Charles Bukowski
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Modest2fault, I guess it all rests on what one calls ugly. I htink that Bukowski was a comentator of the ordinary. He let lihgt shine in places most people deny seeing or wished not to see.
>>By Al C (Thursday, 25 Dec 2003 11:48)
Al C: so do the best of us, friend
>>By modest2afault (Thursday, 25 Dec 2003 12:14)
i believe Tolstoy, Kosinski, Medevoy and Papa H.
it's hard to believe many others...
now that they are all gone,
who should we turn to?
>>By modest2afault (Thursday, 25 Dec 2003 12:20)
i dont think buk is great.. he's writing just for fun, could sell well, but has no literary value at all.. he just keeps repeating himself. sometimes he just forgets the stories he tells, then tells them again in a reversed way; by changing the names of the characters.. etc.
>>By AnneRice (Thursday, 25 Dec 2003 19:43)
AnneRice, while I do not agree with you in any way, I am open to the idea that I may be incorrect. Please support your hypothesis further.
I am curious as to how much Bukwoski you have read. I hope piles of it because then your take on his work becomes very interesting and thought provoking.
If all you have read are the sensatioanlist stuff...well...that leaves me less intrigued by your statement.
I had a lit professor who assigned a paper on Bukowski way back when...I hated Bukowski for his sensationalism. I really ripped him. I found myself more curious as to his prolific production and was determined to see if there was anything worth reading. When I layed aside my bias toward his work I began to see his work in a different way.
Hope you continue the discussion.
>>By Al C (Saturday, 27 Dec 2003 12:07)
Charles Bukowski's work is the one out of 10 million bad works that through mathmatical laws, just happens to sell. Then people who can relate to this crap because they have no other hope in their pathetic lives say it is the greatest work there is. Wake up and smell the dementia people! I sitting here with a full belly and warm and just having been laid do not want to read this drivel. You can go to a mental health hospital and get just as good works from a writers night there. If I was beat down in life enough where there was no hope for me, or through my own dysfunction, wanted to have an outlet, I could pity myself further and read him. And then take it a step further and say he is great. The emperor has no clothes people. If you really want to escape your futile existence at least read something like lost in the cosmos by walker percy. "We are unknown, we knowers, to ourselves... of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, for each of us holds good to all eternity the motto, 'each is the farthest away from himself"-as far as ourselves are concerned we are not knowers.- NIETZSCHE.
>>By noname1 (Sunday, 28 Dec 2003 04:16)
Please take none of my comments personally. When I say pathetic lives I mean we all have pathetic lives, including myself. So if you don't like what I have to say don't attack me, ok? I am just commenting on The writings of Bukowski. In fact Al C ripped him at one time also. There is just a lot better things out there to appease your mental state than Bukowski. Like Walker Percy. Words that will make you sail, not anchor you down, and yet they say the same things.
>>By noname1 (Sunday, 28 Dec 2003 04:35)
I have no desire to attack you personally or at any level. Your fixated on a certain type of writing that Bukowski is noted for...the crap that made him famous. I don't generally like that stuff either. You are entitled to your opinion and I have no need or desire to change it.
If you care to, please answer what you have read of his beyond maybe a dozen or so ugly, mysogynist poems. Past that stuff and past the willy-nilly rambling he did, there are poems of remarkable beauty.
WAlker Percy is remarkable. My favorite contemporary poet is Linda Pastan. She is as fara polar opposite of Bukowski as one could ever find in my view.
"words that make you sail, not anchor you down," Bukwoksi was not a knower, he made that absolutely clear and he is part of a braoder movement that doesn't require complete sublimation of reality to face it. What of poets like Sexton and Plath...equally anchoring...I think there is more to your hatred of Bukowski's work than can be said to be intellectually inspired. That's OK, and if you don't want to explore enough of his work to get by it (expecaiily those poems written in his later life, I think you need to finish the argument with "I simply can't stand his work and I don't care a hoot what anyone says." I respect that.
You're trying to intellectualize your arguement without having read those poems that are remarkably unlike those you hate. Don't fall victim to your own orthodoxy...like all orthodoxies they never reach past their own assumptions of a set of preordained facts. Dangerous stuff.
