1Readers have always played an important role as recipients and sharers of a writer’s work. Reading clubs have helped build the book as a social tool and continue to proliferate, both on and offline (Baron 2004, 85). Scholars have long studied the impact of books on readers, and society in general, from Roger Chartier’s Reading Practices (1985) to a “participatory culture” (Jenkins 2006), as some readership and reading clubs are moving online. On the Internet, readers share tips and advice on what to read, who to read, and how to read on Websites such as Goodreads or Amazon. Some forums and Websites focus on a particular author, others on a set of authors. Reading is a social experience that keeps evolving. As Karpovich puts it: “the Internet has largely negated the two previous biggest obstacles to communications among fans – time and distance – participation is now largely produced by access to the Internet” (2006, 2495). Readers share their experience of a book through writing, a characteristic noted by several scholars (Beuscart, Dagiral, Parasie 2016, 52). Nowadays, the Internet is no longer a threat to the publishing industry; it has “reinforced literary sociability” (Leveratto and Leontsini 2013, 121) through a variety of communication tools and peer-to-peer online groups.
2This article proposes to discuss the online reception of Californian poet Charles Bukowski by examining a forum and a reading community involved in the reception of his work. For about fifteen years from 2006 to 2022, a group of readers developed a close-knit online community around Charles Bukowski. By using the term safeguarding in my title, I am implying that these readers were trying to shed light on an issue that had become their battlefield: they argued that Bukowski’s former editor, namely John Martin, abused his power and position by “overediting” the work of their author mostly after the writer’s death, and in so doing desecrated the Bukowskian style. This article aims to explain how and why a group of readers took such pains to find a common enemy and how this helped cement the group’s homogeneity. To answer these questions, we first need to clarify who Bukowski was, and the relationship he maintained with his readers and editors, before discussing the forum’s organization and the methodology we will use to undertake a detailed discourse analysis of the readers’ community discussion thread around this issue.
- 1 Charles Bukowski died in 1994 in his San Pedro home, in California. His last books with previously (...)
- 2 Peter D. Martin founded City Lights with Ferlinghetti in 1953, but Nancy Peters took over after a f (...)
3Charles Bukowski is known around the world for his writing style, referred to as a “‘simple easy line,’ clear of transcendence and symbolism” (Freyermuth 1996, 854). His goal when writing was to say things as they were, as he viewed them, through either prose or poetry. Bukowski’s texts can be read as “popular texts” (Fiske 1989), as appealing to the working class and rejected by the highbrow culture for their lack of taste, his disregard for the linguistic system in place. Bukowski was highly prolific, having written more than sixty books. His work is still published or republished, long after his death.1 In the 1960s, he was published in underground magazines around the United States (Debritto 2013). In his home state of California, he influenced the 1960s and 1970s poetry scene, particularly through public readings: he was considered a “role model” by poets such as Wanda Coleman (Charles 2014, 153) or on the contrary, “an influence to be avoided” (Rachmuhl 2015, 165). Either way, he was “[the] only poet who unified Los Angeles poetry as a whole” (Rachmuhl 2015, 164). The rest of the general public in the United States was somewhat indifferent to his work. By the end of the 1970s, he became famous abroad, notably thanks to two independent publishing houses in his home country, City Lights Publishers and Black Sparrow Press, owned respectively by Nancy Peters and Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the one hand, and John Martin on the other.2 His European fame can also be attributed to the work of his German literary agent Carl Weissner.
- 3 He was offered a “mock” award by Outsider magazine, naming him “Outsider of the Year” in 1963.
4Bukowski is also known for his image, that of an alcoholic poet, a womanizer, an outsider of literature, and a poète maudit. This “outsider” status was something he was proud of.3 Bukowski’s reputation helped build his career, through his persona in his texts, Henry Chinaski, and his author’s “posture” in real life (Meizoz 2007), his “dirty old man” figure. The latter is transcribed online, through memes or videos, with devoted readers celebrating their author.
