Fascinating because of the two clear divisions in the book. The letters Bukowski wrote to Martinelli BEFORE he realized he wasn't going to get in her pants, and then the letters after that sad realization. At first Buk is a praise-horse that Sheri can ride around, and he hardly chides her at all on her incredibly pretentious writing style (which can best be described as a cell phone text message of some 2000 words) and even goes along with her when (c'mon, Buk!) she starts honestly talking about visits from the Great God Pan, who simply MUST be the one that's moving her incense candles and divining sticks around. After all, she hears the lutes!But Bukowski plays right along with it, now and then mentioning that the two of them should meet. Here....I'll out my gender. Ladies, when we men say, "Your ideas are very fascinating and we should meet up to discuss them," what we really mean is, "Your ideas might well be fascinating, but I really haven't been paying attention. We should have a lot of sex."After they've been writing to each other for a few years, though, a different Bukowski takes control. This is the guy who knows only tragedy can possibly occur if the two of them were to meet, and hell, Sheri's getting kind of old anyway, and Buk isn't sure a woman is any better than a beer, so why go through all the effort? At this point Buk no longer cares too much if he needs to call bullshit on what Sheri is talking about. So he does it. A lot. Of course...Sheri wasn't stupid, either. And she had the luxury (oh, you women!) of ALWAYS calling Buk on his own bullshit, which of course he had in spades. His bullshit, and his sporadic control of it, is what made him a good writer. All in all, a fairly interesting look at a correspondence between a beautiful woman who was an ugly writer, and an ugly man who was a beautiful writer.
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