
People Simply Empty Out (1986) - simonebrunozzi
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out.html
======
topicseed
From Bukowski's Factotum...

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This
could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It
could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park
bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--
isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance,
of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and
the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If
you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You
will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will
ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

~~~
Balgair
Man, I wish any of that were true. It seems that life is just too random to
have that end up being true. Too many things happen that you can't control
that then come along and wreck it all.

My SO achieved so much, had it all, got through grad school great, was going
to teach at a University I know you have heard of, do amazing research all
over the world, help out humanity in a very real way, all that jazz. Then,
bam, the pain started up and has never left. The chonic pain disorder my SO
has is a real sumbitch. I love my SO, terribly so. But all that my SO had just
evaporated into the pain. Just one bad infection, like about 2% of the US
gets, and there it all went.

No amount of drive is going to fix it. No amount of work. My SO can't work
through the pain as it exacerbates the condition. Lord knows my SO spent
months and years just trying to ignore it, making it worse the whole while.
That pain just winds you, for days at a time. Takes it all.

And the shame that my SO feels just kills me. All the desires, all that
motivation and drive that my SO had, it's all still there, clawing at my SO's
mind, telling itself that my SO is 'just not good enough'. That person is
still there, just enveloped with pain, trying to break out and work again.
What gave my SO everything, all that honor and accomplishment, is not tearing
into my SO and making it all worse.

Bukowski isn't wrong, _per se_ , but he is not right either. That fire is
dangerous in the wrong circumstances and it's very difficult to tell when you
are in the wrong place.

One quote that has really changed as it has aged is that Bourdain quote:

> “I understand there’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed
> all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of
> stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.”

Yet Anthony died by his own hand. That drive, that spark and thumos, it was
his undoing as much as it was his making. Would he have been as a sucess if
not for that drive? The only person that could tell you is dead.

So, sure, sleep on the benches for it, go to jail for it, but remember, there
are worse things than just temporary discomforts, mockery, and dishonor
waiting in the weeds along that path.

~~~
milchek
Well said. Really this kind of discussion and debate tends to revolve around
whether people assign importance to the destination or the journey.

If you're constantly striving and chasing some personal goal, ie. "once I
achieve this, THEN I'll be happy" then there are two major risks. The first is
that you'll fail - the fallout from this is obvious since your happiness was a
self-imposed condition of achieving said goal. The second risk is that you do
not live to see your goal, or, unfortunately as you've described in your
personal story, the goal will become worthless for one reason or another -
such as a major personal crisis or illness.

That's not to say you shouldn't strive for great things or have lofty goals
and plans. I personally don't have the answers on the "key to happiness and
success", but I do know that always chasing and never stopping to reflect or
enjoy what you actually have can't be healthy either. I suppose that's where a
lot of the power of things like meditation and mindfulness come from; because
they're about being in the moment.

Personally, I think it's important to take each day as it comes and aim to be
the best version of yourself you can be that day. You win some, you lose some,
but hopefully, the cumulative effect of more good days outweigh the bad, and
you can one day reflect on that without too much regret and with some sense of
happiness.

On another note, Bukowski's requested that "Don't Try" is engraved on his
tombstone. Some feel it is a comment about being authentic, not pursuing or
pushing for something that isn't you, and about letting the work you naturally
enjoy flow from you, as opposed to forcing it - or trying too hard.

~~~
xwdv
Chasing personal goals is more or less how I fucked up my life. I thought I
was doing the right things, I trusted that someday I’d feel happy and
fulfilled if I achieved them. And I did achieve many of them, but instead of
feeling happy, I just kind of felt like an asshole. I tried way too hard, I
faked it till I made it, and when I looked back, I saw I basically lived a
fake life, and had no one I could connect with on a genuine level. I had no
“journey”, my journey was all about faking my journey, reflecting on it was
just thinking about how I was thinking of getting to my destination.

~~~
rewgs
This hits incredibly close to home. Have you figured out how to...for lack of
a better phrase...be a person again? To have a real journey, to enjoy it, to
be your authentic self? Has anything changed thanks to this realization?

------
blunte
Sometimes I do wonder... how many people I see with regular jobs feel like
they are using 10% of their abilities at those jobs? At this very moment I am
making an effort to re-enter the corporate world... studying Python or Ruby or
Elixir any of the other 5 languages I have used in the last 10 years to
convince a company that I can do their work. But inside, I know I'm doing it
99% for the money. It's only because I didn't run the gauntlet in the past and
strike out on my dreams with 150% effort (I tried once, at probably 90%
effort. I failed.)