5Charles Bukowski’s readers have always had a reputation for being “fanatics,” even before the Internet era. He appealed to different types of readers; Joan Jobe Smith described the audience at his poetry readings as a “pay-to-see crowd of young intellectuals, old hipsters, aging hippies” (2012, 87). A journalist used the term “fan” to describe them after the release of his movie Barfly, noting: “Fans follow him around as if he were a rock star” (Ciotti 1987, n.p.). Bukowski’s widow, Linda Lee, likened his readers’ behavior to that of cult members when her husband died in 1994; he was “a great master to his people” (Linda Bukowski in Jablon 1994, 59). Researchers such as Andrew J. Madigan also recognize this “cult-like” following (1996, 449).
- 4 In The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have Taken over the Ship, for example, he writes “Ge (...)
6Bukowski was ambivalent with his readers, declaring a writer “owed nothing to the reader except the availability of the printed pages” (Bukowski and Crumb 1998, 87). While alive, some readers would invite themselves to the writer’s house to drink and talk poetry with him. Charles Bukowski was reluctant to spend any time with them. He expressed his unease in an interview with Marc Chénetier as early as 1975 (Calonne 2003, 137-138), and declared in another text that the best reader was “the one who rewards me with his absence” (Bukowski and Crumb 1998, 87). However, he sometimes addressed them directly in his writing.4 Conscious his poetry readings were useful for his career – and to pay his rent – he would talk with his audience at such events, easing the transfer to his readership online, as Coppa notes that “a live audience has always been a precondition for fandom” (2006, 3433).
- 5 The Website Bukowski Forum is still active and available online, but for personal reasons, the host (...)
7On the Website Bukowski.net which hosted until recently the Bukowski Forum, his 2.0 readers built a “niche” to discuss their author, safeguard his work, and keep his persona alive.5 They were, and still are, invested in the publishing of his work, at different levels. When the Website was still active, they took part in the archiving of Bukowski’s manuscripts or recordings, and as such could be defined as “‘rogue’ memory workers” as defined by De Kosnik (2016, 127). Furthermore, the most active members on the forum have a reputation that extends beyond it. David S. Calonne, in his acknowledgments to a biography on Bukowski, expressed his gratitude to Bukowski.net “to which I repeatedly turned for the resolution of thorny chronological and bibliographical issues” (2012, 219). Some forum members have been formally interviewed online or in more traditional media (Görtler 2020). Incidentally, the forum users blame John Martin for the heavy editing of Bukowski’s posthumous issues, even though the writer, until the end of his life, praised John Martin’s qualities as an editor: “You know, John’s published all these tons of great literature, and there’s just kind of this silence from those critical people, I don’t know why. Like you know, H.L Mencken, they call him a great editor. There’s just silence for Martin. It’s inexcusable” (Calonne 2003, 279).
8Martin is considered one of the pillars of the writer’s publishing career. The collaboration between Martin and Bukowski is what led the author to write professionally, quit his job at the post office, and receive a $100 monthly stipend from his editor to write full-time. This pushed Bukowski to write his first novel, Post Office, in the span of six weeks. In 2007, when Pleasure of the Damned was released, readers were saddened to see it as the last collaboration between Bukowski and John Martin, the last book to be edited by the historic editor for Ecco Press. Readers’ views of John Martin changed dramatically in the following years.
9John Martin’s case is quite peculiar to Bukowski’s readers. The writer was conscious of his spelling mistakes, as he explained in a letter to Jon Webb on August 29, 1960: “And I have no desire to stop spelling mistakes... I find words much more beautiful when they are upside down” (Bukowski 2018, 340). He left to his publisher the choice of certain titles and the right to make minor changes to his texts, such as correcting grammar mistakes or misprints. He let Martin order his poems or short stories into volumes, but did not want their punctuation changed in any way, nor did he want his publisher – or anyone – to add words or make drastic changes to his work. The collaborative work between the two men seemed largely positive if it were not for these editing issues. Indeed, Bukowski was aware of John Martin’s edits, which sometimes angered him, as early as 1970, as evidenced by the following letter to Carl Weissner (11 July 1970):
On Post Office, I have located the “perfect English” spot that (which?) bothered me. If you want to let it run that way, all right. But I hit my toe on it right away and it may have been in the original manu.
