Bukowski C/D and S&D

Ever come across any of his poems that mention Dac Jerouac ? pretty funny

I love the way hating half the population is always seen as worse than hating the whole population.

I will not read Bukowski becuase Miles Hunt once said that he had got into something (I forget what) that had turned him onto Bukowski, through whom he had in turn discovered Dostoyevsky. I'm not sure if it was all just to do with them rhyming. Anyway, through Miles Hunt I have been turned off this entire cultural daisy chain.

I think I saw that documentary too, Nathalie. Has Sean Penn in it, right? My enthusiasm cooled a bit after that one too since he acted like a pig towards his woman-du-jour on camera.

His poetry is way better than his prose, though.

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808456237&intl=us

It'coming to SF and Berkeley very soon.

http://www.filmthreat.com/Reviews.asp?Id=3799

Although there are readings from Sean Penn and Harry Dean Stanton in it. Not sure.

The Bono and Sean Penn talking heads were excruciating. Harry Dean Stanton less so.

MAY 28th, 2004
LOS ANGELES, CA at Landmark's Nuart Theatre
CAMBRIDGE, MA at Landmark's Kendall Square Cinema
BERKELEY, CA at Landmark's Act 1 & 2 Cinemas
SAN FRANCISCO, CA at Landmark's Lumiere Theatre

JUNE 11th, 2004
PORTLAND, OR at Cinema 21

JUNE 18th, 2004
ATLANTA, GA at Landmark's Midtown Art Cinema

JULY 9th, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC at Landmark's E Street Cinema

JULY 30th, 2004
ST LOUIS, MO at Landmark's Tivoli Theatre
NEW ORLEANS, LA at Landmark's Canal Place Cinema
SEATTLE, WA at Landmark's Varsity Theatre
SAN DIEGO, CA at Landmark's Ken Cinema

I have "Women". Should I read it? I read the first page and it looks like it could be v good.

No. Shittiest, most overrated writer ever.

ok.

yes read it.

depends what kind of writing you like. if you like denis johnson, maggie dubris, raymond carver, tobias wolff, richard ford, then you'll probably like his stuff.

i love it. easy to read, funny, deceptively simple style. i haven't read 'women', but i think the misogynistic label is a little harsh.

OK, that was a bit of a kneejerk reaction from me. I just never liked the guy at all, and was constantly subjected to him for my first 3.5 years of college by precious rich slumming classmates, so I might just be a little bitter.

that's fair enough. honestly, i can totally understand why a lot of people don't like his stuff. but it really does come down to taste rather than talent, imo. i really do think he was a talented writer.

what can we do?- Charles Bukowski

at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of
courage
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn't
have too much.
it is like a large animal deep in sleep and
almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it's best at brutality,
selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.

what can we do with it, this Humanity?

nothing.

avoid the thing as much as possible.
treat it as you would anything poisonous, vicious
and mindless.
but be careful. it has enacted laws to protect
itself from you.
it can kill you without cause.
and to escape it you must be subtle.
few escape.

it's up to you to figure a plan.

I have met nobody who has escaped.

I have met some of the great and
famous but they have not escaped
for they are only great and famous within
Humanity.

I have not escaped
but I have not failed in trying again and
again.

before my death I hope to obtain my
life.

from blank gun silencer - 1994

i always hated bukowski then i loved him but now it seems that love might have been a shameful interlude though i'd never hate him again, he's way better than i thought. i used to think he was hamming being fucked up but i think he genuinely was, in a not entertaining way, which i have compassion for, being not chosen. some of his show drunk act is annoying but his audience were probably responsible for some of that, he had an obedient streak.
i don't consider him a misogynist but i wish misogynists could be banned from reading him.

I hope me reading the first page and saying I liked it doesn't make me seem a sodgy.
As I recall he's going, pathetically, on about how useless he is with women.

^^^^^that's some bad sentences from me jus there.

no no i didn't mean you.

I don't really see definite cross-pollination between Johnson/Ford/Wolff love and Bukowski. Carver, maybe, esp. for the guys in motorcycle jackets who still think alcoholism is the key to creativity (ie Ethan Hawke), but the first three are more lyrical and lack Bukowski's narcissism (which is kinda the defining feature of his novels).

i would never place bukowski and carver together, they are totally different kinds of drunks and writers. also carver would never claim that alcoholism was the key to creativity, he was dismissive of that kind of thinking. he was sober for the last eleven years of his life, that's hardly glamorising it.

i like carver, ford, johnson, etc. and i like bukowski, so i was just making a generalisation.