Want to read a great and tremendously sesitive poet? read PAt Fargnoli's work. She is not widely known, but she will be. She, like you, hates Charles Bukowski. She and I have discussed him a number of times. She is in the tradition of Mary Oliver, Linda PAstan and the tremendous B.H. Fairchild.
>>By Al C (Sunday, 28 Dec 2003 14:55)
you guys sound like.. this writer's works are great, right?
i want to check out his books, but i don't know where to start!
please, recommend me which book is great to start! please~
thanx.
>>By SoLainy1230 (Friday, 2 Jan 2004 09:39)
you can start by reading the "hot music water"
>>By papatya (Friday, 2 Jan 2004 09:42)
Maybe start with Ham on Rye?
And in regard to some of the negative posts- say what you will about Charles, but he sure does touch a lot of people's hearts. The world he lived in is distasteful to some folks, but a hell of a lot of people live there. And they need poetry too. I can't knock that. If one regards his work as simply a spectacle, then he is a tourist and it wasn't written for him anyway.
>>By Seward3 (Tuesday, 13 Jan 2004 21:31)
Charles Bukowski is the Walt Whitman of dysfunction. He is a very talented writer, but his subject matter leaves a lot to be desired. If I read Whitman I can empathize with a serene meadow outside a forest on a fall day. When I read Bukowski I can likewise empathize with a drunk man getting beat up over a streetwise stripper. But why? Why read about dysfunction and be so moved as to go out and buy a six pack and tune out for the night? I need to be uplifted not brought down. No one should romanticize dysfunction like he does. You can sing that nice disney tune.".yo ho ho ho a pirates life for me" and think wouldn't it be great to be a pirate, but the reality is a pirate led a very very lousy life full of bad health and hardship and pain, and probably died horribly also. Nothing great about that in my opinion. I'm just making a point here. Furthermore, Bukowski himself became the very thing he loathed in his writings, and in the end he chose to appear crazy as opposed to being the hypocrite he was.
>>By noname1 (Thursday, 15 Jan 2004 03:48)
First off: Pirates kicked ass, matey. And yes being a pirate is a rough life. But nothing worth doing is easy. They got scurvy, but they also got booty sometimes. You might get the lash now and again, but no time clock to punch. And free rum.
And maybe Charles does romanticize his life. I don't know. I take some of it as a warning. But dig: I don't think it's a matter of reading Charles and then going to get a six pack at night, as you said. It's more like getting a six pack is a foregone conclusion, so why not read some appropriate poems and see if you can eek out some beauty from the night?
Like I said, I don't think his work is for everyone. And thank God. I'd worry about the future of our country if everybody liked Bukowski. What kind of world would it be if everyone preferred crazy whores to beautiful meadows?
"Dysfunction" is a way of life for some people. Right or wrong, it just is. And some folks just don't have a lot of choice in the matter. Why judge them harshly? Some folks live, some survive.
And anyway, some of the best writers were degenerate alcoholics and gamblers.
I appreciate you sharing your views, Noname. Carry on.
Soul Survivor
>>By Seward3 (Thursday, 15 Jan 2004 07:28)
Why shouldn’t everyone like Buk? I have never read where he advocated living the lifestyle he lived . He’s said that he didn’t understand how people could live without alcohol or drugs , but his only criticism is of people who are mean or dead inside or boring . His work is not sensational . It is honest , a quality severely lacking in a hell of a lot of other writers . I dont see where he romanticized anything either . I’ve never considered puking to be particularly romantic . And calling the things he wrote about the life he lived ‘crap’ is like saying that ‘old man and the sea ‘ was crap cuz you dont like fishing ,or that John Rechy couldn’t write cuz his milieu was homosexuality .People write of worlds I dont wish to inhabit all the time and I judge their effort on how well they convey that world , and Buk sure as hell conveyed his impressions of the world he lived in with a great deal of insight . As well as huge amounts of self deprecating humor and a desire to see beauty . How can you condemn him for not finding much ? This world tends to be a pretty ugly place , especially for the poor . Even ‘uplifting’ writers such as Annie Dillard write of the aspects of life which are not so uplifting , if they are doing their job . In fact Dillard’s fiction is rather disturbing .So don’t read Buk if you dont like it , but dont give me any conformist crap about him not being a great writer just because he offends your middle class values . And Buk wasn’t a friggin’ pirate . He was not a criminal in any respect except self destruction . And who on this planet doesnt die a horrible death , since I dont see such a thing as a pleasant one ? And what do you all mean by him selling well or writing just for fun? Bukowski was writing cuz he HAD to , as you’d know if you bothered to read enough to form an opinion . And his work didn’t sell much at all until he was in his 60’s , and most of those sales occurred outside this country .Was he an asshole? At times he undoubtedly was , but who can claim they have never done or said anything assholish? And if being an asshole was a valid literary criticism then we wouldnt be reading much of anything . The list of writers with character flaws is a hell of a lot longer than that of the politically correct . It’s just that most people dont have the guts to be anywhere near as honest as Buk . I dont agree with everything he said , but I’m sure glad he had the huevos to say it .
