Charles Bukowski (1920–1994)

A book that I have to rate highly, because it emerges that it is fantastically (though not beautifully) written, but that I can't give top marks to because ultimately, it contains sentiments that I hate, sentiments that make me feel sick. Why? Because they're twisted? Perhaps. But mostly, because I fear they're true.

If you read this as a marginalised teen who sought over-compensation through ridiculous displays of masculinity, maybe it would resonate. Maybe it would be your Mockingbird show more (might not surprise you to hear I wasn't keen on that one either). But for me, nothing about it resonates with personal experience.

But second hand experience? Oh absolutely. I fear that maybe this is men. To differing degrees, in different people, but ultimately, as close as you can get to a truth. This is what we call 'toxic' today. But that's not a condemnation, its just that it is what it is, and it seems hugely unpalatable. I hear these inner thoughts and it brings out every fear I've ever thought about the men that sit opposite me; maintaining a veneer of social acceptability but somewhere, somehow, underneath, something deeper and harsher lurks. Hate. Aggression. Mindless depravity. This text - from the reading perspective of a woman - confirms much if what we might fear, the 'truth' of being male. Whether that is socially conditioned or innate is far outside of the scope of this book, it just is.

At the same time, the book expresses something complex; because it is clear on the one hand we are meant to express pity for this insecure overcompensation expressed through ridiculous expressions of masculinity (mainly, telling everybody you can beat them up, wanting to fuck everything but being terrified of actual women, and hard drinking). But even while I find it too much, I also see the romanticism of the trope; I'm enough on the spectrum of nihilistic, aggressive, sex-driven alcoholic that I get the appeal and the relatability of the 'vision' inherent in an anti-establishment character like Chinaksi. Somehow though, whilst a certain curated level of this nihilism is appealing and sexy, Bukowski communicates something way more raw and deep than this. Which is both disgusting, and brilliant.

Returning to the writing. Roddy Doyle opens with an introduction that summarises it well; it's sparse writing where it's sometimes the gaps that give the most resonance. This isn't perfect; it's sometimes overplayed - in the younger chapters there is too much childish understatement or naivety that is meant to read as profound, and on the latter chapters Bukowski seeks to spell out and justify his own literary approach by inserting a dissection of other authors (which lo and behold mirror his own approach) with some secondary character. But ignoring those few missteps, the overall style is engaging, evocative and incredibly communicative without being overstated.

I hate it, I'll never read it again, and it will leave a bad taste with me for a long time. But it is perhaps as good as they say. show less

I opened this up in a bookshop, and it was like sticking my thumb into a power socket. A letter he wrote in 1963 to John William Corrington, I won't quote it, it's too long, but my heart was pounding and I could feel adrenaline prickling down my forearms. I carried it to the counter, still open, bought it, staggered out into the street and sat in the roughest bar I could find – a place called the Highlander, with boarded-up windows – and just sat there drinking and reading this and show more scrawling encouragements over the pages in biro.

I haven't read any Bukowski in years. The last time I read much of him was when I was living in South America, nearly twenty years ago, a time when I was also writing a lot, probably not coincidentally since the moods from which I write are very similar to the moods that Buk is concerned with getting down on paper. So he speaks to me. And this is…intense, beautiful. I hate books about writing in general, all those god-awful self-help manuals about constructing story arcs and developing character motivations I find positively offensive, even stuff like that Stephen King book that everyone loves are just anathema to me. Bukowski did not hold with any of that shit as these extracts from his letters make clear.

I do not believe in technique or schools or sissies…I believe in grasping at the curtains like a drunken monk…and tearing them down, down, down…

His writing is so beautifully rooted in the world he lived, and so detached from the literary scene.

I can't stand writers or editors or anybody who wants to talk Art. For 3 years I lived in a skid row hotel—before my hemorrhage—and got drunk every night with an x-con, the hotel maid, an Indian, a gal who looked like she wore a wig but didn't, and 3 or 4 drifters. Nobody knew Shostakovich from Shelley Winters and we didn't give a damn. The main thing was sending runners out for liquor when we ran dry.