"i would never place bukowski and carver together"

I can see the similarities. both were direct. the lost art of the straight punch. carver was more the craftsman, like hemingway. bukowski was more inspired, like kerouac.

I read the first 40 pages or so of Women last night. I'm enjoying it. But I can see how it could be construed as misogynistic.
I wouldn't encourage my gf to read it. I tried to get her to read Tropic of Cancer and she did not like.

yeah but Bukowski >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Henry Miller

I have met girls that dig Bukowski. Really!

my wife is one of them!

easy to read, funny, deceptively simple style

I'm finding this to be otm.

..actually this book's not that funny.

The part when Chinaski goes out camping with his girlfriend and her two sisters is funny.

Ham on Rye & Post Office are both pretty good - Ham on Rye is better than "pretty good," really.

the early poetry's weird for how lit-mag it is; the middle period gets pretty good; then it gets real lazy and scattershot, like he's decided that he's gonna hit an occasional vein whether he tries or not, which is kind of an honest approach, if that's something you value. in the late ones, when he does hit, it's with an assured ease. still, I prefer the stuff from when he was just beginning to feel confident - it has an economy that he later lost in favor of something else

"Ham on Rye & Post Office are both pretty good - Ham on Rye is better than "pretty good," really."

that's what i said on yet another bukowski thread today! it's true too.

shd i return my "bukowski: born into this" dvd to ntflx or shd i watch it?

yeah, i think i read post office and factotum in one sitting. dude had some issues with women (to say the least), but ppl seem to forget the scene in post office (?) where betty drinks herself into a coma and he goes to the hospital and sits with her, washes her, brushes her hair and abuses the fuck out of the medical staff for not doing more to save her.

hollywood is hilarious. quite a bit different to his other books in that he is more outside of the story, less the central character. and the scene where they visit charles manson's house is pretty good.

don't understand the whole "chicks wouldn't dig him" tag - i mean, i can still want equal rights for women AND have a sense of humour, right?

yuh. right.

and nicky lo-fi otm.

fwiw, i only said my gf wouldn't like him. Not that all "chicks wouldn't dig him".

oh no, i wasn't really referring to what you'd said - it just seems a general belief. although i belong to a bukowski forum and it's probably 98% male.

Bukowski never claimed his drinking contributed to his creativity. I never got that impression anyway. I think he even denied it. In a way I see my fascination with Bukowski similar to Guided by Voices (in a roundabout way) and, hey, I'm not rich nor a student, but I can see John's (?) dislike because of the "kids slumming" thing. In a way it's bit like women digging serial killers who are imprisoned. It's a safe way of living dangerously, I guess. Bad boys are attractive. I do place him in the same league/territory as Carver, Johnson and so on. They all seem to have a very direct way of writing, which, certainly at the time, appealed to me immensely. I didn't/don't like a very floral, tralala, magic real way of writing. (I have since come around to it and do like magic realism and even a floral way of writing, though in doses.)

Was he mysoginistic? I am still not convinced. Or rather I... excused it (until I saw the documentary which made it too up close and personal) and appreciated he was so matter of factly about it. He clearly had issues with women but I was able to forgive it because 1 he wrote very honestly about it, 2 I think deep down he did love women in a fucked up kinda way and 3... well, it's always easier to read it, then see/experience it. I do think that he played into it (mysoginy/alcoholism). He was aware that his fans loved that part of him (much like GBV for example), so I do think his fanbase kinda kept the machine rolling in that way.

Women is a great book! I love Post Office and Factotum more, but Women is a great book as well. I'd defenitely recommend it.

BTW, fuck, has it been that long since I read Bukowski? Sheeit. More than 6 years. Yikes.

Also, don't call him Buk. He's not a dog. God, I hated it when people used that nickname.

I love Bukowski! and I am female! Have just finished reading Howard Sounes' bio actually. The film Factotum with Matt Dillon was very good, I thought.

I think mainly he is v funny but his pathos can be heartbreaking too (viz the poem about the dead goldfish).

I got the book HOLLYWOOD out of the library!

I look forward to reading it when I have finished with GEORGE MELLY.

Hollywood is fantastic. I love it because of the OH NOT SO OBVIOUS references. roffle.

Francis Ford Lopolla

i love bukowski. i mean i LOVE HIM. im naming my second born after him.

