Pulp

Charles Bukowski

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780876859261
• eBook ISBN: 9780061857225
• Subtopic: Classics

Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this novel demonstrates Charles Bukowski's own brand of humor and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.

Bukowski’s final novel is a surreal pastiche of the classic Mickey Spillane, Chandleresque private dick novel. Nick Belane, is a lonely, middle-aged, egotistical, alcoholic private detective who is badly in need of some lucrative work, but what he gets is a series of increasingly strange assignments from a bizarre collection of clients.

He is asked to track down the long-dead French classical author Celine and an elusive red sparrow. He encounters aliens, heavies and even Lady Death herself. All the while, Belane is convincing himself that he’s still a white-hot detective and that nobody can take him for a ride, or indeed make him feel he’s losing his mind.

Pulp is essential fiction from Buk himself.

1

I was sitting in my office, my lease had expired and McKelvey was starting eviction proceedings. It was a hellish hot day and the air conditioner was broken. A fly crawled across the top of my desk. I reached out with the open palm of my hand and sent him out of the game. I wiped my hand on my right pants leg as the phone rang.

I picked it up. “Ah yes,” I said.

“Do you read Celine?” a female voice asked. Her voice sounded quite sexy. I had been lonely for some time. Decades.

“Celine,” I said, “ummm…”

“I want Celine,” she said. “I’ve got to have him.”

Such a sexy voice, it was getting to me, really.

“Celine?” I said. “Give me a little background. Talk to me, lady. Keep talking…”

“Zip up,” she said.

I looked down.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Never mind. I want Celine.”

“Celine is dead.”

“He isn’t. I want you to find him. I want him.”

“I might find his bones.”

“No, you fool, he’s alive!”

“Where?”

“Hollywood. I hear he’s been hanging around Red Koldowsky’s bookstore.”

“Then why don’t you find him?”

“Because first I want to know if he’s the real Celine. I have to be sure, quite sure.”

“But why did you come to me? There are a hundred dicks in this town.”

“John Barton recommended you.”

“Oh, Barton, yeah. Well, listen, I’ll have to have some kind of advance. And I’ll have to see you personally.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said.

She hung up. I zipped up.

 

And waited.

2

She walked in.

Now, I mean, it just wasn’t fair. Her dress fit so tight it almost split the seams. Too many chocolate malts. And she walked on heels so high they looked like little stilts. She walked like a drunken cripple, staggering around the room. A glorious dizziness of flesh.

“Sit down, lady,” I said.

She put it down and crossed her legs high, damn near knocked my eyes out.

“It’s good to see you, lady,” I said.

“Stop gawking, please. It’s nothing that you haven’t seen before.”

“You’re wrong there, lady. Now may I have your name?”

“Lady Death.”

“Lady Death? You from the circus? The movies?”

“No.”

“Place of birth?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Year of birth?”

“Don’t try to be funny…”

“Just trying to get some background…”

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck.

She snapped her fingers.

“Hey, come out of it!”

“Huh?” I looked up.

“The Celine case. Remember?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I unfolded a paperclip, pointed the end toward her.

“I’ll need a check for services rendered.”

“Of course,” she smiled. “What are your rates?”

“6 dollars an hour.”

She got out her checkbook, scribbled away, ripped the check out and tossed it to me. It landed on the desk. I picked it up. $240. I hadn’t seen that much money since I hit an exacta at Hollywood Park in 1988.

“Thank you, Lady…”

“…Death,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Now fill me in a little on this so-called Celine. You said something about a bookstore?”

“Well, he’s been hanging around Red’s bookstore, browsing…asking about Faulkner, Carson McCullers. Charles Manson…”

“Hangs around the bookstore, huh? Hmm…”

“Yes,” she said, “you know Red. He likes to run people out of his bookstore. A person can spend a thousand bucks in there, then maybe linger a minute or two and Red will say, ‘Why don’t you get the hell out of here?’ Red’s a good guy, he’s just freaky. Anyway, he keeps tossing Celine out and Celine goes over to Musso’s and hangs around the bar looking sad. A day or so later he’ll be back and it will happen all over again.”

“Celine is dead. Celine and Hemingway died a day apart. 32 years ago.”

“I know about Hemingway. I got Hemingway.”

“You sure it was Hemingway?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Then how come you can’t be sure this Celine is the real Celine?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got some kind of block with this thing. It’s never happened before. Maybe I’ve been in the game too long. So, I’ve come to you. Barton says you’re good.”

“And you think the real Celine is alive? You want him?”

“Real bad, buster.”

“Belane. Nick Belane.”

“All right, Belane. I want to make sure. It’s got to be the real Celine, not just some half-assed wannabe. There are too many of those.”

“Don’t we know it.”

“Well, get on it. I want France’s greatest writer. I’ve waited a long time.”

Then she got up and walked out of there. I never saw an ass like that in my life. Beyond concept. Beyond everything. Don’t bother me now. I want to think about it.

3

It was the next day.

I had cancelled my appointment to speak before the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce.

It was raining. The ceiling leaked. The rain dripped down through the ceiling and went “spat, spat, spat, a spat a spat, spat, spat, spat, a spat, spat, spat, a spat, a spat, a spat, spat, spat, spat…”

The sake kept me warm. But a warm what? A warm zero. Here I was 55 years old and I didn’t have a pot to catch rain in. My father had warned me that I would end up diddling myself on some stranger’s back porch in Arkansas. And I still had time to make it. The Greyhounds ran every day. But busses constipated me and there was always some old Union Jack with a rancid beard who snored. Maybe it would be better to work on the Celine Case.

Was Celine Celine or was he somebody else? Sometimes I felt that I didn’t even know who I was. All right, I’m Nicky Belane. But check this. Somebody could yell out, “Hey, Harry! Harry Martel!” and I’d most likely answer, “Yeah, what is it?” I mean, I could be anybody, what does it matter? What’s in a name?

Life’s strange, isn’t it? They always chose me last on the baseball team because they knew I could drive that son-of-a-bitch out there, all the way to Denver. Jealous chipmunks, that’s what they were!

I was gifted, am gifted. Sometimes I looked at my hands and realized that I could have been a great pianist or something. But what have my hands done? Scratched my balls, written checks, tied shoes, pushed toilet levers, etc. I have wasted my hands. And my mind.

I sat in the rain.

The phone rang. I wiped it dry with a past due bill from the IRS, picked it up.

“Nick Belane,” I said. Or was I Harry Martel?

“This is John Barton,” came the voice.

“Yes, you’ve been recommending me, thank you.”

“I’ve been watching you. You’ve got talent. It’s a little raw but that’s part of the charm.”

“Great to hear. Business has been bad.”

“I’ve been watching you. You’ll make it, you ju...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39
• Chapter 40
• Chapter 41
• Chapter 42
• Chapter 43
• Chapter 44
• Chapter 45
• Chapter 46
• Chapter 47
• Chapter 48
• Chapter 49
• Chapter 50
• Chapter 51
• About the Author
• By Charles Bukowski
• Copyright
• About the Publisher