3rd line: “and did not get paid.” It seems a little precious. “and didn’t get paid” (Bukowski 2015, loc. 1481).
10Nine years later on 15 January 1979, after the release of the novel Women (1978), he wrote in another letter to Carl Weissner:
I hope you haven’t started translating Women yet. John Martin and I are at it - I claim he has inserted too much of his writing into the novel. […] I really feel he has changed wordage too much, sometimes every other sentence. This is disrespect to me. I don’t care about minor changes in grammar and straightening out past and present tense but when too many sentences are fucked with it disturbs the natural flow of writing. My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way, I don’t want it smoothed out.” (2015, loc. 1939)
11The novel was republished in a second edited version, more faithful to Bukowski’s original writing. The two kept working together, and John Martin published the majority of Bukowski’s work while alive, and edited the posthumous books well after he retired and sold the publishing rights of Bukowski to Ecco Press. He explained how he edited some of Bukowski’s poems in a recent interview:
Over the years I continued to edit Bukowski’s poetry books for Black Sparrow and later for Ecco Press, totaling some 2,600 published poems. […] Hank would sit in the evening, writing poems and stories, and drinking, and sometimes towards the end of the evening the poems got loose and vague - not his best work. So I edited out those poems (Debritto and Martin 2015, 172).
12The letters written by Charles Bukowski demonstrated that some novels were edited, and not to the author’s liking. It was then not a far-fetched idea to think or assume that the publisher may have done the same to his poetry. According to the forum’s members, the last titles edited by John Martin, mostly poetry volumes, were transformed to the point of making Bukowski’s style unrecognizable. Although Martin stated in the interview with Debritto that he never drastically edited the poems or writings of his authors (176), the readers disagreed and aimed to prove their claim through research, promoted on their forum. The editor who had allowed Charles Bukowski to become famous and publish his books by helping him quit his job at the post office was now persona non grata in the Bukowskian fan world. By frequently feeding the forum’s discussion thread and the “Poem comparisons” section with new evidence of John Martin’s deception,6 readers bonded around a common enemy and a goal: to raise awareness of the issue.
13In a 2013 blog article entitled “The Senseless, Tragic Rape of Charles Bukowski’s Ghost by John Martin’s Black Sparrow Press,” the forum’s leader Michael Phillips (known as “mjp” or “Hannah”) explained their findings by comparing two poems: one found in an underground magazine, the other reissued by Black Sparrow Press after the author’s death. They noted several differences between the two poems, in color-coded highlights, and declared that Bukowski’s text had been “raped” – a controversial term for a controversial writer – by his former publisher. This was one of many examples and it was considered by readers as the ultimate betrayal. According to some scholars, “blogging is also frequently characterized as socially interactive and community-like in nature” (Herring et al 2005, 145). The blogger decided that a more centralized thread of discussion on the topic would be more useful and turned their blog article, a “vehicle for self-expression and self-empowerment” (143) into “‘conversational’ exchanges” (145) on the forum. This issue became one of the most heated discussions. Before addressing the latter more in-depth, it is important to look at how the forum is organized, using Herring’s classification system of a computer-mediated community.
14Nancy Baym explained in the 1990s that, “In order to understand any technologically-minded community, one has to understand the infrastructure of its system” (Baym 1993, 143). Taking a closer look at the forum’s organization will demonstrate how it succeeds in becoming a lasting reading community, one of the main reasons for this success being that the founding members (FM>9) have a high “level of personal commitment” (Leveratto and Leontsini 2013, 139) and they have strived to transform the forum into a welcoming place. The nucleus of the most active readers on this platform has even been described as a family (Moinzadeh 2017, 2).
