Charles Bukowski: In love with the typewriter.

Charles Bukowski and vintage typewriters.

If you’re a writer and haven’t heard of Charles Bukowski, you’ve been living under a rock. He’s the kind of guy who lived life on his terms, shot from the hip, and didn’t apologize for it. A drunkard, womanizer, and overall wild man, Bukowski was one of the most celebrated writers of his time, and his work still speaks to readers today.

One thing that Bukowski loved almost as much as alcohol and women was typewriters. He was passionate about his writing tools, going so far as to write an ode to his Underwood typewriter in his book “Love Is a Dog From Hell.” He said, “I always had a passion for the typewriter. It’s the one machine that has infinite possibilities… And so I picked up that Underwood and I started banging away at it.”

Bukowski owned several typewriters over the years, but his favorite was the Royal KMM. In “The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship,” Bukowski wrote, “For years I used a Royal KMM that weighed at least thirty pounds, but the touch was so beautiful that the machine virtually disappeared and the words flowed like wine.”

But Bukowski wasn’t always a responsible typewriter owner. He once threw his Royal KMM out of a second-story window in a fit of anger, and had to go retrieve it when he realized he couldn’t live without it. He also had a habit of pounding on his typewriters with such force that the keys would stick, and he’d have to take the machine apart to fix it.

The typewriter wasn’t just a tool for Bukowski, it was a symbol of his passion for writing. He once said, “I’m not a good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter… That’s the key to writing. You have to rewrite and you have to have a passion for it.”

Bukowski’s passion for writing was fueled in part by his love of alcohol. He was never one to shy away from a drink, and often wrote about his love for beer and whiskey in his work. In his poem “Beer,” he wrote, "The beer sits in the glass/motionless/liquid-amber/ ripples up the tower of the glass/the beer is not alive/except in its dying/you have a few sips/make little remarks/ and the beer disappears/very slowly."

Bukowski’s alcohol consumption was legendary, and he notoriously showed up drunk to readings and interviews. He once said, “I never went to bed sober in my life. You don’t want the truth? You don’t want the truth because deep down in your heart you know I’m right.”

Despite his wild behavior, Bukowski remains an icon for writers and readers alike. His typewriters and his love for them were just one aspect of his larger-than-life personality. He once said, “I think that we’re all poor sinners, and that we’re all equally worth saving. I think that’s what makes my stuff readable, the fact that I’m just like everybody else.”

So here’s to Bukowski, the man, the legend, and his beloved typewriters. May we all find the passion and the courage to write as fearlessly as he did. As he wrote in his poem “So You Want To Be A Writer,” “if it doesn’t come bursting out of you/rethink/it/unless it comes unasked out of your/heart and your mind and your mouth/and your gut/don’t do it.”

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