>>By goddog (Saturday, 17 Jan 2004 03:50)
Yes, reading Ham on Rye is a great place to start. In that book you'll find a tender heart. Noname1 has not read enough Bukowski to debate Bukowski. There is a bias based on what she knows.
I will say that I disagree in a sense, goddog, becuase Bukouwski's audience WAS looking for the sensational from him in his readings. Some felt they were tragically hip for sayinghtey liked Buk's work. He smelled them as rats, even used them to further his ends. So what.
Noname, he never became what he hated. If you mean that he didn't die poor and in a gutter, well, you're right he didn't. He was certainly amazed and grateful that he didn't, that's for sure.
Buk was very honest. I'll say it again, ad naseum, he wrote with some of the most passionate as well as beautifual images at times. Because you fear the reality that America produced a good poet that wasn't going to be sucked into the vortex of the American Dream machine doesn't lessen the man's contribution to our poetic sense in this country. What Bulowski hated was was he called "posey," that brand of poetry measured filled with hubris of acedemic poets outto prove they were smarter than their readers. I agree and always have...that stuff is mostly masturbatory junk. At least when Buk got masturbatory, he told you how he did it.
Bukowski cannot be understood or appreciated in a single book. You have to sift through lots and lots of work and fall back on your heels when he really shines a light into unvisited corners of our world. I would post some poems of his, but I am sure that is a violation of copyright. Let me lead you to a few...will write again with the smaes of some that just might fool you.
...and the Ham on Rye suggestion, an autobiographical novel is a great place to start...read Post Office as well...then go back to the poetry. I would be surprized if your persepective does not change.
We have accepted novelists for eternity that wrote about similar subject matter. Is it that some get lost in the false notion of "truth and beauty" of poetics?
>>By Al C (Tuesday, 20 Jan 2004 12:21)
He hee. Al, Noname is a MAN, baby. At least that's what he claims in his profile deal. You're not trying to start a fight by calling him a woman, are you? I'd love it if you were. C'mon- let's hear from the Buk hating Christian, academic, sissy faction on this. Maybe this will help: If you don't like Buk, read more of him. If you still don't like him try sending out a search-and-rescue team for your heart and testicals.
>>By Seward3 (Tuesday, 20 Jan 2004 17:47)
Charles Bukowski should have started a foundation with the money he made from his poems. That way he could help less talented people in the same life situations as he was. Instead he chose to piss it away at some racetrack and then write about it so we can ooooh and aaaah and say what a great writer he is. Actually, he puts just enough fiction in his writings to make it seem that what is actually his experience was neat and desirable, when the reality of his situation was of a horrible nature. That was his gig, and he made money doing it. Or he chose to drink alcohol and then perhaps inflict violence on another person. Not cool, people, no matter how it sounds on paper. Yes, the literary Gods did smile on him, and the written word gave him a chance to rise above his lot, but he failed. It is hard to stop drinking, or smoking, or gambling, but people do it. He could have been an American giant. To me he is wasted talent. Vonnegut will be around a lot longer than Bukowski. Let the degenerates live their lives, don't use a gift to glorify them. Or if you do, at least help them.
>>By noname1 (Wednesday, 21 Jan 2004 04:44)
The list of artists who have not started foundations with their earnings is about a thousand times longer than the list of those that did . Vonnegut's style and milieu were different from Buk's but that doesn't mean they were not both great and important authors . Someone needed to write the books Bukowski did , and aparently some of you are glad it wasn't you . So be it . Buk needed to write those books and did a truly outstanding job of it .Who'd have ever thought Van Gogh would be remembered the way he is . The tastes of history are fickle but I'll bet Buk is there with Kerouac , Miller , Harrison , Mailer etc when they speak of the literature of our time .