15To discuss the forum’s structure and organization, I have decided to use Herring’s “faceted classification” template and her eight subsections, starting with the participatory characteristics; the forum makes use of one-way transmission like “most CMC systems in current use” (Herring 2007, n.p.). The interactions between members are asynchronous. It is a public forum, with a high degree of anonymity: forum members can choose to write their name or a pseudonym, and are free to add their picture as an avatar or not. The forum collects many messages and has a large number of members. Even though in terms of comparison the social network Reddit gathers 11,200 members, the forum, made up of around 3,000 members, is seen by many as the place to find legitimate answers about the author. Indeed, one of the threads posted on 10 November 2022 under “All things *not* Bukowski” asks “Why have forums declined in use?”7 and some members state that despite a declining number of posts, this forum is still the place to go in order to find relevant information, provided by a core of active participants. The new members are invited to participate by first introducing themselves in a subsection of the forum entitled “New blood: introduce yourself.”8 The balance of participation is uneven, as in most online forums and discussions. The majority of posts come from founding members and moderators who spend a considerable amount of time on them. Visitors notice who the active members or founding members are by clicking on their profile pictures, which offer information on the member’s number of posts, their “reaction score,” their “role” (founding member, moderator, etc.) and their location, if any. However, since the degree of anonymity is high, the participant characteristics are difficult to survey. The demographics are only provided by those who want to share their picture, age, or location. There is no clear information about race or gender since even the pseudonyms chosen don’t provide much information.
16The writing is in English and, like other online written languages, is “informal and speech-like” (Baron 2004, 82). There is a degree of specialization with the use of words only people from the Bukowskian world would know. The tone, mostly respectful, depends on the topic under discussion. The “information exchange” about Bukowski’s publishing or independent publishing for instance is mostly serious and friendly. But a discussion debating an issue such as the one studied in this article leads to a tone that is on the whole more emotional, more combative at times, frustrated, and sarcastic, with much profanity.
17The role of each member is clear, even though not clearly stated. The forum is supervised and monitored by a leader, mjp/Hannah, ensuring that the conversations run smoothly and that Charles Bukowski and his literary and family circles are respected. Other founding members and moderators exist. The idea of “moderator” implies that they have the right to review or withdraw comments that they feel violate the forum’s guidelines, but tend to take the opportunity to disagree with a comment explaining why a post is unwelcome or inaccurate. Nine founding members took part in the discussion studied below. Lurkers and new members play a role in the community, reinforcing the interest in Charles Bukowski, and validating the forum’s mission to answer all questions about the author.
18The Website Bukowski Forum is considered a literary forum, and even though there is not much discussion about Bukowski’s writing per se, a lot is said about his “epitext” (Genette 1987, 9) and about his life. The forum’s users tend to take Bukowski’s reading as is, without feeling the need to interpret his words. For them, Bukowski wrote what he wanted to write clearly and simply, and as such, his texts don’t need further explanation.
19The majority of posts refer to the author, even though unrelated topics gather around 45% of the posts. The “Miscellaneous Stuff” section at the bottom of the forum page, entitled “All things *not* Bukowski,” provides room for discussion about other topics. The subsection “New blood: introduce yourself” relates to Bukowski, as it is where new members introduce themselves and why they like Bukowski, or explain how long they’ve been a fan of the author. It is widely considered that “no active participation is expected of a visitor to a Website, even if the site has a forum” (Soroka, Jacovi and Ur 2003, 67). On the Bukowski Forum, participation is encouraged, even if it does not lead to any answer from other forum members. In a way, one can assume that Charles Bukowski is used both as a common interest for forum members and a pretext for like-minded people who, after exchanging knowledge and information about their author, feel safe enough in the community they have built for broader conversations about other culturally-related topics.
20I will now examine in greater depth the methodology used to study the discussion thread, highlighting the issue of the poems edited posthumously by his former editor, John Martin.
