Hi there Tony!
Thanks for reading my e-mails even if they are a bit long! Was at the library tonight and I was glad to see «Down and out…» on the shelve and I took one copy and put it in display on a table; I do that with the books of authors that I like! And with my friend’s books! A bit adolescent but what the fuck! I am 60… am I not returning to infancy?....
About the drawing on the door: what a fucking stupid thing to do... but like I was saying Buddhism is great but the human beings that practice it are, well, nothing more than human beings...
The Sokka Gakai is one of many organizations but it seems to be the easiest one to reach... there is good in it and there is bad (mostly when you meet the people... some are devotees and can't do anything without the organization and the master President Daisaku Ikeda, who is a well respected man etc... but what I like is the writing of the founder of that practice Nichiren Daishonin in the middle age... he was pretty far out and determine and sometime violent! he said that if you chant «nam myoho renge kyo» on and on you will attain the highest state of life etc... the Tibetans have their own mantra and the Vietnamese Buddhist... you see tony there is as many type of Buddhism as there is types of Christianism divided between Catholics and protestants etc so one has to fin the one that one likes and that one can use in his own life... for me the Nichiren Buddhism as the Sokka Gakai makes available for daily practice suits me fine but I stay away from the fanatics... as much as possible.. In this Buddhism we practice part of one well known sutra in the Buddhist canon: The Lotus Sutra… I have memorized the 2 chapters (2 and 16) that we chant in what we call Gongyo (the practice of the sutra) where we chant the Daimoku (nam myoho renge kyo) in front of the Gohonzon (a Sanskrit parchment that was written by Nichiren)… So I have all that in a place of my house ready for practice… I hit the gong (made like a boll) and light the candles and incense and make the offering (fruits and water) and open the Butsudan that holds the Gohonzon and start reciting the Sutra with a type of necklace of beads… Anyway I like all that ritual and objects etc… It is easier than going to Tibet or in other sect… The building of practice of the Sokka is modern and has regular chairs and you do not feel too weird… in L.A. the main building is on Wilshire and they have other center all over the state and the USA… Some other Buddhist organization despises the Sokka: jealousy, envy, doctrinal theology, etc… I do not give a shit about what everybody say I like the practice and from my study of Buddhism and believe me Tony I can teach Buddhism in any University in the world and that one is as good and as authentic as any… But like in any religion there are wars of words and beliefs… They have very good website… were everything is explained and defined… These days I am not doing the ritual morning and night but just chant the daimoku (nam myoho…) while I drive or walk etc… I was very busy in doing it for 10 years… And I met the top people of the organization and was even talked about in Japan (Home of that Buddhism and many others) because I was on a French TV Show about that Buddhism and everybody loved what I said… So I became king of a «star» very fast and some people hated me for rising so fast: again, human beings are human beings and that is why they are practicing and will have to practice a lot to become better human beings… myself included!
I bought 1 book of Fante: Ask the Dust. I will buy 1933 and Bandini tomorrow… it is the only one they have… and maybe another title: «…bunker» something! I love the idea of L.A. in his books so far… Can’t wait to start «Ask the dust» but I have to finish Jim Thompson’s «Heed the Thunder»… which is starting to be very very good… I read the «Alcoholics» and loved it… I will read all his books for sure and I have all of them but 4… People ask me why I read so much of these thrillers… I tell them because they are maybe the most intense writers in the world and sometimes the less known… Like tonight I bought «Nightfall» David Goodis… you cannot find any of his book… they had that one out of nowhere! Now listen to this Tony this guy, Jewish and gay, was hired by Hollywood after the success of «Don’t shoot the piano player» … But he hated it and went back to home in Philadelphia where he spent the rest of his life miserable and writhing some of the best books in the world and was directly published in paperback, it goes to tell how much he wasn’t respected! A French producer made a movie of that book and also of another one: «The moon in the gutter»… He is very dark, NOIR as hell… all his books were always available in French but you could not find them for the last 50 years… recently there is renewed interest in his writing… The same for Horace McCoy (They shoot horses don’t they)… and so many others… Chester Himes (how great his thriller with Grave Digger Jones etc) and all his other books about being black in America… He was publishing his first books in French in France because nobody in the States wanted to publish him! Man even today you pick up some of those university anthology and Kerouac is not in as a novelist! Nor a poet! So that should make you feel good tony and make you patient and more determined… even myself I am still not in some anthology… even if my poems and songs are being studied in all levels of schools… I am still left out! Some of that intelligentsia anthologist despises me for my popularity etc… In the States the intelligentsia has interest only for Hemingway and Faulkner and Wolf (Thomas) and Steinbeck…. I am not saying that I don’t like them…. But you know what I mean!
