“Cheer up. Maybe you’ll be famous after you’re dead.“
*
29 years ago, the “King of the Underground” Charles Bukowski, passed away from leukemia in his (adopted) home city of Los Angeles, California. Bukowski is well known for his poetry and short stories, but even more known for his intense subject matters and persona. Publishing almost exclusively in small presses and literary magazines (hence the King of the Underground), and focusing on the plight of the every-man, the dirty, sometimes terrifying, sad and isolating aspects of humanity – he really was an impressive spokesperson for the average man. That being said, Bukowski is often considered more famous now than he was during his life (for as popular as he was in his lifetime, he was definitely underestimated in the American literary/academic arena).
“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.“
Bukowski was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, on August 16th, 1920. His early life in Germany was difficult, as WWI war reparations had stagnated the German economy forcing his father to attempt to find employment elsewhere. In April of 1923 the small family traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, where they lived until moving to Los Angeles in 1930. Bukowski’s childhood was ripe with problems. According to the author, his father struggled with alcoholism and frequently emotionally and physically abused his family – his behavior teaching Charles at a young age about “undeserved pain” and part of his sons work for the rest of his life. Charles’ family’s foreign ways, the clothes his parents made him wear, and a terrible case of acne further isolated the young man, and the bullied Charles became a quiet, somewhat repressed teen. All that changed, however, when a friend of his introduced a 13 year old Charles to alcohol – a substance he would depend on for life.
“I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.“
After high school, Bukowski began a two year stint at Los Angeles City College, thriving in his humanities courses on journalism, art and literature. However, at the onset of WWII in 1944 he quit and moved to New York City, hoping to try his hand at being a writer. During this time he was actually arrested by the FBI for 16 days for potential draft evasion, as was frequently happening to those of German heritage. After failing a physical, however, he was determined unfit for military service and was released. At the age of 24 he began writing and started to be published in a couple of small magazines and presses, but the acceptances of his work were few and far between. Deciding it a failed experiment, Bukowski quit writing for almost a decade – a time in his life he referred to as “a ten-year drunk”. He moved back to Los Angeles, worked at a pickle factory, drifted around the United States working odd jobs when it suited him, moved back to LA and worked for the United States Postal Service, and then quit that for a short time as well.
“But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.“
In 1955, a brush with death made Bukowski revisit his original dreams of writing. After a hospital stay for a bleeding ulcer, Charles started writing poetry once more. In the late 1950s, after his “ten-year drunk” period had finished, Bukowski began to be published in a couple poetry and literary magazines, such as Gallows and Nomad – finally giving the credit he was looking for to Bukowski’s early work. As a matter of fact, not only was Bukowski published in both of the only two issues of Gallows to ever exist, but two of his other poems were featured works in the inaugural issue of Nomad in 1959. The same magazine would also go on to publish his essays, including one of his best known essays, Manifesto: A Call for Our Own Critics. By 1960, the small Hearse Press was beginning to publish Bukowski’s work – they put out his collection Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail, and then continued publishing his poetry through the decades, all the way up until the early 80s.
“He asked, What makes a man a writer? Well, I said, it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.“
By the 1970s, Bukowski had accepted an offer from John Martin, publisher of the Black Sparrow Press, to leave his post office job behind (yes, Bukowski had gone back to the job several times) and write full time. Bukowski accepted the offer, writing in a letter “I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy… or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.” A mere month after his retirement from the postal service, he completed his very first novel, entitled (drumroll, please) Post Office. For the remainder of his years, Bukowski would publish many of his works with Black Sparrow Press – making it a successful press in the long run! That being said, he always favored small presses and underground magazines, and published with many over the course of his lifetime.
“And if you have the ability to love, love yourself first.“
Throughout his life, Charles Bukowski wrote over forty books of prose and poetry. His work continued to come out after his death, and he was heavily posthumously published (with new material) for over a decade after he passed away. He was a controversial writer, using a hard, clear voice and often centering his subjects on violence, drinking, sexuality, gambling, death, desolation and abandonment. His work spoke to those who ever felt dehumanized by society or by others, to those who felt desperation, but weren’t always able to act on their most basic desires. Today, Bukowski continues to inspire.
“Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.“
***
“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside – remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.“
Paine’s pamphlets, especially Common Sense, were immediate successes. Common Sense was published on January 10th, 1776, and was signed anonymously, “by an Englishman”. Within the first three months of its existence 100,000 copies were sold throughout the colonies. He employed his eloquence to fan the flames of anger at the British monarchy for their abuses. While published after the start of the American Revolution (which began in April 1775), it served to bolster enthusiasm for the cause, to inspire many and to aid in the confidence of those fighting for freedom. Common Sense largely upholds the ideals of republicanism and encouragement for freedom, and spends some time encouraging readers to join the Continental Army. He advocates an extreme change, a total break in the narrative of history. Though his ideas were not necessarily original nor unheard of, Paine’s method and way of speaking to the public made his pamphlet one of the most popular Revolutionary works in existence. In that vein, Paine became one of the most influential revolutionary writers in history.
