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News & ArtsWednesday, October 14, 2009
Books It's About Process
Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 4:22 PM
Over at Reality Studio, there are two really interesting stories up about writers at the dawn of personal computing. It turns out that while William S. Burroughs never got around to embracing computers:
As far back as the mid-1960s, Burroughs was aware of the possibilities of the computer and computer-generated poetry. In Insect Trust Gazette, Burroughs’ work appears alongside an early computer poem. In his interview with Conrad Knickerbocker in Paris Review, he stated that he had yet to experiment with the computer, but thought that such literature was valid and interesting, if it stood on its own merit. Yet as time passed — again, as far as I know — Burroughs never experimented with the computer.
...Charles Bukowksi totally fucking loved his Macintosh IIsi:
Bukowski also incorporated the computer as a metaphor in his later writing. From early 1991 to his death in 1994, computers and the act of writing on one appeared repeatedly. In The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship, R. Crumb provided an illustration of Bukowski sitting in front of his Macintosh. The caption reads, “Old writer puts on sweater, sits down, leers into the computer screen and writes about life. How holy can we get?” Clearly, the computer re-energized Bukowski and gave him new life as a writer. Yet much of Bukowski’s late writing was about old age and death. The computer fit into this.
(Via Fimoculous. And I have to say: Any day I can post Robert Crumb twice on Slog is a good day.)
1
Makes me think of the story Word Processor of the Gods by Stephen King. He switched over to computers pretty fast.
2
It doesn't come as much of a shock the Burrows was a creature of habit. Bukowski, on the other hand, I could almost imagine making Facebook posts.
3
Borroughs could have written Naked Lunch in one eighth the time with a word processor, except the Algerian molestation and drug binges that created the work wouldn't have happened. Truly, a mixed blessing.
4
Really wish Bukowski's contemporaries who are still alive would embrace this technology. It truly amazes as to how these intennectuals just don't "get it".
8
Perhaps Burroughs' aversion to the computer was also somewhat related to his ancestry. He was the grandson of Willaim Seward Burroughs of adding machine and later after his parents sold their rights, in 1960s, mainframe company Burroughs Corp. that became part of Unisys in the 1980s. He certainly owes his Harvard education and the modest trust fund he drew upon to the family invention
9
It's oddly fitting that Bukowski loved his Mac, since Mac does for personal computing what Bukowski did for poetry: makes it easy for even the stupidest human being to imagine he's doing something that, if done right, actually requires training and skill.
What an awful goddamn fraud of a poet Bukowski was. Yet he is the perfect barometer of poetic taste. Mark my word. A person who thinks Bukowski is a good poet never, ever, ever has good taste in literature.
What an awful goddamn fraud of a poet Bukowski was. Yet he is the perfect barometer of poetic taste. Mark my word. A person who thinks Bukowski is a good poet never, ever, ever has good taste in literature.
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