Here then, is the origin of Henry Chinaski and, so we assume, of Charles Bukowski. Charles Bukowski’s life begins, as far as he can recall, under a table, looking at the world from ankle high level, just as you would if you were drunk in the gutter. Henry Chinaski’s life probably began not with a bang, nor with a wail and a wet squelching, not with, as might be a reasonable expectation, but with a suppressed whimper, brought about by the smack of leather shaving strop on a child’s flesh as Henry’s father beats him, again, for some transgression. Henry tries not to cry out and go somewhere else in his head while his father labours at bringing a child up properly by thrashing him, and if we suppose that Bukowski experienced similar parental instruction and took to flights of fancy as an escape, then this may be where his writing started.

If he had had an untroubled, happy youth, he may never have written at all.

Henry Chinaski’s youth is anything but untroubled. Early troubles are visited upon him and, in forming his character, he eventually learns to bring trouble upon himself and upon others.

Here he takes his first drink and, in a dazzling departure from reality, enjoys it. Possibly Bukowski’s formative experiences with alcohol were different from my own vile, scrumpy-vomit flavoured adventures, but I can’t recall any early experience for myself or my friends going smoothly. Maybe we should have clubbed together and got some good stuff instead of a beverage with the tell-tale warning sign of being in a plastic bottle. Household cleaning fluids come in plastic bottles, drink comes in glass.

This is a book to hurl at any sulking teen who thinks the world is ending because they can’t have digital telly in their bedroom. There’s beatings, from the father, the teachers, the other kids. There’s alienation and social cruelty, there’s hopelessness and desperation and envy and grim, grim, grim poverty. There’s also unexpected tenderness and occasional flashes of humour.

What comes across is how bloody unlikable the teen Chinanski is. That’s okay though, it’s the job of a teen to be unlikable.

Here is the truth revealed in the book – everyone is unhappy growing up but those with less; less money, less looks, less talent, less height, have it worse than others, who’s unhappiness may be confined to a fifteen minute sulk in their room writing very bad poetry in a book with black pages using a silver marker pen.

Here’s the revalation in the book – if you drink because the world is such a terrible place, stop feeling guilty, open another bottle, but make sure it’s GOOD red wine. Because the world is a terrible place.

Chinaski (and, by extension Bukowski), writes late at night, in his digs, using a typewriter. Initially I thought this was far too far-fetched. I used to own a typewriter, not even a mechanical job like Bukowski would have had (probably constructed of cast iron and solid gravity), but an slick electronic thing, made of plastic. And when the key was struck and the hammer hit the letter in the daisy wheel, the report was like something you’d expect to hear coming from the open door of the village blacksmith as he knocked up a horseshoe for a Clydesdale. When I lived in a shared house I learned how to write longhand after dark, for fear my flatmates would use the typewriter as a Frisbee and me as a football to eliminate noise nuisance. How the hell did Chinaski write, drunk, at night? Because the boy that starts the novel under a table ends it a young man staying in a rooming house with thin walls but in a part of town where the midnight banging of a typewriter is neither the loudest, nor most disturbing sound to be heard.

The writing’s almost as powerful as the liquor that spawned it. One thing this book does do is make you think about drinking. If you drink, it’s a cautionary tale. If you don’t you’ll wonder what all the fuss is about and maybe try a glass or two yourself, probably after watching the news. ( )

Bukowski comes clean on some things in this book, perhaps because, dropping back to childhood years, he couldn't help himself. Some things must have just bubbled up despite his outsider persona (more on this below). In this one we not only learn about his awful father and miserable upbringing, but about some of his early influences, as well as some writers and writing styles he recoiled from. He's more human in Ham on Rye.

Bukowski hates pretense. It's what makes him fascinating, and laudable. He hates it with the passion of a Celine, another misanthrope who knew how to write. And yet in this book, with its smattering of vulnerable details, we get a hint that in other books, tough guy Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's alter ego, is not an entirely pretense-free construct. Which is too bad, because the scant criticism Bukowski gets (he has mostly fans, few detractors)--that there's no uplift in his writing, no redemption--probably derives from this missing slice of his life.

And of course it should be said that Bukowski can be nasty. His takedown of Henry Miller in another book, for instance--whom he presents as an old man, living in Pacific Palisades, supposedly trying to cadge money from his younger visitor (a transparent aka)--gave me the creeps. Why savage your precursor?

Back to Ham on Rye: somewhere along the way I realized I was reading this novel/memoir as if it were a noir mystery--a Jim Thompson, say--which is a genre I like, but whose limitations I understand. And I realized too that I'd lowered my expectations, to accept Bukowski for what he is: a very good writer, but not a great one. ( )

Didn't care for it. Moments of very funny dry humor, but it's hard to like the autobiography if one doesn't like the author -- and I don't. Abusive father, hard childhood, but nothing learned from it. Bukowski is himself an abusive person for whom women are only two dimensional characters. Distasteful, regrettable, pathetic, offensive. It did, however, keep my interest until the end -- hence the two stars. ( )

My introduction to the novels of Charles Bukowski. I'm not sure if I would like to read the other, more adult adventures of narrator Henry Chinaski, but the author's accessible style and dry wit is very refreshing and funny. 'Ham on Rye' is a darker, sharper take on 'The Catcher in the Rye', preoccupied with the immature concerns of an adolescent boy - sex, and proving how tough he thinks he is. Anecdotal in the telling, every other 'memory' of growing up in LA for Chinaski/Bukowski is about getting into a fight, and whereas some 'memories' ring true, most sound like immature bravado. A product of time and circumstance, Henry is disadvantaged from childhood, living with a bullying father in Depression-era America, but his street smarts and self-deprecating humour help the reader to sympathise with him instead of judging by word and deed alone. An entertaining read. ( )

strange yet somewhat addicting. ( )