I had a friend and consulting boss who once told me, "I don't care what work I
do; it's just a day job, and it's money." And as with people who can happily
do hookup after hookup on Tinder, I sometimes wish I were like them. But when
you really care about shit, it ties you up. And when the stuff you care about
is just one or two cogs in a big machine that isn't really worth supporting,
you die slowly for a wage.

My advice to young people (those of you who are in your first 5 years of
employment) is to realize now that unless you want to become a business owner
or want to do 12+ years of good effort in one of the big 5 (4?) consulting
firms, you should just never grow your personal cost of living and instead
focus on doing stuff you love - money be damned. You may just find yourself in
the enviable position where doing the thing you loved resulted in a windfall
(Google bought you), or at least funds you 5+k/mo while you travel the many
other awesome parts of the world which cost way less than the US and western
Europe.

~~~
diminoten
I dunno, wanderlust doesn't afflict everyone, and having a stable routine
matters to some folks.

~~~
blunte
I would argue that those people have not yet wandered, and don't know what is
possible in life.

I have not studied this scientifically, but my experience is that the more
places a traveler has been, the greater their desire to explore.

~~~
cortesoft
I think it is a bit paternalistic to assume that people who don't want to
wander the world just haven't done so yet.

I love having my stable job, getting to come home and spend time with the wife
and kids after every work day, and knowing they have a stable life where they
aren't having to move schools or worry about constant change.

People are different.

~~~
blunte
How possibly could that concept be paternalistic? Is it just men that have a
desire to travel and find their place in the greater environment/world? Why
not women also?

Nobody says that you cannot have stability. But clearly you are in a stage of
life that I have passed through. (Although, I did take my kids to a very new
environment when they were 10-ish, and they got to experience snow skiing as a
regular Friday activity, and hiking and mountain biking in good weather in the
non-winter months.)

If your energy is focused on your family, and you are happy, and your job
doesn't make you feel like your talents are wasted, then great! That's
enviable. But it doesn't have anything to do with people who have experienced
travel wanting to do more of it. It's a bit saying there's no value in trying
foods other than what you grew up eating.

~~~
cortesoft
I meant paternalistic as in 'assuming you know what is best for someone else',
not anything to do with gender.

My issue with the original comment was the assumption that the ONLY reason you
wouldn't want to wander is because you haven't done it enough. Some people
have wandered, and just aren't drawn to it.

This goes for any statement like that; "If you don't like x it is just because
you haven't had a good one" or "You only like y because you haven't tried x
yet"

People have different preferences, and it is not always simply because of lack
of experience or knowledge... people like different things.

~~~
blunte
Fair enough. Age and life situation is also a major element in the
consideration. Traveling as a child is different from traveling as a parent of
small-ish children, and those are different from traveling solo or otherwise
without children.

------
plutonic
Perhaps as a counterpoint, this poem:

The Men That Don't Fit In [0] By Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they
break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range
the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs
is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and
true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the
strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I
would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh
mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's
the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each
forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he
stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done
things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to
laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a
rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in.

[0] [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58012/the-men-that-
do...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58012/the-men-that-dont-fit-in)

------
kouh
If you want to delve into his work, please note that his editor John
Martin/Black Sparrow heavily defaced most of his original work with mediocre
edits that bordered vandalism [0]. The manuscripts is where the better stuff
is.

[0] [https://mjpbooks.com/blog/the-senseless-tragic-rape-of-
charl...](https://mjpbooks.com/blog/the-senseless-tragic-rape-of-charles-
bukowskis-ghost-by-john-martins-black-sparrow-press/)

~~~
dustyleary
Wow, that is amazing. I don't see how anyone could look at the poem referenced
in the post [0] and conclude that the editor did not intentionally change a
work of art into something only loosely connected to the original.

And this is poetry, where specific word choice is incredibly important to the
work. I would feel uncomfortable even adding missing filler words like "the"
and "and" to the output of a respected poet. "Vandalism" is a good name for
what John Martin did.

On top of that, I'm not really a "literature person"... I'm wholly unqualified
to defend my opinions of why one work is good and another is bad... And my
opinion was primed by the author's negative opinion of Martin...

But the Martin version of this poem, in addition to not being faithful to the
original material, is really _awful_.

[0]
[https://a902e479034e684a62a7-1e94d668f4cdc59b83cfdb5f186933f...](https://a902e479034e684a62a7-1e94d668f4cdc59b83cfdb5f186933fd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/2013/06/dirty-
vulgar.png)

