu­al images (the killer’s shad­ow appear­ing on a poster announc­ing a reward for his cap­ture, a child’s bal­loon caught in a pow­er line, Lor­re’s bulging eyes as he dis­cov­ers a chalk “M” on his shoul­der) and its inven­tive use of sound, for exam­ple in the ser­i­al killer’s omi­nous whistling of Grieg’s Peer Gynt, have made M one of the most stud­ied and imi­tat­ed films ever made.

In 1959 M was re-released in trun­cat­ed form, and for sev­er­al decades after­ward audi­ences were shown a bad­ly altered 89-minute ver­sion. A restora­tion project was mount­ed in the 1990s. The 109-minute ver­sion above, a result of that project, is clos­er to Lang’s orig­i­nal film. It’s now housed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis Restored: Watch a New Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Free Film Noir Movies (34 Films in Total)

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A Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Coming Monday. Watch the Trailer.

in Music, Radio | August 24th, 2013

This year, Pink Floy­d’s mas­ter­ful prog rock album The Dark Side of the Moon turns 40. Yes, 40. Explor­ing themes rang­ing from con­flict and greed, to men­tal ill­ness and the pass­ing of time, The Dark Side of the Moon has “every­thing you’d ever want … : Grand, trans­port­ing melodies, synapse-rip­ping synth exper­i­ments and sound col­lages, intri­cate musi­cian­ship, state-of-the-art stu­dio sound and John Lennon-meets-Thom Yorke lyrics like ‘The lunatic is on the grass/Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs/Got to keep the loonies on the path.’ ” Or, so that’s how Rolling Stone mag­a­zine sums up the album that it now ranks 43rd on its list of “The 500 Great­est Albums of All Time.”

Next Mon­day, BBC Radio 2 will hon­or Pink Floy­d’s mag­num opus with a new radio dra­ma from leg­endary play­wright Sir Tom Stop­pard. Appar­ent­ly Stop­pard (who co-wrote the screen­plays for Brazil and Shake­speare in Love) first con­sid­ered writ­ing a play based on the album back in 1973. Now, some 40 years lat­er, he has “trans­formed the Pink Floyd clas­sic into a psy­che­del­ic mash-up of Kant­ian phi­los­o­phy, epic rock and John Prescott sound­bites,” writes The Inde­pen­dent. To get you ready for Dark­side, as the play will be called, Aard­man Ani­ma­tions has cre­at­ed a three-minute trail­er that evokes themes from the album and play. Says the direc­tor Dar­ren Dubic­ki:

I spent time absorb­ing the rich detail from the Pink Floyd album, their art and the dra­ma script. What was fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant to us was that we retained a con­sis­tent visu­al tone that echoed the imagery cre­at­ed over the years for the band. The insane­ly sur­re­al and pow­er­ful art­work cre­at­ed by Storm Thorg­er­son and Hipg­no­sis has always had a strong dis­tor­tion on real­i­ty. Their sense of space and twist­ed con­text make for some uncom­fort­ably beau­ti­ful art. This tone has been con­sis­tent for decades and we want­ed to hon­our this with our con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal, and ana­logue, slant on the style.

You can watch the trail­er above, and find some won­der­ful Pink Floyd mate­r­i­al in the sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Watch Pink Floyd Plays Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Per­forms The Wall at the Berlin Wall (1990)

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Robert Crumb Illustrates Philip K. Dick’s Infamous, Hallucinatory Meeting with God (1974)

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature, Religion, Sci Fi | August 23rd, 2013

CrumbExperienceofPKD

“I saw God,” Fat states, and Kevin and I and Sher­ri state, “No, you just saw some­thing like God, exact­ly like God.” And hav­ing spoke, we do not stay to hear the answer, like jest­ing Pilate, upon his ask­ing, “What is truth?”

–Philip K. Dick, VALIS

In the months of Feb­ru­ary and March, 1974, Philip K. Dick met God, or some­thing like God, or what he thought was God, at least, in a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry expe­ri­ence he chron­i­cled in sev­er­al obses­sive­ly dense diaries that recent­ly saw pub­li­ca­tion as The Exe­ge­sis of Philip K. Dick, a work of deeply per­son­al theo-philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tion akin to Carl Jung’s The Red Book. What­ev­er it was he encountered—Dick was nev­er too dog­mat­ic about it—he end­ed up refer­ring to it as Zebra, or by the acronym VALIS, Vast Active Liv­ing Intel­li­gence Sys­tem, also the title of a nov­el detail­ing the expe­ri­ences of one very PKD-like char­ac­ter with the improb­a­ble name of “Horselover Fat.”

LSD-trig­gered psy­chot­ic break, gen­uine reli­gious expe­ri­ence, or some­thing else entire­ly, what­ev­er Dick’s encounter meant, he didn’t let the oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn it into art slip by him, and nei­ther did out­sider car­toon­ist and PKD fan Robert Crumb. In issue #17 of the under­ground comix mag­a­zine Weirdo, Crumb nar­rat­ed and illus­trat­ed Dick’s meet­ing with a divine intel­li­gence in the appro­pri­ate­ly titled “The Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence of Philip K. Dick.” It was even­tu­al­ly col­lect­ed in the edi­tion, The Weirdo Years by R. Crumb: 1981-’93. (See the com­ic in motion in the awk­ward, ama­teur video above.) The com­ic quotes direct­ly from Dick’s telling of the event, which began with a wis­dom tooth extrac­tion and was ulti­mate­ly trig­gered by a gold­en Chris­t­ian fish sym­bol worn around the neck of a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal deliv­ery girl. Most PKD fans will be famil­iar with the sto­ry, whether they treat it as gospel or not, but to see it illus­trat­ed with such empa­thet­ic inten­si­ty by Crumb is tru­ly a treat.

