Free Run With the Hunted by Charles Bukowski Page A

Gorky,
    H.D., Freddie Nietzsche,
    Schopenhauer,
    Steinbeck,
    Hemingway,
    and so
    forth …
    I always expected the librarian
    to say, “you have good taste, young
    man …”
    but the old fried and wasted
    bitch didn’t even know who she
    was
    let alone
    me.
    but those shelves held
    tremendous grace: they allowed
    me to discover
    the early Chinese poets
    like Tu Fu and Li
    Po
    who could say more in one
    line than most could say in
    thirty or
    a hundred.
    Sherwood Anderson must have
    read
    these
    too.
    I also carried the Cantos
    in and out
    and Ezra helped me
    strengthen my arms if not
    my brain.
    that wondrous place
    the L.A. Public Library
    it was a home for a person who had had
    a
    home of
    hell
    BROOKS TOO BROAD FOR LEAPING
    FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
    POINT COUNTER POINT
    THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
    James Thurber
    John Fante
    Rabelais
    de Maupassant
    some didn’t work for
    me: Shakespeare, G. B. Shaw,
    Tolstoy, Robert Frost, F. Scott
    Fitzgerald
    Upton Sinclair worked better for
    me
    than Sinclair Lewis
    and I considered Gogol and
    Dreiser complete
    fools
    but such judgments come more
    from a man’s
    forced manner of living than from
    his reason.
    the old L.A. Public
    most probably kept me from
    becoming a
    suicide
    a bank
    robber
    a
    wife-
    beater
    a butcher or a
    motorcycle policeman
    and even though some of these
    might be fine
    it is
    thanks
    to my luck
    and my way
    that this library was
    there when I was
    young and looking to
    hold on to
    something
    when there seemed very
    little
    about.
    and when I opened the
    newspaper
    and read of the fire
    which
    destroyed the
    library and most of
    its contents
    I said to my
    wife: “I used to spend my
    time
    there …”
    THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER
    THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE
    TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
    YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN.
    Â 
    ----
    I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future. I didn’t like what I saw down there. Those men and women had no special daring or brilliance. They wanted what everybody else wanted. There were also some obvious mental cases down there who were allowed to walk the streets undisturbed. I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. I knew that I wasn’t entirely sane. I still knew, as I had as a child, that there was something strange about myself. I felt as if I were destined to be a murderer, a bank robber, a saint, a rapist, a monk, a hermit. I needed an isolated place to hide. Skid row was disgusting. The life of the sane, average man was dull, worse than death. There seemed to be no possible alternative. Education also seemed to be a trap. The little education I had allowed myself had made me more suspicious. What were doctors, lawyers, scientists? They were just men who allowed themselves to be deprived of their freedom to think and act as individuals. I went back to my shack and drank …
    Sitting there drinking, I considered suicide, but I felt a strange fondness for my body, my life. Scarred as they were, they were mine. I would look into the dresser mirror and grin: if you’re going to go, you might as well take eight, or ten or twenty of them with you …
    It was a Saturday night in December. I was in my room and I drank much more than usual, lighting cigarette after cigarette, thinking of girls and the city and jobs, and of the years ahead. Looking ahead I liked very little of what I saw. I wasn’t a misanthrope and I wasn’t a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.
    Then I heard the radio in the next room. The guy had it on too loud. It was a sickening love song.
    â€œHey, buddy!” I hollered, “turn that thing down!”
    There was no response.
    I walked to the wall and pounded on it.
    â€œI SAID, ‘TURN THAT FUCKING THING DOWN!’”
    The volume