~~~
peterwwillis
Vandalism (in its original use, the pillaging of art) implies a need to cause
destruction, hostility; it's vengeance, comeuppance. In this case I think
"rape" is the correct description. Rape is asserting your power over someone
against their will, to humiliate, dehumanize; it's forced submission to make
oneself superior. What Martin did is much worse than simply destroying
Bukowski's art; he forced himself upon it, corrupting it, like a necrophiliac
with a pen.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> I could see all this. Why couldn't they?

Having worked mind-numbing jobs like packer at a warehouse, I can assure you
that most people can see "all this" just as clearly as Bukowski. Like
Bukowski, they are unable to do anything to change "how things are", but
unlike Bukowski they don't have a guaridan angel to lift them off the daily
rat race and into a successful creative career. More importantly, perhaps,
unlike Bukowski, many of those people have responsibilities, specifically to
their families and particularly their kids, responsibilities that they
recognise and that they usually accept. Or in any case, those who accept those
responsibilities give up any dreams of a "free" life and do what best they can
to fulfil those responsibilities. If that means working at a 9-to-not-quite-5
job that eats you from the inside, because there is no better option, then
that's what it means.

But Bukowski asks: why do people have children? Because that's what people do,
if you look around you. People make more people. Perhaps we are all slaves of
evolution that has programmed us this way but a sizeable chunk of people find
that they love their children even before they have them, even if they find
that they can never have them. Some people are not like that and some can't
even stand the idea of having children. Perhaps those people are lucky,
perhaps they are the real unlucky ones. Who knows.

~~~
mantap
Traditionally, your kids work to support you when they grow up. In rich
countries this doesn't happen because it has been financialized into pensions,
but in the rest of the world it's very much a reality.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Bukowski was writing for people in the USA, correct?

------
strenholme
I was a cubicle worker for years, making too much money doing too little work
during the dot-com bubble. I was not happy with my life, so I took my dot-com
savings and left the country to go to a Latin American country to live there,
learning the local language. I ended up becoming a professional English
teacher and translator there. I made enough money to support myself, and only
had to work mornings.

One thing I really like about Latin America is how important connections are.
People are on the street meeting and talking to each other on a level I don’t
see in the US; personal connections have more value there.

Now that I am a single father to a young child, I’m back in the states working
again, but it’s not the grind it used to be, much less the grind it was back
in 1986. With work at home and flex hours being a thing that it wasn’t two
decades ago, I can handle work without having the horrible burnout I had
before.

------
trynewideas
To save you the search: "$100 in 1969 is equivalent in purchasing power to
about $699.10 in 2019." 1960 median rent in NYC was about $545 in 2019
dollars.

------
silasdb
Bukowski, coming from the working class (like Jack London and others), has a
_real_ view about what work is indeed. He is not an outsider like many writers
or artists. If you have a chance, read a short story written by him, Kid
Stardust on the Porterhouse. I bet must of us already felt that way.

------
ilaksh
This touches on a fundamental issue with our society which that employment
just does not generally lend itself to real agency.

If you are single, have few obligations and live frugally in the Bay Area as a
software engineer for a massive company making $200,000 per year and able to
save up thousands of dollars per month, it may be difficult to see that issue.
But just try to realize that most jobs and situations aren't like that.

------
merpnderp
I always wonder what people who complain about the 9-5 feel should be the
alternative.

~~~
Kecelij
Working for yourself. Creating your own business, not being a slave to the
system and being manipulated by media and the collective unconscious into
thinking it's normal to work for someone, to sell your SELF, not your products
(as it should be, in a rational society). Sadly, nothing about todays society
is rational. But hey, if you wanna spend 1/3 of your life working a job you
think is "OK", fucking have at it.

I would be ashamed to have written on my tombstone "worked 1/3 of his life as
a sys admin".

There is no meaning in that. Just an empty job to have money, for what? For
more stuff? To teach your children to do the same? Keeping materialistic
corporations afloat with me taking care of the servers and stuff.

~~~
paxys
If you create your own business are you going to hire people to work for you
9-5?