If you only know Crumb as the cre­ator of las­civ­i­ous Rube­nesque women and schlub­by, drug­gy horn­dog hip­sters (like Fritz the Cat), you may be sur­prised by these emo­tion­al­ly real­ist illus­tra­tions. If you know Crumb’s more seri­ous work, like his take on the book of Gen­e­sis, you won’t. In either case, fans of Dick, Crumb, or—most likely—both, won’t want to miss this.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Hand Puppets That Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee Made for His Young Son

in Art, K-12, Theatre | August 23rd, 2013

klee puppet

My kids used to beg their dad to help out with their impromp­tu pup­pet shows. He com­plied by hav­ing our daugh­ter’s favorite baby doll deliv­er an inter­minable cur­tain speech, hec­tor­ing the audi­ence (me) to become sub­scribers and make dona­tions via the small enve­lope they’d find tucked in their pro­grams.

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Like my hus­band, artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) loomed large in his child’s ear­ly pup­pet work. To mark his son Felix’s ninth birth­day, Klee fash­ioned eight hand pup­pets based on stock char­ac­ters from Kasperl and Gretl — Ger­many’s answer to Punch and Judy. The boy took to them so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly that his dad kept going, cre­at­ing some­thing in the neigh­bor­hood of fifty pup­pets between 1916 and 1925. The cast soon expand­ed to include car­toon­ish polit­i­cal fig­ures, a self-por­trait, and less rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ters with a decid­ed­ly Dada-ist bent. Klee also fixed Felix up with a flea mar­ket frame that served as the prosce­ni­um for the shows he put on in a door­way of the fam­i­ly’s tiny apart­ment.

PaulKleePuppets

When Felix set out into the world at the age of eigh­teen, he packed his favorite child­hood pup­pets, while his dad hung onto the ones born of his years on the fac­ul­ty of the Bauhaus. Felix’s por­tion of the col­lec­tion was almost entire­ly destroyed dur­ing the bomb­ing of Wurzburg in World War II. Dr. Death was the only mem­ber of the orig­i­nal eight to escape unscathed.

klee puppets 3

You can find a gallery of Klee’s pup­pets here, and a book ded­i­cat­ed to Klee’s pup­petry here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tchaikovsky Pup­pet in Time­lapse Film

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Price­less Primer from 1969

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

 Ayun Hal­l­i­day is okay with pup­pets as long as she can hold them at arm’s length. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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“Notes from a Dirty Old Man”: Charles Bukowski’s Lost Cartoons from the 60s and 70s

in Art, Poetry | August 23rd, 2013

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The poet Charles Bukows­ki has appeared often on Open Cul­ture late­ly, and I have no objec­tion. Not only do I savor writ­ing about a lit­er­ary fig­ure thor­ough­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Los Ange­les, where I live, but about one who, even nine­teen years after his death, keeps pro­duc­ing inter­est­ing things. Or at least we keep find­ing them.

A case in point comes from this post by Stephen J. Gertz of Book­tryst about evi­dence redis­cov­ered ear­li­er this year of Bukowski’s efforts as a car­toon­ist: “Nine­teen long-lost orig­i­nal draw­ings by Charles Bukows­ki, Amer­i­ca’s poet lau­re­ate of the depths, sur­faced at the 46th Cal­i­for­nia Inter­na­tion­al Anti­quar­i­an Book Fair Feb­ru­ary 15–17, 2013, offered by ReadInk of Los Ange­les. Six­teen of them appeared as accom­pa­ni­ment to Bukowski’s clas­sic col­umn in the Los Ange­les Free Press (The Freep), ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’. The remain­ing three orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Sun­set Palms Hotel, Issue #4 (1974).”

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Less comics per se than drawn win­dows into Bukowski’s world­view, these pan­els show, in a shaky yet bold line, the poet­’s views on drink­ing, smok­ing, stay­ing in bed, and con­duct­ing rela­tions with the fair­er sex. “Until its ter­mi­na­tion in 1976,” Gertz con­tin­ues, “Bukowski’s ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’ was prob­a­bly the sin­gle biggest con­tribut­ing fac­tor to both the spread of his lit­er­ary fame and his local noto­ri­ety as a hard-liv­ing, hard-drink­ing L.A. char­ac­ter.” The very idea of Bukows­ki as a reg­u­lar colum­nist may strike some famil­iar with his poet­ry as incon­gru­ous, but you can get an idea of how the gig formed his lit­er­ary per­sona by read­ing the 1969 col­lec­tion Notes of a Dirty Old Man and the 2011 More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncol­lect­ed Columns. Nei­ther, how­ev­er, con­tain Bukowski’s illus­tra­tions, but now you can appre­ci­ate them on the inter­net. They almost make you believe the man could have pub­lished a car­toon or two in the New York­er, but no — wrong coast. (And wrong sen­si­bil­i­ty, cer­tain­ly.)

BukowskiCartoon

via Book Tryst

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Charles Bukows­ki Poems Being Read by Bukows­ki, Tom Waits and Bono

Charles Bukows­ki Sets His Amus­ing Con­di­tions for Giv­ing a Poet­ry Read­ing (1971)

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.