>>By goddog (Wednesday, 21 Jan 2004 08:43)
I recall noname1's original profile as a woman, if I am not mistaken. If I am mistaken sorry...but that isn't what a read a month ago.
Oh yea...let's start foundations with our earnings. Who the hell are you to decide how he spent his money...at the track...on crack...on starving children...that's an individual call.
I smell some serious political positioning here...are you sure you're not a woman?
>>By Al C (Wednesday, 21 Jan 2004 21:46)
Al C! Are you causing trouble again? You devil. Maybe Noname is a herm. If so so we oughtn't have fun at herm's expense. I found herm's post to be so whacked I didn't know how to respond, except to ask is maybe s/he needed to pee or something. Responding seemed pointless. Like throwing a lead core life-preserver to a morbidly obese she-male who has chosen to grab onto a steel girder to stay afloat.
I will say this though- This is a case where it's hard to seperate the artist from the art, but still, judging people harshly is crap. You don't hear ME putting down the transgendered no matter their views on literature and life. To each his/her own.
He should hav
jections, the only thing to do is circle the wagons, get loaded and kick the shit out of them.
>>By Seward3 (Thursday, 22 Jan 2004 03:19)
And just for the record I like the artist here . I was deeply embroiled in the life he described so well when I picked up' erections , exhibitions , ejaculations and other tales of ordinary madness ' and the stories and poems in there said exactly what I felt . And some people may see his writing as sensationalized or romanticised but it was an accurate (and often hilarius) portrait of the drunks and drug addicts and dealers and strippers and theives and fuckups and fuckoffs , the losers and the lost , the damned and the damned well trying , the people I knew from the streets and parks and bars and jobs that littered my life . I didn't know there was a status associated with reading Buk cuz I didn't know or talk to anyone who'd read him for 20 years , until I came to Gnooks .
Many people here have implied that Buk pissed away his life or his talent but that was exactly what he didn't do . He lived his life on his terms and having said just what he needed to say he still managed to support himself by doing just that for the final 22 years of his life . Buk is the frigging American Dream .
I have no doubt that Buk could be every bit as obnoxious and overbearing and assholish as his creation Chinaski . But I always felt he emphasized those personality traits because they were the funnest for him to puncture with self deprecation .And if he was as mean to his women as they all say then how did he get so many who wanted to live with him . Oh right , it was his pretty face .
And hey guys noname probably switched gender to avoid hassling by the real perverts out there . If noname is gender challenged I would have thought it would have liked Buk .
>>By goddog (Thursday, 22 Jan 2004 04:04)
Have you gentlemen ever thought that maybe you are wasting your lives by fighting over the writings of a man who would have thought that you are more messed up than he? Maybe some should consider finding real lives
>>By pollyanna (Thursday, 22 Jan 2004 18:57)
Pollyanna...if you read the posts you'd know the opposite. Buk would have told us to fuck off...
Of you think I spend my life reading what is here, then maybe you have a warped sense of the world.
I suppose if we were discussing the pros and cons of Danielle Steel or John Grisham we'd be having a more productive literary discussion?
My mind is rotting, and I am squeezing the life from myself at this very minute.
Help me
>>By Al C (Thursday, 22 Jan 2004 23:16)
My last post got fucked up somehow. I'm sorry. Well, not really. And no Pollyanna, it never occured to me I was more messed up than Bukowski. Is it a contest? How do we keep score? Are there judges like at barbeque competitions?
However it has occurred to me that I am wasting my precious borrowed time reading posts like yours, even though I get a kick out of them. It reminds me of something a wise old queen told me once: If after being exposed to someone's presence you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence.
He also told me, "Some people are shits, darling." Reading some of the whacked-out posts here, like yours, Pollyanna, has confirmed this.
And Al, Danielle Steele isn't such a bad broad. I spent a wild weekend with her in Vegas at the Sands once (comp'd out the ass) and I didn't sleep a wink. She was doing this freaky thing she does with a lit cigar when the Mexican housekeeping girl barged in and saw everything. It was crazy. She stayed for cocktails, but Danielle and I couldn't convince her to get all weird and nasty with us. Shame.
