About book The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship (2002)
Why is it that I have let more than fifteen years pass since reading my last Bukowski? I had always liked him. When he died in San Pedro in 1994, only a year after the last diary entry in The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, I was surprised to see how busy he had been in his later years. Then, just a few months ago, I heard there was an exhibit of his papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino. I went on the last day and received the surprise of my life: The place was packed with young people -- so packed that I had difficulty barging my way to the glass to see all the exhibits. Something clicked in my brain.The Captain Is Out to Lunch... is a kind of literary diary covering the period from August 1991 to February 1993. Bukowski had some more shocks for me: He was very much like me. He liked to write, and he liked to listen to classical music. The days of heavy boozing and hanging out with dubious women were over for him (for me, they had never begun, but, so be it). In his latter years, the poet and writer was not unlike me:Classical music was my stronghold. I heard most of it on the radio, still do. [He listened to it on KUSC-FM, like I do.] And I am ever surprised, even now, when I hear something strong and new and unheard before and it happens quite often. as I write this I am listening to something on the radio that I have never heard before. I feast on each note like a man starving for a new rush of blood and meaning and it's there. I am totally astonished by the mass of great music, centuries of it. It must be that many great souls once lived. I can't explain it but it is my great luck in life to have this, to sense this, to feed upon and celebrate it.Turning to popular music, Bukowski feels as disgusted as I do:[E]very day as I drive to the track I keep punching the radio to different stations looking for music, decent music. It's all bad, flat, lifeless, tuneless, listless. Yet some of these compositions sell in the millions and their creators consider themselves true Artists. It's horrible, horrible drivel entering the minds of young heads. They like it. Christ, hand them shit, they eat it up. Can't they discern? Can't they hear? Can't they feel the dilution, the staleness?"I didn't mean to spend this much time on Bukowski's taste in music. I was just surprised that he felt the way I did. Although his prose style is brutally direct -- he never fails to call a spade a bloody shovel -- there is a directness about this diary with the aging author being drawn further and further into a life that consisted of spending hours at the racetrack, writing to the music of Mahler, and fending off crowds of hucksters who want to capitalize on Bukowski's reputation. They pound on his door for autographs, though they forget to bring paper and a pen; they try to photograph or interview him; they want to batten onto his energy and drink wine with him and his wife Linda. As he approaches his last year, he becomes ever more involved in his work and observations. I'll have to read some more of Bukowski's work in the months to come. After all, he is probably the most representative Los Angeles writer of the last thirty or forty years; and I myself have been an Angeleno during all that time.
Charles Bukowski's The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship is a loose collection of journals from the author's last few years alive. He knows death is near and, in between computer repairs and trips to the racetrack, reflects on how to approach his day to day life knowing he won't be on the planet much longer. I started and finished this book on a Friday night and, although I've drifted from Bukowski's work in the last couple decades, I'm glad I read this one. tBukowski's strongest when he's considering his own motivators and interpreting his own patterns. His primary interaction with humanity in these journals takes place at the race track, where he sits back, observes, and hopes no one approaches him. He's amused when people recognize him and admits he gets suckered every now and then by fake interviewers and photographers, but he focuses mainly on getting back to his house and putting words on the computer screen.tHe's funny, too. He attends what appears to be a huge rock concert (U2, I think, although he never names the band) for his wife but gets drunk and wants to get the hell out of the after-party. He gets pissed off when his computer blue-screens and he loses a night's writing. He wipes out while climbing into his jacuzzi. He goes to the mall with his wife. Sooner or later most evenings end late at night with cats, classical music, and the rush he gets from writing. Bukowski asserts his work over his last years is his best ever, and based on this book (I haven't read Pulp, the novel on which he was working through this period, but I will soon), I agree. He's confident, unapologetic, clear-eyed, and in control. Charles Bukowski becomes a model of how to live, in his early seventies, with a courage and honesty refined and less dramatic than his first five decades. This surprised me. “Charles Bukowski” and “model of how to live” were not phrases I expected to type in the same sentence. I hope I turn out as tough as this bastard. He lived out his years, based on The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship, in a way I admire.
