Bukowski, his Mac IIsi, eBooks and the Internet

It turns out that Charles Bukowski, novelist and poet, famous for reflecting on and out of the american working class, was open to new technologies at least in his later years, if not eager to delve into them.

In general Bukowski kept abreast of new innovations that would further his writing. In a letter to John Martin, his Black Sparrow publisher, Bukowski mentioned the availability of a technology (the Internet) that would allow him to send poems instantly. The speed and ease of new technologies amazed, excited, and inspired him. When he first got a fax machine, Bukowski immediately wrote Martin a fax poem. In late 1992, Bruce Kijewski approached Bukowski with the idea of electronic books. Bukowski was intrigued. He wrote back, “Yes, you have a strange project: electronic books. It might be the future as more and more people find that the computer is such a magic thing: time-saver, charmer, energizer.” Bukowski’s open-mindedness in old age is refreshing, when you consider all the aging writers who fall back and rely on the familiar, be it in technologies of writing or actual writing style.

http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/charles-bukowski-william-burroughs-and-the-computer/