Various (Moore, Thomas (Editor); Bukowski, Charles; Blunden, Ron et al.)

The Paris Metro: The Magazine About Paris Today Vol. 3 No. 21 (October 11, 1978)

Paris, France: Metro Communications, 1978. First Edition, First Printing. “Intellectuals, they try to tie me in with all the literary figures of the past – Walt Whitman, Melville…God, it bores me so. They try to make a package out of me. I try to tell them no, you can’t put a label on me. I’m a loner, I do my thing. But it’s no use. They keep asking me about Kerouac, and didn’t I meet Neal Cassidy [sic], and wasn’t I with Ginsberg, and so on. And I have to tell them no, I was drunk during the whole beatnik thing, I was not writing then. And of course, they’re disappointed. The French are particularly eager to associate me with the beatnik thing for some reason.” (Charles Bukowski, p. 16) A short interview with Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) conducted by Ron Blunden is the feature piece of this issue of The Paris Metro, the short-lived, English-language magazine geared toward expatriates in Paris. “Nothing else remotely like Metro existed at the time. Other English-language competitors like the Herald Tribune provided local news coverage, but the Metro offered a full high-low smorgasbord, from in-depth interviews with city employees to poetry by writers such as Gregory Corso and capsule reviews of Paris’s worst restaurants to coverage of pickup softball leagues,” writes Adrienne Raphel in a 2024 retrospect in The Paris Review (the article notes the Metro has not been digitized, and so is only available in print.) The interview juxtaposes Bukowski’s relative obscurity in America with his widespread fame in France. “No, I was taken by surprise (by the fame). I didn’t suspect it was this good – or this bad – until I came here,” he says, while earlier noting “ In America now, they expect me to be drunk in the gutter half the time, to be living with a sloppy whore with big tits and so on. But I’ve got a right to my own life.” The Metro author notes it was Bukowski’s tenth interview of the day, “…and he wasn’t exactly as fresh as morning dew. The drinking had apparently started early (too early, confided Linda King, his current flame and all-purpose nurse) and the joint he kept relighting certainly wasn’t his first.” (Debritto, B1087, p. 299) Curator’s Note: We have covered with a blank white sticker one image of child nudity. Presumed first edition, first & only printing. Complete folded broadsheet newspaper in relatively fine condition with some moderate age-toning throughout; tearing to the cover and spine and significant chipping to edge of leaves on some pages. Near Fine. [Item #8012]

Price: $40.00