28/12/2006 - Personal documents - 'Selected Letters' by Charles Bukowski
As I enjoy Bukoswki's letters very much, here's another quote from a letter dated May 1962, most probably the 15th:
[***] the jon jazz bit not for me. I prefer the symphony - Shostakovitch 5th, Symphony in D by Franck, Stravinsky, the better parts of Mahler, etc., but don't care for the symphony crowd. Stiff phoney crows, all this marble hall exaltation, this church-like holiness. They ought to play this stuff in the juke-boxes of beerhalls, bars. Think of trying to hold the price-line with a whore while listening to Beethoven. This would be life out of the stems of flowers.[***]
You would expect Bukowski to prefer jazz or rock, but in these letters he refers many times to his love for classical music, even though the above described setting is very 'Bukowskian'. I love this quote, as I often have the same thoughts (be it not in these 'eloquent' words) whenever I visit a classical concert. But I must say I prefer the crowds in Sydney to the 'stiff phoney crows' I usually came across at concerts in the Amsterdam Concert Gebouw.
Charles Bukowski: Selected Letters Volume 1, 1958-1965. This edition published by Virgin Books, 2004.
For more Bukowski, see entry 13/12/2006
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