Quote of the Day: Charles Bukowski

“I vomit, first thing, early. Then I read all the poems I wrote when I was drunk the night before and then I vomit again. … Then I go back to bed and sleep two more hours. Then, strangely, I find myself at the racetrack again, losing with my new system. I go home and drink 18 bottles of beer. … Then I go over to my girlfriend’s place. I call her a whore. We fight. … I don’t know when I write the poems.”

That's part of a letter the poet Charles Bukowski wrote (as quoted in Sunday's New York Times Book Review) in reply to a fan who wrote inviting him to dinner with her and her four-year-old daughter. The woman was asking what a typical Bukowski day was like. The letter appears in "Dear Mr. Bukowski", a limited edition collection of the poet's letters.

Bukowski died in 1994, but his 1975 novel Factotum was made into a movie in 2005. It was directed by the Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer and filmed in the Twin Cities at sites like Cuzzy's Bar in the Minneapolis Warehouse District, Nye's Polonaise Room across the river, and the Dubliner in St. Paul on University Avenue. Matt Dillon plays the role of Henry Chinaski, a loser and an alcoholic who gets jobs polishing the giant marble American Indian statue in St. Paul's City Hall and at the Gedney pickle factory in Chaska. Bukowski's book takes place all over the country but not Minnesota; adaptations were made.