Like James Cain also no books of his on the shelves but may be The Postman… And John D Macdonald who sold millions of books… you only find «Cape Fear»… and what about the most despised: Mickey Spillane… Fuck no books of his but only sometimes vol 1 and vol 2 containing each 3 novels… there should be a vol 3 with 3 other novels… his 9 first Mike Hammer are unique… And Richard Stark? And Pronzini? And Marcia Muller? Now I did know much about these writers 10 years ago… but I started getting interested when I was re-reading Kerouac and was wondering what these guys were exposed to as far as books are concerned, and also when I read Chandler and Hammett and wanted to know more about that type of literature, the pulp area, hard boiled etc in relation to jazz etc…I even as far as reading The Shadow and Doc Savage… and even Spicy Detective Pulp Mag…. And I started to collect the original paperback edition with those superb covers... I have sixties edition of «On the Road» and «Dharma Bums«… tonight I bout the paperback edition of «On the road» the scroll version… cannot wait to start reading it! I forgot another writer of those thriller masterpieces and it is Shell Scott (pen name?)… And there is another one I forget the name but his hero was Race Williams and he is the originator of «hard boiled» literature…
I modern thriller writer is Ian Rankin… I like all his rolling stones titles…. And is hero inspector John rebus… I read so far 5 of his novels and The Black Book, the 5th, is the one that I like best… I read all Connelly, Harry Bosch novels are great… he likes jazz and I buy every album that he listens to in a story…
Rebus likes the Stones albums… Oh yeah… Tony… looks at this publisher’s books: HARD CASE CRIME founded by Charles Ardaï… all the covers are vintage inspired… good nostalgia!
Concerning your title… Sick City sound good… You are right about that Thompson novel, very odd but great anyway… and like I wrote before I am still looking for the thriller aspect of Jim Thompsons’s novels so far but I only have read 3… I am thinking of Patricia Highsmith who wrote 30 novels and is just being accepted as an important writer in the States… again we are not doing so bad with our writing Tony! Man 30 books, not to mention those 5 Ripley’s masterpieces… and no recognition in her own country for more than 40 years!!!!!! I made it big in Quebec and a little in France… but I am nobody in the world… that depresses me sometime… But it is my karma: a rock-poet pop-star in a small country!
I hate methadone… I heard about subutex… but I would have to reduce my dose and for the time being no way I can to that without risking the relapse into heroin… I love the stuff so much… I miss it… And I am mad at myself to have gone so high on methadone that I cannot feel H anymore… I shot a point a month ago and got a good buzz in the head but after that not much… I would have to stop the methadone for 2 days then shoot some H and see what it does! But I am not there… Ibogaine for sure I did a research on that and I wanted to try it but did not know where to go… And I am not sure about the result… I will one day look more into it because I guess I will have to maybe get off methadone… but the truth is that I cannot risk going down… I went down a lot 18 months ago… from 165 to 65 with no bad feelings… but then I felt like trying H and I went back on my 165 fast… And being on methadone keeps me from antidepressant! That is why I went that high on methadone to stay away from the antidepressant that my doctor wanted t me to take… and no way! I also hate that AA bulshit… I talked a lot about it on radio showing the lies and contradiction… the whole concept of sickness is a lie and so depressing when they say that there is no cure… and that God is the only way… and the prayer hand in hand and the godfather and the telling the sharing in front of the group I hate it… and there are other groups that are criticizing AA openly now… you could not have done that 10 years ago… they are now advertising on TV and radio and one of the sacred rule was never to do that: it says «no soliciting» or something like that… it is a sect and nothing more… all the people I know that are in that are like in a sect… they speak the doctrine they teach it they live it they dream it… someone told me I would not read the same book once I was in it for good and I told him well thanks for warning me I’ll make sure I stay away from you people… if you are scared of books you are very week people and I believe now that yes you are sick! No cure for you guys! Stay there… they even go in AA disco and club… and leave their wife or girlfriend to go out with a girl from the meetings… and they talk at Dunkin Donut till 3-4 in the morning smoking cigarettes after cigarettes and they go home smelling like shit! Worst then when they were on the skid… Fuck they and good if it does well for some of them… some people I know saved their lives going to meeting but they lost their drive, torque… and became boring! Fuck that!