If my characterizing some of the Buk-hating contributers here as shits, herms, unworthy adversaries, testically challenged, and mean pinch-faced bloodsuckers offends anybody, I'm sorry.
Well, not really.
>>By Seward3 (Friday, 23 Jan 2004 01:06)
Sweward3...damn good kink man! Fear and loathing!
Aploogise for nothing. I am learning that what we say in abject anger, disgust, or lust is all that is pure.
live your brand of peace!
>>By Al C (Friday, 23 Jan 2004 02:32)
It's sad when a discussion of such a controversial writer degenerates
into a mud slinging contest between people who have regressed
into 14 year olds. Of course I'm new to this forum, so could some one please
clue me in on the soap opera that seems to have developed? Why don't
noname1 and AI C just smoke a peace pipe and call a truce? although,
in an ironic sort of way, it just couldn't get more Bukowski than this. All
you need is alcohol and sex, and there you have it. Raw at it's finest.
I can't wait to see what happens next. It's the edge of your seat feeling
that you get , like a car wreck that you just can't turn away from. I guess
that sums him up, better than I ever could put into words. What
Bukowski is, he is. And you are what you are. And there you have it.
>>By Faun (Tuesday, 27 Jan 2004 14:20)
Faun: Please do not attempt to smooth things out and make peace between forum members here. I have gone through a lot of trouble trying to incite a riot. Your suggesting we make peace is counter-productive, and though it is unlikely, could make all my efforts to piss off the hoity-toity Buk-haters all for naught. Peace, as always, is to be considered a last-ditch resort here. Rather, war (mutants vs pushy christians) is to be embraced. Don't come to the Buk page looking for tea and sympathy.
As to what this lame-ass soap opera is about: It's about the Bukowski, baby.
>>By Seward3 (Tuesday, 27 Jan 2004 18:13)
Faun had a nice post, in a simple sort of way. Bukowski is a Jerry Springer for literates. Also, please don't make lame inferences on if I am male or female based on my writing style. Please have an open mind!
The stark reality is Bukowski lovers are bohemian losers who drink or smoke too much and probably work at some menial job, if they can keep it despite their addiction. They may be in a band that plays bad music. Or work in a coffee shop at some large bookstore chain, their small apartment or bedroom in mommy's house littered with beer bottles, empty skoal tins, and ashes from their cigarettes. Stop playing your bad music, painting your bad pictures, and stop reading Bukowski, and put your hand on your rearend and go and make something of your life. Then write about success. Stop kidding yourself and comforting yourself with works from this man. There is much more to life. All I'm saying is get that silly little smirk off your face and make some real money and do the things you really dream about.
>>By noname1 (Wednesday, 28 Jan 2004 05:42)
Holy shit! Fire in the hole, boys!
>>By Seward3 (Wednesday, 28 Jan 2004 08:20)
noname1, you are so full of shit you can't see the hubris of your orthodoxy. I, for one, read many diverse authors (as can be evidenced in the lit forum).
I am a wholesaler for one of the largest companies in America...hate the work...make mid $100's. Certainly I can't prove this to you, but it is true. I've worked like a horse for decades to take care of the corporate bullshit and know that it all it is: bullshit. Making money doesn't lead to happiness at any level other than not worrying about putting food on the table. Since you won't believe this...who cares.
I do not find comfort in Bulowski's works..."stop kidding yourself." This is something you should do. I don't smoke, have never been unemployed, have had regional success asa musician in my youth, and simply chose a wrong way of living for my persona...none of that led me to buskowski.
You wish everyone to open their minds yet attack those more open to literary ideas than yourr self-appointed expertise.
You can dislike Bukowski with all your heart, that doesn't bother me. But to try an intellectualize your bruised sensibilities at his hand as elevated thinking is bullshit. I brisle at idiots like you that think writing, reading and caring revolve around a campfire and holding hands as we revel in "truth and beauty."
I agree taht Bukowski can be thought of as the Springer for literates...as long as you don't know shit about his work. Don't like his work. That is easy to understand and easy to accept. Listening to you expound your sterotypical bullshit on those who might read him or his work is a giant magnifying glass on the black hole of your expanding ignorance.
You are a bigoted mornon. I wish you well in your delicate self-absorption.
>>By Al C (Wednesday, 28 Jan 2004 11:55)
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