The depression is here although the govt. prefers to call it a “recession.” Which reminds me of the old one: a recession is when your friends are out of jobs, a depression is when you’re out of one. It’s at times like this that I’m glad that I trained myself throughout a lifetime to detest a job of any sort. All these poor automobile workers sitting around glassy-eyed with homes half-paid for and cheating wives. They trusted that a hard day’s work for a good day’s pay would get them through. Now as the govt. tries to pump blood into the corpse they sit around and work crossword puzzles and look at daytime TV shows programmed to the female…the only thing that will cure this is the same thing that has cured every capitalistic depression since 1940 – another war; a big war, a little war, a hot war, a cold war, but war war war, and so we arm the Arabs and we arm the Jews and we send scout planes out once again to Vietnam, and I write my poems and drink my beer and try to get through the last 4 scenes in Factotum[.]
Charles Bukowski | Letter to Carl Weissner 1975
The depression is here although the govt. prefers to call it a “recession.” Which reminds me of the old one: a recession is when your friends are out of jobs, a depression is when you’re out of one. It’s at times like this that I’m glad that I trained myself throughout a lifetime to detest a job of any sort. All these poor automobile workers sitting around glassy-eyed with homes half-paid for and cheating wives. They trusted that a hard day’s work for a good day’s pay would get them through. Now as the govt. tries to pump blood into the corpse they sit around and work crossword puzzles and look at daytime TV shows programmed to the female…the only thing that will cure this is the same thing that has cured every capitalistic depression since 1940 – another war; a big war, a little war, a hot war, a cold war, but war war war, and so we arm the Arabs and we arm the Jews and we send scout planes out once again to Vietnam, and I write my poems and drink my beer and try to get through the last 4 scenes in Factotum[.]
Charles Bukowski
Feb 19, 1975
(from a letter to Carl Weissner)