21The approach to analyzing the forum is qualitative rather than quantitative. Close reading and discourse analysis of a specific discussion thread are useful and convenient for several reasons. First, the discussion based on Charles Bukowski’s editor and the poems edited after his death has been longstanding for Bukowski’s readers and there is a “persistence of transcript” (Herring 2007, 6), the thread being available to readers from 2013. Also, as Baym stated when studying a soap opera forum, collecting data can be overwhelming, and data inevitably needs “narrowing”:
Once data were collected, I immediately faced a second problem: I had way too much data. Although it was clear to me that analyzing so many messages closely was impossible, the best ways in which to narrow them down were not immediately apparent. The challenge was to narrow the data down in a way that retained the coherence of both the group and the discussion. (2000, 26)
22Finally, an analysis through computational methods such as lexicometry or word frequency analysis did not highlight any significant findings. A lexicometric analysis did not help decipher consensus-building, nor understand why the thread has sustained vigorous discussion for ten years. Voyant Tools, “a web-based reading and analysis environment for digital texts” (Sinclair and Rockwell) provides us with the most used content words extracted from the thread. Unsurprisingly, the name of the editor blamed, “Martin” (195 mentions), and the author “Bukowski” – or “buk” – (241) are first in line, in correlation with verbs and adjectives such as “bring,” “added,” “acceptable,” “altered,” “agreed,” for Bukowski, and “explain,” “afraid,” “cited,” “count,” “discard” (Macaud 2023). This list is not significant regarding the interactions between posters, even though it does show a frequency of more negative words associated with Martin, and a more positive tone for Bukowski.
23Narrowing to a discourse analysis of a single discussion thread extending from 2013 to 2022 helps us understand the reception of Bukowski. As of March 2023, the discussion selected is the fifth highest in the forum in terms of replies (360 posts), and the 8th in terms of views (around 73,000 views); the #posthumousissues is the most frequently used tag. A word cloud of the most popular tags on Bukowski Forum highlights the popularity of the phrase “posthumous editing issues.” The thread shows the evolution of the discussion regarding the edits on Bukowski’s posthumous publication, and underlines the claim that John Martin was overediting or modifying the poems of Bukowski, adding confusion, erasing the slurs or the vernacular language, getting rid of mentions of sexuality or mental health, making it, in a way, more politically correct.
24Through my analysis of the discussion, I have noted different ways of building consensus against a common enemy, through interaction or collaboration: using linguistic tools generally used by online communities, such as the creation of common indexical elements, a combative tone endorsed by most readers in their goal to achieve a consensus and resolution but also the use of intertextuality (Hodsdon-Champeon 2010), creating legitimacy of active members for a valid interaction to occur (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1986).
25From 2013 to 2022, there is a clear evolution from a very lively conversation which reaches a peak in 2015, to a steady decrease of comments (Fig 1):
Fig 1: Forum discussion thread, numbers of comments and participants from 2013 to 2022.
26I have given a number to each member in terms of their first appearance and status or their number of posts: founding members (FM>9), active members (AM>12), and less active members, with 5 posts or less (LM>46). The number of posters tends to diminish after 2015 when Abel Debritto started editing Bukowski’s books for Ecco Press, offering a resolution to the issue, which may be why the discussion flaked after reaching a peak with up to 120 comments that year. One of the forum members expressed their content early on: “A new editor: F’n A, the guy that did King of the Underground. Nice” (AM #3, 14 November 2014). The fact that John Martin quit editing for Ecco Press and was replaced by someone the forum members trusted might have provided the resolution a few readers had hoped for. By achieving this goal, the conversation seems to have declined. However, the shock and fury are still present through the following years.
27The majority of posts are shared by the most active members (AM>12 and FM>9), yet the questions are not necessarily theirs, which confirms that the less active readers, or those who post only once or twice, help keep the discussion alive. Members’ actions on the forum depend on their interest in a question or discussion thread, and their “levels of engagement” (Muller 2011, 5) will evolve accordingly. An active member one day can, as a result, become a lurker the next, which would also explain the high number of views for this thread, as opposed to a much lower number of responses.