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It had been a long time since i read Charles Bukowski and was a bit unsure about this book - being a diary he kept from 1991 - 1993 in LA before his death in 1994. I used to read a lot of Bukowski in high school, who i blame for my negative relationship with men and sexuality. But what is cool is how much writing he continued to do right before he died - and maintained the same cynical and absurd behaviours that he even hated in himself. He wasn't getting into fist fights and drinking to oblivion, but was struggling to put on his shoes, and continued to go to the horse track even though he felt empty about it, how bored he was of popular music, hollywood and people. But i liked that his late night entries he was ok with death and his failing body. And this entry: "It's good sitting here tonight in this little room on the second floor listening to the radio, the old body, the old mind mending. I belong here, like this. Like this. Like this." The Robert Crumb illustrations were also A+. Anyways, i think i'll revisit all those novels I read so long ago. I kind of miss him now.
—Sharmeen
Il solito Bukowski misantropo. Il solito Bukowski frequentatore di ippodromi. Il solito Bukowski… Ma è davvero il solito Bukowski? «Per essere uno scrittore istintivamente fai ciò che nutre te e le parole, che ti protegge contro la morte in vita. Per ognuno è una cosa diversa. E per ognuno è una cosa che cambia. Per me una volta significava bere tantissimo, bere fino a uscire pazzo. Mi affilava le parole, le portava fuori. […] Ora è cambiato. Ora ho bisogno di qualcosa di più sottile, di più invisibile. È una sensazione nell'aria. Parole dette, parole sentite. Cose viste. Qualche bicchiere mi serve sempre. Ma ora cerco le sfumature e le ombre. Le parole mi vengono da cose di cui sono quasi inconsapevole. Va bene. Ora scrivo porcherie di genere diverso.»Un Bukowski diverso, quindi. E la prima importante differenza risiede nella forma dell'opera: infatti, questo è un diario; al suo interno l'autore si muove sicuramente meglio che nel romanzo, ma ad ogni modo siamo lontani dalle spettacolari pagine delle raccolte di racconti. Meno cinico e beone ma più meditabondo e amareggiato, il Bukowski de Il Capitano è fuori a pranzo trascrive sul suo diario, in modo sporadico, impressioni ed esperienze acquisite durante gli ultimi anni di vita. La morte è il tema centrale dell'opera ma non l'unico: un grande spazio viene dedicato alla scrittura, insieme alla sua personale importanza e necessità, e alla critica di gran parte della letteratura. Però, una maggiore tristezza colpisce Buk, il quale, ormai gravato dal peso dell'età, accentua la propria misantropia e di conseguenza il proprio pessimismo; le notti licenziose passate in compagnia delle donne e dell'alcol sono un lontano ricordo, e hanno lasciato il posto a serate più tranquille, nelle quali la figura dell'uomo diviene il punto focale della riflessione. È comunque un Bukowski che delude, soprattutto coloro i quali sono stati abituati allo scapolo perennemente ubriaco di Storie di ordinaria follia e Compagno di sbronze: lo studio dell'Umanità (quell'Umanità tanto odiata) produce una sorta di smarrimento nell'autore, e gli incontri con fan (e non) all'interno dell'abitazione si rivelano spenti. L'ippodromo, in questo modo, diviene quasi una metafora della vita: decenni passati a cercare un sistema adatto, un senso, eppure niente da fare; ma proprio questa ricerca continua a rendere produttivo Buk, fino al sopraggiungimento, non così inaspettato, della morte. Tutto ciò va a ripercuotersi sulla scrittura che si dimostra talvolta ripetitiva e scontata nonostante alcune fantastiche perle, rimasuglio della sua grande abilità di scrittore che si va affievolendo.
—Alessandro
Great title, but I'm only giving it three stars because it's not really his work, but his posthumously published journal entries. They are fun to read and give insight into Bukowski's thoughts shortly before his death, but they're probably more for the hardcore Bukowski fan than the casual reader. Nevertheless, I did enjoy them and I read most of the book in one evening. If you enjoy Bukowski, chances are you'll really enjoy this book, but if you've never read him and are looking for somewhere to start I would choose something else (Hollywood is still probably my favorite).
—Stormcrow