Next time I write I will tell you about French Quebec literature, English Canadian Literature etc… a little crash course on the subject… Thanks for all the info’s you are giving me and the things to look into… I really appreciate it and make the best of it believe me!
So enough for now…
I will go and read and watch rerun of Magnum PI (I have the same Ferrari… same year same color…also have a Delorean 1981…not much of a car but a great looking one… stainless steel body… and I have a Lotus Europa 1969, a Porsche Carera 1988, a Fiat Spider 2000 1981, a Triumph TR6 1974, a Mustang GT Fast back (like the one in Bullitt with the plate: California Bullitt 1967), and a Porsche 944 1984 red (Virginie was almost born in it… I’ll tell you the story sometime)… If I find the time I’ll send you the pictures of those cars and of my bikes… A pity and a shame that I haven’t driven them for 5 years… they are all over in garages and cost me a fortune to maintain and etc… I might sell all of them before I get to old... my car friends all want to buy them because I have mint cars and they were all showed on TV here and in France… it is part of my legend here in Quebec… the only car that I did not buy was a Corvette Stingray split window 1966… my passion for cars stopped just before I had the time to buy it… and also I started smoking smack… I must have forgotten one car I am sure… memory weak! Did I love to drive those cars in the country smoking grass…? But you know Tony it is a full time occupation and while I was into that I was not writing or reading… only in garages with car collectors… who are mostly jerks… some have real class but they are the few! Either obsessed people or pretentious or very boring!!! I even bought my first car with a grant for a book in 1981, that I still have, and there’s the one I forgot to mention: Corvette 1981, beige, glass top… I didn’t even have money to put gas in and my guitar player at the time Alan Lord lent me money for the gas… We smoked a joint and laughed our ass out! After that I bought them like you buy t-shirts… oh yah I also have a song « Mercedes 1987(for the Joplin O Lord…»)… I made a lot of money I spent a lot and too much on coke… more than 100,000 on that shit in less the 18 months and close to 200,000 in 2 years and a half… easy to make the calculation: between 2,000$ and 3,000$ each weekend| I was earning 1,600$ every week end in discos, paid in cash and it all went into coke… at the time I had my own TV show Sunday night «Le Blues à Francoeur» and was doing the drive home in the number one radio in Montreal and doings the disco paid in cash plus adds all over etc etc… it lasted 12 years… I saved money although I spent a lot… I am not rich but I could have been… I missed my chance because I loved the fast life too much and because I am a poet and fuck Wall Street… Most of the people I know who became rich saving money and investing etc are dull, or sick or dead! So I guess I did the right thing… You know Tony, Celine Dion could buy me 1,0000 times but I was there when she started and she was poor and I helped her and she still remembers those days and kisses me hard every time she sees me… I was driving my Corvette at the time and she was young and very impressed… But now man I am a poor man compare to her! But she will not be studied in schools and will be forgotten when she dies… but us Tony, we will stay forever… there will always be a Tony O’Neill book lying somewhere for someone to read… and here I am not taking into consideration that you could come a best seller author… and if you do not your books will be legendary! But you have to keep at it… and write and write and write… do not loose time Tony… keep on writing: poems, novels, notebooks dreaming etc etc… I wish I could write novels like you… I envy you much… I am slowly re-reading «down and out…» and I am amaze of how easy it seems: that is the magic of a great writer…make it look easy…well sometime we find also great writers who make it seem hard… ee Cummings for instance or Proust…or Barthes… or Joyce…
Ciao
Lucien
Take good care my friend!
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