28Overall, through a ten-year discussion, and 360 comments referenced and analyzed, only twenty-nine questions were asked about John Martin’s involvement. They expressed disbelief, doubt or incomprehension and were then more rhetorical: “for fuck’s sake, why in the world do they (or he) need to dick with a man’s life’s work […]?” (LAM #33, 18 November 2016) Other questions were about Martin’s response to the accusations or lack thereof: “Can Martin just play dumb forever?” (LAM #3, 21 August 2013). Finally, some users asked what the next step was, whether any academic research would be conducted or what resolutions the fans should expect.
29The answers to a need for academic research are mostly negative, leading to disagreement and giving rise to the idea of a “discursive negotiation” (Pirogowska 2010, 62-64). Most active members are not interested in the academic research regarding this issue, stating for instance, “I would never stoop to scholarship regarding Hank’s work, it means too much to me” (AM #8, 29 October 2013), while some explain that the latter is in progress. A few members disregard the idea of any academic papers coming to life, as it would, they contend, not add anything to their work: “To answer your question re: archives and evidence, the links are all in the articles (and at the top of every page of this forum). But really, the evidence is on the page and speaks for itself” (FM #1, 21 August 2013). These comments about academia are unsurprising from Bukowski’s fandom, as Bukowski himself was quite critical of universities and institutions in general. As a result, Bukowski’s own opinion has been transferred to his fans, who reject any attempt at a resolution offered by academia.
30The theme of a battleground slowly appears in the discussion, an “us versus them” scenario. “We” are the people fighting for Bukowski: “This is why MJP’s fight is worth the cause […] and why it’s worth all of us to pursue the cause” (AM #5, 8 October 2013, emphasis added). “They” are people doubting the legitimacy of the claim, asking for more evidence, or for the point of view of the editor. Any contribution shedding doubt on the matter was declared irrelevant: “oh my god i forgot how exasperating that guy was. well, if your [sic] don’t notice or 18 May 2020).
31The military metaphor seems to circulate everywhere in the forum as if each member was feeding off the other’s messages. Consensus building is evidenced by the repetition of common iterations to describe Martin’s actions toward Bukowski’s text. The group becomes increasingly homogenous and critical of Martin’s work as the years go by, from the statement that “The number of altered poems in those Martin soiled books is astonishing. It’s a freakin abomination. Hats off to mjp and his gang of merry workers. A very impressive number of manuscripts collected indeed” (LAM #24, 7 March 2015) to much more graphic expressions relating to sexual assault (like “fingered” and “necrophilia”) or censorship (like “forgeries” and “attack on poetry”). The combative tone used during the first year, the pronoun “we,” the need to act upon this treason as an “army,” the use of conditional and modals (such as “we should” or “we could”) to figure out ways to make up for Martin’s transgressions, were replaced by pure condemnation and some comments radicalized. “Good lord I didn’t have a clue such crime was being commited [sic] […]. That’s revolting” (LAM #26, 1 March 2015).
32Though the discussion was initially about overediting, it later homed in on the necessity of publishing Bukowski’s texts as manuscripts, in their purest form, which confirmed that the readers were gradually becoming more extreme in their view of John Martin as editor. This distilled into a hatred for the editing process, and for the production side of a literary text. The change of tone used by one active member (AM #3) is enlightening. His hatred even transferred to the forum leader who failed to recognize the importance of the issue. At first very enthusiastic about mjp’s discoveries, he defends him – “Sure MJP is pissed off and it comes through. But that’s because it’s so fucking obvious how much damage has been done and it’s hard to take” (20 October 2013) – and momentarily blames Linda Bukowski for not taking care of the matter, before agreeing with the founding member’s answer not to put the blame on anyone else but Martin; indeed mjp talks afterward of Martin as a “butcher,” stating “I’m sickened enough by The Butcher Santa Barbara’s whitewashing of Bukowski’s poetry” (11 April 2015). He feels content when exposing the editor: “It feels good to expose the failed English teacher for who he is. His contributions are senseless, no matter what his intentions. Looking forward to reading the new City Lights book” (2 June 2015). He maintains a congratulatory tone towards Bukowski “scholars” on the forum and becomes more and more derogatory toward Martin: “A complete lie… It makes zero sense… Much like a response our current President would make… The FUCKING magazines are the truth… Not JM’s dirty little lies…” (5 December 2018). But after 2022, he becomes angrier at the forum members, and mjp in particular, for not paying attention to the edits made before Bukowski’s death: “MJP’s posthumous theory only clouded the real truth and made Martin look more legitimate” (23 November 2022). This example demonstrates the frustration of some readers toward both the editor and the members of the forum. This active member wanted to go even further.