~~~
Kecelij
I would never do that. I am a jack of all trades and I intend to keep it that
way. One man business.

~~~
endemic
You’re still beholden to the people who pay for your products/services.

~~~
kentrado
You will notice the different though. Those people only care about the end
product, you can work however you like to get there. There's freedom in there.

------
southerndrift
How should I interpret the end? Does he mean 'yr boy' literally, as in 'your
slave'?

>To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy
accomplishment, if only for myself.

>yr boy,

>Hank

Is Bukowski acknowledging that he has exchanged working for a boss to writing
for Martin? Does this change the message of the letter to the point that he
actually doesn't see his life as an accomplishment?

~~~
lioeters
For what it's worth, I interpreted that ending as showing fondness,
familiarity, friendship, gratitude.

I thought "yr boy" could mean that the publisher was an older father figure.
Just checked, John Martin was born in 1930, Bukowski in 1920. So that theory
is out.

"Boy" doesn't always have a racial undertone in American culture - it's
commonly used as a familiar term, among good buddies.

------
nullc
Related:
[http://www.inspiracy.com/black/abolition/abolitionofwork.htm...](http://www.inspiracy.com/black/abolition/abolitionofwork.html)

------
guest2143
Reading this essay made me think of this book that I recently read:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1319.The_War_of_Art](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1319.The_War_of_Art)

How much of the obstacles that we face are there just to 'resist' the shining
light we each could bring into the world? Or the work we were meant to do?

------
retrocryptid
So I knew hacker news was a place to go for tech stuff. But... HN denizens,
you have now officially impressed me with your interest in literary matters.
(but don't get a big head, impressing me is sometimes not that hard.)

------
throwaway3627
People think I'm crazy not to go prostitute myself for a job at Google; I
think they're crazy for volunteering to be bridled and ridden around for 20
hours a day for years without having equity or ownership in the profits.

~~~
WWLink
20 hours a day o_O

~~~
throwaway2048
How many programmers can truely leave work at work, even if they really want
to.

Mental tasks occupy all your waking hours, and its very hard to avoid.

------
jasonifer
"Sometimes you have to pee in the sink."

~~~
Gibbon1
"Everyone pees in the sink. Gentlemen push the dishes aside first"

~~~
Aeolun
I’m not sure what I think this means, but it does sound very profound.

------
tw1010
Ugh, such a huge mix of emotions reading this.

------
zerogvt
Just thank you for sharing that.

------
puranjay
What stands out the most about Bukowski is his incredible lack of empathy. He
looks at people working regular jobs and all he sees are empty bodies. He
can't imagine that maybe these people go home to loving families, interesting
hobbies, or rich creative lives.

If you've found yourself at the end of a bad economic bargain (which is most
people), you tend to rationalize your ambitions and switch attention away from
work to more fulfilling things outside of work

~~~
smaslennikov
I think a difference of purpose is to be mentioned here. Not all people are
the same, some strive for different aspects of life than others.

Using your example, some seek family, a close social circle, a white-picket-
fence life. There's nothing wrong with that, but another group seeks relative
solitude, doesn't see a purpose in creating a family or having a nice house,
and fills some kind of intellectual hole, be it with creative writing, or
relatively non-conformist research.

My point is, I don't see Bukowski as one who lacks empathy, rather, someone
who follows his own purpose, though, potentially blind to some others'
happiness doing other things.

Lastly, the workforce ethics back then were quite different from today's. It's
my understanding that the pay was significantly lower compared to costs of
living while progressing in ranks was near impossible without a degree.

~~~
jacobush
It's exactly the other way around - it is _now_ it's harder to progress
without a degree and cost of living is higher.

------
tengbretson
It hurts my brain to imagine being a 66 year old man writing angsty letters
that read like that of a highschooler.

~~~
lacampbell
What does angsty mean? I am never sure if people are using it as a fancy word
for 'angry' or they're adopting the german meaning of 'fearful', or 'anxious'.

~~~
munificent
Honestly, when people use it, they really mean "anger that I personally
disapprove of". The choice to say "angsty" instead of "angry" says more about
the person making the word choice than it does about the person being
described.

------
the1iplay
Yes...let's all just leave our jobs and start writing or directing a movie or
start singing.

And praise this alcoholic.

I love my '9-5'.