I just watched "Born Into This". Yeah, the part where he goes aggro on his girlfriend/wife was definitely upsetting; classic alcoholic personality going horrifingly distorto.

But, parts of the film, to be honest, moved me greatly. The guy, despite his facades, did have a side to him that was so penetratingly naked and revealing of the human condition. I mean, as far as his actual personal presentation, as well as his writing. I guess that is what some of the people in the film are getting at when they repeatedly refer to his "charisma".

I feel that people like Bukowski, Kerouac, Miller, et al. tend to get a short-shrift these days as a result of so many dodo-heads reading their stuff and ending up missing said authors' points entirely, and subsequently advertising their misguided interpretations in loud and crass fashion, and then eventually these authors' writings/personas get shunted into some cheap cultural shorthand for 'bohemian' blahblahblah.

But for me, at least, it doesn't take away from the fact that these people led genuinely risky, interesting, inspirational lives that are eminently worthy of consideration (not to mention their actual literary outputs, as well). I guess what I am trying to say, is that, I understand when people dismiss these folks offhandedly as being a throwback to some portion of their own adolescent phase, but, at the same time I would encourage them to read a good biography of any of these people, or to read some of the actual primary sources with a fresh eye. (Part of the problem in appreciating some of them, as well, I think, is that people tend to read them (as mentioned upthread) as a sort of rite of passage when one is eighteen years-old or so, and, at that young age very few people have had sufficient "adult" life experience (i.e., earning a living, significant love affairs, etc.) to be able to appreciate these writers in their full depth.)

But, anyhow, Bukowski, as a human being, in the film made me cry. It reminded me of an essay I read years back where the author quotes some young woman at one of his readings who said something along the lines of "he's so ugly, that he's beautiful".

It was hard seeing Bukowski act that way on camera (re: Born Into This)...the trouble is that I wanted him to *not* be a heel in real life, in spite of the fact that he spent his whole career describing how much of a heel he was.

My absolute favorite thing is showing Bukowski to friends who don't like poetry: I've never met anyone that hasn't been turned around by him.

there's a bukowski forum that i belong to, and there is an insane amount of people who end up posting there, who have never been fiction or poetry readers. but once they've been turned onto bukowski, that changes entirely. i think that's where his real power lies.

That's interesting. I was always more predisposed towards Kerouac & Miller, if I can clumsily lump them in with him...but, anyhow, I can see how Bukowski's poetry could definitely convert someone who was otherwise turned off from poetry.

VegemiteGrrrl, did you feel like he seemed a heel other than the disturbing sequence where he hauls off on his future bride? I thought he comported himself pretty decently other than that, at least within the context of the film.

Also, Ginsberg. I have a serious soft spot for Ginsberg. I think that Ginsberg managed to express the rawness that is so affecting in the best of Bukowski and Kerouac, but also added the joi de vivre that was Miller's stock in trade.

The scene with his wife was the clincher, I really loved the movie overall.
I just hate finding out my heroes are real people. Bubbles burst, etc. You can only romanticise them so far before you're shown your own hypocrisy I guess. Ah who cares. All the best heroes are screwups anyway, I should be used to it by now!

I love all of Bukowski's writing, but his poetry is definitely on a slightly higher pedestal for me. I grew up loving flowery wordy poets like
Shelley, Tennyson, Blake, the old dudes...Bukowski's economy of words, and the simple pictures of mundane un-pretty life...it just gets me. Goddamn
genius. Side note: Bukowski I enjoy most when I smoke (and I'm not much of a smoker). Early Rolling Stones, too. It just feels right.

Yeah, meeting heroes can easily turn to dud. Though, I've met at least one person who actually surpassed my expectations (in a positive respect).

But, point well taken-- knowing what a jerk I myself can be, idealizing others just seems silly.

You're not alone in preferring his poetry to his prose, and I have a feeling, based in part on conversations with others, that ultimately, his poetry will be remembered in greater esteem than his prose.

I smoke so infrequently that everything seems appealing to me on occasions when I do, so I can't even properly comment to that end!

...but I will make a mental note to throw on early Stones next time.

I wonder if he'll make it into the Library of America series. He should.