33Active posters need legitimacy for the interaction with other members to be valid (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1986, 12). This legitimacy comes first from contributors knowing – either personally or from a distance – people in the entourage of the writer. For instance, one mentions having met Linda Bukowski: “I’ll say this, esart and I spoke to Linda in Pasadena when The Continual Condition was published, and here was her comment to us on the book: she held it up and looked at the cover and said, ‘Isn’t it adorable!’ Nothing about what was inside” (FM #1, 30 October 2013).
34This relationship – or interaction – with the inner circle, though tenuous, brings additional legitimacy to the forum members and to the writings and opinions of its most active members. The editor’s loss of legitimacy reinforces the forum’s founders and moderators, in their own niche. The mechanism in place is reminiscent of the “scapegoat mechanism” developed by René Girard (2014, loc. 984), the editor has become the forum members’ “victim”, and they have no doubt about his guilt.
35They also use intertextuality to appear legitimate. Intertextuality is “a prominent feature of discourse on the Internet” where “[e]valuation and rebuttal, in particular, are common activities” (Hodsdon-Champeon 2010, 2), and this forum is no exception to the rule. Very often, the posters use similar arguments. The contributors mention the issue relating to Women nine times as evidence. They cite edits on Post Office, Bukowski’s first novel, described in a letter published in 2015 in On Writing and quoted above. Others quote the article written by Michael Phillips. The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship (1998), one of Bukowski’s last written books, published posthumously, is used as further evidence, showing Bukowski would not have made handwritten changes after he started using a computer. What is noteworthy is that these arguments are taken from Bukowski’s prose writing instead of the poetry that was the main issue of the discussion thread. There are a few examples of poem comparisons, always met with both acclaim for the findings and shock for the wrongdoings of the editor. The most active posters refuse to take into consideration other authors who may or may not have been overedited by Black Sparrow as possible evidence that Martin was systematically overediting. They remain “exclusively committed to a single show or star” (Jenkins 1992, 40) and refuse any connection with other authors.
36The comments are directed at John Martin in numerous ways: either by simply stating his name, or indirectly, by using the name of his former publishing house, Black Sparrow, or Black Sparrow Press. Forty-four mentions of John Martin are positive, which represents a bit more than ten per cent of the comments. The members express thankfulness for his discovery of Bukowski and his overall work at Black Sparrow, but their comments are usually followed by a contrasting conjunctive adverb or conjunction such as “however”, or “but”, questioning whether his editing has gone too far. Another online interaction tool is the use of Martin’s surname as adjective and adverb, or noun, adding prefixes or suffixes: “martinization,” “martinized,” “un-martined,” attesting a group effort to make him their enemy while at the same time creating a sense of identity for this “imagined community” (Coles and West 2016, 44-53). People in the community reading the adjective “martinized” to modify the meaning of the noun “books” would know that the latter were either “edited” or “altered” by John Martin, and therefore not worth reading or buying. John Martin’s scapegoat status contrasts with other Bukowski editors or members of his inner circle who are positively reviewed or noticeably absent from the conversation: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published Bukowski early on, is only mentioned once. Carl Weissner’s translations are valued. Some consider whether other publishers from underground magazines could have given Bukowski’s work a better future.
37The “Poem comparisons” section of the forum was created afterward to help the leader of the forum gather the texts, before creating a distinct page on the Website itself, with color-coded frames of what has been deleted, added, or moved in the posthumous version.9 After 2020 the members recognize, however, that there is no financial incentive to republish the books, one of them concluding that it is better to, “just let it go. What was done has been done by all parties and elsewhere. Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile” (AM#12, 24 November 2022).