The opposition of female public speaking wasn’t simply a hurdle. Much of the opposition was so strong that it led to violence. Many female conventions and rallies were disrupted with extreme forcefulness and cruelty, inciting suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony to state this: “No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized.” Her statement cemented the fact that it was not so much the idea of women voting that bothered their contemporaries, but rather it was women breaking out of the cages they had for so long been held and standing up for themselves publicly that was the problem. 
In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (two of the main “heavy hitters” in the suffrage movement) joined forces to create the National Woman Suffrage Association, and began the fight for a “universal suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution” (History.com). It was Stanton’s belief early on that the only way to change the way women were treated was through government political reform. While some believed that though women deserved rights, support, protection (from domestic abuse) and equal pay – they did not necessarily require the right to vote, Stanton believed the right to vote was integral to all the other matters listed. And she was not wrong. The same year, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Henry Blackwell formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). These two leagues were enmeshed in a bitter feud that would last decades, their participants disagreeing on the Fifteenth Amendment – allowing African American men the right to vote. Some, like Stanton and Anthony, rejected the Amendment, believing that woman’s suffrage was more important, and mistakenly believing that African American men opposed women’s suffrage and would fight against their cause. Stone and other members of AERA, on the other hand, supported their previously oppressed fellow citizens and supported their victories, in hopes they would help support the women’s movement in return. This is not to say that racial bias did not exist in both organizations, as it most definitely did, despite both groups being strongly associated with the abolitionist movement. Their rivalry would last until 1890.
In 1910, some of the Western states slowly began extending the vote to their female citizens. State by state, women were gaining rights (though there was still a significant ways to go). States in the South and the Northeast resisted. WWI once again slowed the momentum of the party, but women’s work in the war effort helped to engender support for their intelligence and abilities in the long run. Their aid proved their patriotism and that they were as deserving of rights as men were. A parade for women’s rights in 1917 in New York City consisted of hundreds of women, carrying placards with over 1 million female signatures on them… a far cry from where they started out, with less than 1% of the population’s support. 
Carson eventually got a temporary position with the United States Bureau of Fisheries, a job which she had been on the fence about but was persuaded to take by one of her college mentors. She spent her time there writing radio copy for “weekly educational broadcasts entitled Romance Under the Waters.” With 52 programs in the series, Carson had her work cut out for her. The episodes focused on aquatic life and was meant to prompt interest in biology of fish and the work the Bureau did. During this time, Carson’s interest in marine life grew, and soon she was submitting articles on aquatic life in the Chesapeake Bay to local newspapers and magazines. She impressed her superiors with her dedication and knowledge to the point where they offered her the first full-time position that became available, as a junior aquatic biologist.
Over ten years at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (as it was by then called) were good to Carson – she had become the chief editor of publications. Years after the first interest shown by publishers, Carson was once again on the book-publishing path. This time, Oxford University Press expressed interest in a life history of the ocean. Her completed work would eventually become The Sea Around Us. Several chapters were published serially in the Yale Review, Science Digest and The New Yorker, until it was finally published as a book in July 1951. It was an immediate bestseller, remaining at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List for 86 weeks straight. This success gave Carson the ability to give up her job at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and focus on her writing full time.
Her books on the ocean life continuing to be popular, best selling works across the country, Carson began focusing much of her research on pesticide use in the United States, something she had been interested in for over a decade, but finally had the time and space to work on it. By 1957, the USDA was proposing widespread pesticide spraying – to eradicate fire ants and other pests. Carson was suspicious of some of the toxic chemicals they were proposing using, including DDT – a now known carcinogen. She worried what kind of effect the runoff from this activity would have on coastal life, and for good reason. Carson would spend the rest of her life focusing her efforts on conservation, with a great emphasis on “the dangers of pesticide overuse.” In September 1962, Houghton Mifflin published what would become Carson’s best-known book, Silent Spring. This work described in detail the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, and is credited worldwide with helping begin the modern environmental movement. “Carson was not the first, or the only person to raise concerns about DDT, but her combination of “scientific knowledge and poetic writing” reached a broad audience and helped to focus opposition to DDT use.” She also poetically noted the dangers of human nature on the environment, a verifiable fact . Carson was, truly, ahead of her time. Unfortunately taken from us much too soon (passing away at the age of only 56 after a battle with breast cancer), Rachel Carson will live on with every moment that we choose to put the good of the planet above ease of our lives.
