OPEN CITY No. 31, Nov. 30–Dec. 5, 1967 — Bukowski Notes, Liza Williams

An issue of Open City (Nov. 30–Dec. 5), featuring Charles Bukowski's "Notes of a Dirty Old Man." The column is built around the mailbox — that great-girl grey structure on the rented porch that connects suffering to hope — and the letters of a woman named Meggy, who writes to Bukowski with the relentless, dull warmth of a female devoted to aging in her own easy sellout. Meggy's letters arrive in waves: her plants are dying, her friend Lana teaches poetry at the insane asylum, she saw his last poem in The Blue Stardust Jack-Off, he is the world's greatest living writer, the children are coming home soon. Between her letters come a National Endowment for the Arts rejection, a hotel-room letter from a broken drifter named M. with rheumy legs and 51 aces turned up blank, and a note from someone signing off as Lawrence of Arabia. Bukowski reflects on being cruel to the cruel, stupid to the stupid — the only thing left when nothing can be done. On page 12, Meggy resurfaces having been accepted by Evergreen, still holding his first collection Christ Creeps Backwards, her husband joking that bongo hasn't written in a long time. Bukowski empties the beer bottle, walks to the window over the usual dark sterile senseless Los Angeles day, thinks about flying up to her door drunk in rags with buttons reading IMPEACH JOHNSON and STOP THE WAR, decides nothing will work, sits back down. The column closes with Meggy's final letter — blah blah blah, watered the pots, the children are coming home soon — and Bukowski asking whether this ever happened to Balzac or Shakespeare or Cervantes.

The front cover leads with an editorial by publisher John Bryan on racial segregation in South Los Angeles. Interior pages include advertisements featuring Phil Ochs and Big Brother and the Holding Company. The back cover features "Liza: the City," a column by Liza Williams — who would later become an on-and-off companion to Bukowski — alongside the weekly event listings, which include Tim Buckley at the Troubadour and Joan Baez at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion. Large tabloid format, 17" x 11", black and white throughout.

The front cover leads with an editorial by publisher John Bryan on racial segregation in South Los Angeles. Interior pages include advertisements featuring Phil Ochs and Big Brother and the Holding Company. The back cover features "Liza: the City," a column by Liza Williams — who would later become an on-and-off companion to Bukowski — alongside the weekly event listings, which include Tim Buckley at the Troubadour and Joan Baez at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion. Large tabloid format, 17" x 11", black and white throughout.

Provenance: Mailing label on front cover addressed to John Bryan Sr., father of Open City editor John Bryan, and a newspaper man himself.

This copy has a pretty even fold, but there are some edges sticking out on the bottom. The top