Joe – Bootleg Chapbook w/ Charles Bukowski Poem About Jörg Fauser (Yellow Cover)

This bootleg chapbook contains a single four-page poem Charles Bukowski wrote about Jörg Fauser after he was flattened by a truck on his birthday in 1987.

Like Carl Weissner, Fauser apparently translated some early Bukowski short stories in German and helped with Bukowski’s success there (I was interested to learn this, but don’t know much more).

Joe is a powerful Bukowski poem and works well as a standalone chapbook. He recalls a visit Fauser made to L.A. to interview him for the German edition of Playboy. Bukowski acknowledges he didn’t behave kindly to Fauser, partly because of his usual insecurity when other men were around his girlfriends.  Later, he feels bad, and tries to make up for it in letters to Weissner, asking how Fauser is doing in flattering terms. But it’s still a bit unclear whether he feels bad about hurting Weissner’s feelings (because Fauser is friends with Weissner) or whether he truly feels bad about not being friendly to a guy who helped advance his career. Regardless, it shows a certain maturity that Bukowski may have developed after years of ending relationships with long-time correspondents after meeting them in person.

The bootleg imprint is listed as “S Press Tonband Verlag" out of Dusseldorf Germany. Not much is known about who was actually behind the series of Bukowski chapbooks bearing the imprint. According to Wikipedia “S Press Tonbandverlag was a publisher of experimental literature , Beat poetry , and concrete poetry.” But it seems unlikely the press itself was behind these chapbooks bearing the name.

In reality, this chapbook is merely a reproduction of the poem as it appeared in Gargoyle No. 35 in 1988. But the quality of the reproduction and paper stock (including end pages) is surprisingly good. The drawing on the cover is not from Gargoyle.

This copy is in Very Good + condition with bumps and light creases to the oversized covers. It measure approximately 9.75" x 6.5".

In my years of collecting. I’ve only seen these chapbooks a handful of times over the years. A nice addition for a Bukowski completist.

Box 20