38The “big readers” on this forum have become militants (Burgos, Evans and Buch 1996, 68) and feel invested with a mission to save what they now consider sacred texts. All media are used to reach the widest possible audience and raise awareness on the matter. John Martin, after discovering and publishing Bukowski, has become public enemy number one for his readers. The books rejected by the community are named the “dirty dozen,” and “soiled” by the publisher. With this warning, the prospective reader indirectly recognizes the value of upcoming publications, edited by a different editor. Pearson notes that
The digital revolution has had a profound impact upon fandom, empowering and disempowering, blurring the lines between producers and consumers, creating symbiotic relationships between powerful corporations and individual fans, and giving rise to new forms of cultural production (2010, 84).
- 10 Debritto, who wrote Charles Bukowski: King of the Underground (2013), was a regular participant of (...)
39In the case of the Bukowski Forum, these debates and research seem to have had a consequence on the author’s upcoming publications: Abel Debritto10 has taken on the task of editing the new books and is attempting to publish the original poems without altering the Bukowskian style.
40Bourdaa explained the need for collaboration on social networks between producers of TV series and fans. She talked about the “fans’ right to actively engage in the creation and re-distribution of cultural materials” (2016, 103-104).11 Here, the “producers,” Ecco Press, in hiring Debritto, confirm this collaboration exists together with an “active engagement” between readers and producers of content in the literary field as well.
41The readers’ involvement has had a consequence on the archiving of Bukowski’s manuscripts. Several active readers looked for magazines where Bukowski was published in his early years and a common effort was made to compare these publications with the Black Sparrow Press or Ecco Press publications. When the Website Bukowski.net was active, archiving poems and comparing poems became a peer-to-peer process, where each reader could share their discovery and upload them on the forum. Through archiving on Bukowski.net, along with the discussion thread, they ensured Bukowski’s work survived online, and they promoted the “right” texts to new or prospective readers. As Taylor noticed: “the embodied, the archival, and the digital overlap and work together and mutually construct each other” (2010, 3). The readers, by working outside the scope of the Internet, by doing research on printed magazines and published books to later be archived online, exemplified this ongoing “mixed reality” (Taylor 2010, 3).
42In an article on archivist work online, Gailey questions the need to edit former literary work for readability in the contemporary age; she mentions the undeniable “editorial presence” in archives, “including commentary, normalization, and synopses” (2011, 140). We could wonder whether the archival work done by the members of the forum, using commentary through markers, highlights, or annotations – particularly in the “Poem comparisons” section of the now archived Website Bukowski.net – isn’t in itself a form of editing of the manuscripts of Bukowski, and as such, goes against their belief in the purity of Bukowski’s work.
43Furthermore, the forum discussion blaming John Martin needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as most comments about this “martinization” of books by Bukowski are still at the stage of “niche” discussions. One article by PBS published on 6 November 2017 mentions the “mangling” of Bukowski’s text by his editor, during an interview with the new editor (Flock 2017).
44This discussion thread made us question the duties and rights of editors and publishers, and whether readers might have an impact on future publications if their weight online was strong enough to withstand that of an editor. Theoretically, readers, as consumers, now have the opportunity to distinguish between books that are “to be avoided” and those that have been vetted by the community of readers. In the last pages of this forum, however, one reader acknowledges the difficulties involved in modifying Bukowski’s previous publications edited by Martin. In their opinion, the publishing houses owning the publishing rights would most likely not see any financial interest in it. This concluded the thread of discussion. The influence of the readers on the publishing world, if any, is therefore solely on future publications.
45This forum represents the “reader’s collectives” (Burgos, Evans and Buch 1996, 92) that serve as intermediaries between individuals and publishing houses. Whether the readers’ research on John Martin and their claim of wrongful edits have merit, this reading community managed, through a common interest, to survive and thrive online by successfully building a consensus to safeguard their author’s publications. The contemporary reception of Bukowski’s work has evolved to form a tight-knit community, where scholars and readers gather online to discuss their author and his publishing.
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