Bukowski's novel Women
Anyone else like this novel? I read it years ago and am rereading it with pleasure.
What interests me about Bukowski is everything that he doesn't do. He doesn't drag in exotic religious terminology like Kerouac. He doesn't indulge in surreal interludes like Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer. He uses a well edited but ultimately living, natural language to tell a story of modern people living in apartments, driving, having conversations, fucking, not fucking, drinking, puking, shitting, reading. In short, he works with the modern, largely average situation of living in a city. Our language, our world. If the novel is escapist, this seems only to be in terms of style. It escapes from a certain artificiality, in a way reminiscent of the work of stand-up comics (Dave Chappell's latest specials, for instance). He does wax abstract and self-reflective in a few strong passages, but even this is realistic. We occasionally describe ourselves abstractly to ourselves.
Since this is The Lounge, I hope it's acceptable to have just suggested a theme for conversation and why I think it's a worthy theme.
What interests me about Bukowski is everything that he doesn't do. He doesn't drag in exotic religious terminology like Kerouac. He doesn't indulge in surreal interludes like Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer. He uses a well edited but ultimately living, natural language to tell a story of modern people living in apartments, driving, having conversations, fucking, not fucking, drinking, puking, shitting, reading. In short, he works with the modern, largely average situation of living in a city. Our language, our world. If the novel is escapist, this seems only to be in terms of style. It escapes from a certain artificiality, in a way reminiscent of the work of stand-up comics (Dave Chappell's latest specials, for instance). He does wax abstract and self-reflective in a few strong passages, but even this is realistic. We occasionally describe ourselves abstractly to ourselves.
Since this is The Lounge, I hope it's acceptable to have just suggested a theme for conversation and why I think it's a worthy theme.
Comments (8)
When I read him, the internet was in the future we now occupy. Just fished this poem out.
Wow, great quotes. I've read lots of Buk, but neither of those. He was prolific. Ginsberg has powerful moments and is a fascinating character. Kerouac is great at times. It's been awhile, but I remember Desolation Angels being especially good, maybe because it's so dark and angsty. For me Henry Miller is great at times. Tropic of Cancer is uneven but hilarious and liberating. The later stuff is a bit complacement and longwinded. I gave away The Rosy Crucifixion. It has its moments, but it didn't have the inspired feel of Cancer or Black Spring. Burroughs was a great brutally simple stylist. I think mostly of Junkie and Naked Lunch. But I loved all these guys for getting away from 'literature.' Theirs was the stuff of life as I lived it myself, or close enough.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It's easy to imagine drunks with typewriters who think they're the next Bukowski. I imagine them missing the style and focusing instead on bad boy persona. He found the right place in the music of his time. What an aspiring writer might do is to try to be to Bukowski what Bukowski was to Fante. Their styles are more or less the same, but the first person narrator changes in his character from Fante to Bukowski (an update or variation of the writerly masculinity, which is to say the hero.)
Most certainly. When I read Ham On Rye, it reminded me of my school days in a small town. His school was different. His difficult father was difficult in a different way. But he brought my kind of experience into the written medium skillfully. Mumblecore is something like the film version of this. The feel and acting is naturalistic. The plots involve love affairs, jobs, the pain and glory of just living modern life. No billionaires with high-tech gadgets wage midnight wars on the mob.
This is by no means the only kind of writing worth reading. But as I young man I wanted to be a writer and a truth teller. These autobiographical writers seemed to have the same goal. They wanted to ennoble their own lives without escapism. Punk rock comes to mind. They and their friends were the stars. They wanted to live and do rocknroll, not just be passive consumers of fame's mystique. But, again, this is just one approach. I will admit that I no longer have the patience to bother with Finnegans Wake. (Ulysses is great. )
They didn't have to be Batman or Mick Jagger to live noble lives. They could do ordinary things with style and awareness. Bukowski wrote somewhere that bars were ruined by TVs. The people at the bar used to entertain one another. Kerouac often describes hanging out with a group of interesting friends. They'd get high or go listen to jazz or go out the woods or drive across the country. It didn't cost a million dollars or involve shooting a machine gun at cardboard villains (the bad guys in Death Wish).
This is the escapism: sensational plots. Heroes have super powers or great wealth or fame.
Whereas the writing I'm praising was about awareness, being turned on, being courageous enough to live differently --mostly within the laws we all assent to. Any of these ideals can and have been parodied. Grunge can become a $200 sweater for rich kids, etc. Things tend to become commodified. And I never liked the Buddhism of the Beats. But including it was realistic. Young people eat that kind of thing up. That's probably why Bukowski has aged so well for me. No additives. Just sex-love, death-aging, and art/style. Or rather that kind of primary coloration of themes. The stuff that doesn't stop mattering.
Mick Jagger lives a noble life?
I'll drink to that. Video killed the bar stool star, too, I guess. Good bars don't have TVs, or music so loud you can't hear anyone talk. That's not accidental--when people can't hear anyone (can't hear themselves think, practically) they buy/drink more booze. I always thought the reason to go to a bar was to talk and/or get laid, certainly not to watch television.
'Heroic' might be a better word. I think he was (at his peak) one of the great artists in one of the greatest art forms. He also brought a feminine energy into the mainstream image of masculine cool. He was surely part of the sexual revolution. I'm sure there have been plenty of homophobes out there who managed somehow to ignore the pansexual charge of Mick's persona. (Pansexual is just a more likable word than bisexual. All these categories/boxes are little lame, but I guess they get the job done.)