Any of you ever got into the stories of Charles Bukowski?
He was kinda like the tom waits of short fiction and narrative. Only without they hope and joy of Waits, ahem.
Bukowski took one long look at the american dream and threw up on it. He spent most of his life boozing, womanising, living in cheap dives, working dead end jobs, pissing off one boss after the other and ending up in jail after getting drunk and violent.
He's a personal hero of mine.
He was like a rogue saint. He was about as negative an individual as you could find but he was honest. He didn't seem to play the games of success and image and ambition. When asked by a student at one of his eadings if he 'would advise choosing writing as a career' he just blinked and said "what? You don't choose writing, writing chooses you."
Not all of his books were great but Post Office about his time working the rounds and Ham on Rye[i] about growing up in Eisenhower's america are classics.
Anyone see Factotum which I guess is loosely based on Bukowski's life?
Bukowski's novels are great, although they have aged a bit - kind of like Henry Miller's stuff.
bukowski was a breath of fresh air in the 1960s....like other Beat writers, his writing was a break from many of the restrictive rules that dominated the literary world of his day.
he's surprisingly popular today. the book chains stock a wide range of his stuff...maybe even second in popularity only to kerouac. i find that once you get past the masculine aggro, simplicity of style, shock value and the feel good story (old ugly postman gets girls and literary success)....there really isnt all that much substance to him.
two particular bukowski setpieces come to mind. one, he meets a hitch-hiking couple, beats up boy, rapes girl, girl dumps boy. second, his son/daughter points at a dwarf, bukowski apologies inwardly with a cute rhyming couplet. not a bad writer, but nothing great (not as overrated as Hemingway, but who is ).
he cost me a girlfriend...some angstsy Vassar or Smith feminist saw his books on my shelves and freaked out. put her panties back on and that was that.
i can see why he could be considered a misogynist. in that genre, i'd rather take algren, trocchi or hamsun.
Bukowski was great.
Sure, a lot of the things he said upset a lot of people but he never wanted to be liked. He just wanted to be honest and because he was prepared to be outcaste had the privilege of unmasking a lot of social hypocrisy.
His descriptions of work and the american way, how they drove workers into the ground and then let them die without a thought was brilliant. He was the original, nihilistic bum.
olddog Wrote:Bukowski was great.
Sure, a lot of the things he said upset a lot of people but he never wanted to be liked. He just wanted to be honest and because he was prepared to be outcaste had the privilege of unmasking a lot of social hypocrisy.
His descriptions of work and the american way, how they drove workers into the ground and then let them die without a thought was brilliant. He was the original, nihilistic bum.
dude, the term 'nihilism' was coined and used centuries before Bukowski, so how can he be the first?
Nor was he all that orginal. Bukowski himself acknowledged in interviews that his work was heavily influenced by a whole bunch of earlier writers. Bukky's first books came out in the 1960s. Thats a decade after Trocchi, Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs; 30 years after Nelson Algren, 40 after Hemingway, 60 after Kafka, and 70 after Hamsun. And thats not even going into writers who went before Hamsun.
Read Hamsun's Hunger and then pick up any Bukowski. Then tell me if Bukky did anything new that wasn't done already and done better by Hamsun in 1890.
Not to take anything away from old Bukky. He's quite readable, there is honesty in his writing and i love the idea of an ugly git like him finding fame and fortune belatedly....but the original nihilistic bum....not a chance. Bukky is the Scarlett Johansson of his genre....a good but not great writer, inexplicably overhyped.
I go for stuff like Hamsun much more than the Beats, Waits, Bukowksi bottom-feeder thing... Hamsun's work has always had a touch of the inexplicable to me, Pan, Hunger, Mysteries etc... I kind of like the Scandinavian origin, more than Kafka's eastern europe vibe.
also I don't know what nihilism is, or care, but it may be said that Bukowski is the original nihilistic bum given our modern condition of living/working/eating/shitting/dying - Burroughs and Ginsburg seem too flamboyant ... good 'ol Bukowski just had shitty jobs and relationships and drank. Simple.
That said, while I've enjoyed some Bukowski, it hasn't been enough to go and pick up everything he wrote.
Bukowski praises John Fante as an influence and one of his favorite authors. Fante wrote Ask The Dust, which is the only one Ive read by him, and it is one of my personal favorites.
it was just a little while ago
almost dawn
blackbirds on the telephone wire
waiting
as I eat yesterday's
forgotten sandwich
at 6 a.m.
an a quiet Sunday morning.
one shoe in the corner
standing upright
the other laying on it's
side.
yes, some lives were made to be
wasted.
if you like Bukowski's style pick up some of William Burroughs Jr. work (not naked lunch guy, his son - who was also an addict all his life). Cursed From Birth is my favorite (published after his death). I've read all of Bukowski's novels except Factotum. Ham on Rye and Pulp are his best IMO.