LofA is all about canon and prestige. Writers like Bukowski and Henry Miller lurk near the outer edges of the canon, but neither has the prestige to break into that series. Of course, if Miller ever makes it in, that would be a sign that Bukowski will eventually qualify, too.

http://mjpbooks.com/blog/the-senseless-tragic-rape-of-charles-bukowskis-ghost-by-john-martins-black-sparrow-press/

Will Henry make the Library of America? It might take a hundred years but yass

I think Miller will get his LoA editions pretty soon

Henry's readership has certainly endured for a goodly number of decades beyond his death now. They tend to be relatively few in number and they don't often remain loyal to him into their middle age, but new youths always come along to replenish the supply. I tried reading him in my forties and I got so I wanted to hurl his books at the wall in exasperation with him.

I've read less of Bukowski. I think he might be slightly more congenial than Miller for actual adults; my general impression of him is that he had a noteworthy talent, but occupied a very narrow niche, rather like e.e. cummings. A little of him goes a long way toward giving you all of him.

I meant Henry Chinaski

Miller's good but he has his own thread I'm sure

174. Jack Kerouac: Road Novels 1957–1960
231. Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems
262. Jack Kerouac: Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur
283. The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished & Newly Translated Writings

not saying just saying

Kerouac has more cachet in academia than either Bukowski or Miller, since he is emblematic of a 'movement' rather than a one-off.

Gittabdinh fad fcofien

Gotta read factotum, that is

Still waiting on that library of America comp btw

Gittabdinh fad fcofien

(Aimless takes the unlit briar pipe from mouth and nods sagely)

Library of America comps are the bomb.

Bukocksi

“I come from San Pedro ...”

https://i.imgur.com/XQZ0JrH.jpg

sometimes I still think about Bukowski -- a complex figure for me (abusive but very intelligent parent who thought Buk was great & knew him v. casually from railbirding Santa Anita & Hollywood Park). the table is the table wrote, on the politics thread:

imho Bukowski only wrote a few good poems but in his best poem he wrote:

“not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world”

and I think this is right -- that poetry was a hustle for Bukowski but not a pure hustle, he was legit a writer (for me Ham on Rye and Post Office seemed better than his poetry to me back when, but it's been forty-plus years since I read them) whose strategy was "every once in a while you land on a good one and in the rest of the time, which is most of the time, you rely on persona." "Guy with Bukowski on his shelves" is an anathematized type and I think fairly but I do think occasionally looking at his bigger swings is worthwhile. But what constitute those? The ones where he reaches for something quasi-elegeiac, speaks in generalities, or the ones that are just chopped-up prose from novels he stopped writing? I think in it's in the latter category where he sometimes hits something. so much of his "now I make money at this" poetry feels super unrevised, but I'm not actually sure. anyhow. because I had early exposure to the "macho and fucked up guy who considers Bukowski a genius" archetype but don't consider him a total hack I like to mull about his stuff every so often, try to locate the poet inside his work whom he either 1) obscured for various reasons or 2) was not, but contained, among several other authorly identities. but take "The Suicide Kid," below -- the punch line lands so nicely; the line breaks are hard to defend half the time; the callback to the first line at the end is supremely hokey; and yet, it lands, it sews itself up for me. anyway. thinkin on a saturday morning because of table quoting that other, more elegaiac poem

I went to the worst of bars
Hoping to get
Killed
But all I could do was to
Get drunk
Again
Worse, the bar patrons even
Ended up
Liking me
There I was trying to get
Pushed over the dark
Edge
And I ended up with
Free drinks
While somewhere else
Some poor
Son-of-a-bitch was in a hospital
Bed
Tubes sticking out all over
Him
As he fought like hell
To live
Nobody would help me
Die as
The drinks kept
Coming
As the next day
Waited for me
With its steel clamps
Its stinking
Anonymity
Its incogitant
Attitude
Death doesn't always
Come running
When you call
It
Not even if you
Call it
From a shining
Castle
Or from an ocean liner
Or from the best bar
On earth (or the
Worst)
Such impertinence
Only makes the gods
Hesitate and
Delay
Ask me: I'm
72

Ham on Rye is classic. I have gone off Buk a few times during my life because of what a terrible guy he was. But he sure could pound that prose out and some of his poetry is classic.

I'm not an expert on Bukowski poetry but it's known that Black Sparrow publisher John Martin edited/altered lots of the poems, especially the posthumous stuff. A number of similarities w/ Raymond Carver and his editor.

I used to own about 10 or 12 Bukowski books (three novels, a bunch of poetry collections and Notes Of A Dirty Old Man) but the only ones I still have are Factotum and Post Office.

I read a lot of Buk in my early 20s and then checked out for reasons including the toxicity of a certain kind of lad that worships him but with distance I'd still say he could write and has been badly served by the baconing of laddishness