PULP

Charles Bukowski was born in America in 1920. His mother was German and her name was Katharina, which is almost my name, but not quite. His parents moved to America after the First World War, when the German economy collapsed. Economies collapses as economies do best. Bukowski wrote the book "Pulp" just before his death (he died of cancer) and the book was published by his widow. His gravestone reads: "Don't try". I like that.

Don't try.

"Somebody at one of these places ... asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it." - C.B.

The word "pulp" can mean one of these things:

1. A soft, moist, shapeless mass or matter.
2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough,unfinished paper.
3. The soft center of a fruit
4. The soft center of a tooth
5. A mixture of wood, cellulose and/or rags and water ground up to make paper.
6. Mass of chemically processed wood fibres (cellulose).

His characters are often the low-lifes of society, such as poor detectives,getting impossible jobs, which is the main character in this book. In this book the detectiveNicky Belane is hired by Lady Death to find a deceased, French writer named Céline. Bukowski dedicated the book to "bad writing", which basically says it all.

Writing good is not something you do, it does you. So to speak.

"Pulp" is not a long book. Books do not have to contain an endless amount of pages to be good books. The reason why people write books with an endless amount of pages is because they don't know how to write good books. The good books become bad books and the bad books become good books. How many times can you write "books" before someone tells you that you're repeating yourself?

14. I've checked. Still 5 to go.

Bukowski was a low-life. It's the low-lifes that write the best books. If you're not a low-life, you're an upper-life, and upper-lifes spend too much money on food and thinking too higly of themselves, and most of them write too well. Bukowski didn't write well, but he wrote great books.

Not dedicating what you write to bad writing means that you're a fan of good writing, and being a fan of good writing means that you try to write good yourself. And therein lies the problem: Don't try.

"Dedicated to bad writing."