Читать книгу Come On In! - Charles Bukowski - Страница 9

my friend Tom, he liked to come over

and he’d say, “let’s go get a coffee.”

and my girlfriend would say, “you guys

going to talk that literary stuff again?”

and we’d go to this place where you paid

for your first coffee and all the refills were

free

and we’d get a seat by the window and he

would begin:

Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Dos

Passos mainly but others got in there

too: e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound, Dreiser,

Jeffers, Céline and so forth.

although I will admit I was mostly a

listener and wondered what he was

really getting at, if anything, I

continued to listen and

drink coffee after

coffee.

once he said, “look, I’ll take you to the

place Fitzgerald stayed at for a while

during his Hollywood period.”

“all right,” I said and we got into his

car and he drove me there and pointed

it out:

“Fitzgerald lived there.”

“all right,” I said and then he drove us

back for more coffee.

Tom was truly excited about these

literary figures of the past.

I was too, to an extent,

but as Tom talked on and on about

them

and the coffees continued unabated

my interest began to wane, more than

wane.

I began to want to get rid of

Tom.

it was easy.

one day I wrote a poem about Tom

and it was published and he read

it

and after that

we enjoyed no more coffees

together.

Tom had been working on a

biography of me

and that ended that.

then another writer came along

and he drank my wine

and didn’t talk about Hemingway,

Fitzgerald, Faulkner, etc.,

he talked about himself

and ended up writing a not-very-

satisfactory biography

of me.

I should have stuck with Tom.

no, I should have gotten rid of

both of them.

which is exactly what I have

done.