His writing was plain, direct, ungrammatical when necessary, but never for deliberate effect.

I think I could come on pretty heavy. I can toss vocabulary like torn-up mutual tickets, but I think eventually the words that will be saved are the small stone-like words that are said and meant. When men really mean something they don't say it in 14 letter words. Ask any woman. They know.

He never censors himself, he's offensive and crude and true to the life he's known, and you can feel that in every word – you can feel the difference between this stuff, that is done out of honesty, and the kind of writers who are putting it on to sound tough and gritty.

Besides, it pays to be crude, buddy, it PAYS. When these women who have read my poetry knock on my door and I ask them in and pour them a drink, and we talk about Brahms or Carrington or Flash Gordon, they know all along that it is GOING TO HAPPEN, and that makes all the talk nice

because pretty soon the bastard is just going
to walk over and grab me
and get started
because he's been around
he's CRUDE

And so, since they expect it, I do it, and this gets a lot of barriers and small-talk out of the way fast. Women like bulls, children, apes. The pretty boys and the expounders upon the universe don't stand a chance. They end up jacking-off in the closet.

There's a guy down at work, he says, “I recite Shakespeare to them.”

He's still a virgin. They know he's scared. Well, we're all scared but we go ahead.

What I love, what I absolutely love about this passage is that in a sense I don't really agree with any of it, it's the kind of macho bullshit that appeals when you're a kid, at the very least it's misleading, arguably pretty sexist, and so on and so forth, but he feels it, and he writes it down, and he pushes the thought right through until – he hits something aphoristic. The last line or two there is excellent, and he earned it. You can see him earning it.

The writers he admires are the ones who, in his assessment, have lived life and not just written literature.

There have been some breakthroughs through the centuries, of course—Dos[toyevsky], Celine, early Hem[ingway], early Camus, the short stories of Turgenev, and there was Knut Hamsun—Hunger, all of it—Kafka, and the prowling pre-revolutionary Gorky…a few others…but most of it has been a terrible bag of shit.

The ones he doesn't admire are those who write for fame or academia or, basically, any reason other than compulsive necessity.

A writer is not a writer because he has written some books. A writer is not a writer because he teaches literature. A writer is only a writer if he can write now, tonight, this minute.

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When you write only to get famous you shit it away. I don't want to make rules but if there is one it is: the only writers who write well are those who must write in order not to go mad.

Some people are turned off Bukowski because he swears a lot, he objectifies women, he's a bit of an asshole. But he's so true, he's so honest, I would take this honest misogyny a hundred times over the laboured respect of someone telling me a fucking lie designed to make themselves look good, which is what, after reading Bukowski, you can't helping feeling most of literature is.

Besides, even if you don't like what he's writing about, if you're interested in writing there is so much to learn from him. Which makes a book like this an ideal way of consuming some Bukowski, and understanding the compulsion that underlies all his work – that underlies, he would say, any great work.

And when you can't come up with the next line, it doesn't mean you're old, it means you're dead. It's all right to be dead, it happens. I yearn for a postponement, though, as do all of us. One more sheet of paper into this machine, under this hot desk lamp, stuck within the wine, re-lighting these cigarette stubs […]. This is a life beyond all mortal and moral considerations. This is it. Fixed like this. And when my skeleton rests upon the bottom of the casket, should I have that, nothing will be able to subtract from these splendid nights, sitting here at this machine. show less

Oh, [a:Charles Bukowski|13275|Charles Bukowski|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1387554724p2/13275.jpg].

Where do I begin?

I adore his poetry, really. It speaks to me in the bitter, cynical, drunken tones of a misogynistic misanthropist who is just scribbling on paper in hopes of another paycheck coming in. It speaks to me in the harsh growl of someone cursing down the phone at his admirers, then sleeping with their wives, sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers - any woman with show more a pulse before shoving them out the door with no apology. It speaks to me in the way that [a:Hunter S. Thompson|5237|Hunter S. Thompson|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1206560814p2/5237.jpg] does, but without the strange bit of heart buried deep within Gonzo's rotten frame.

It speaks to me, and speaks to me frankly. I know I'll give it more stars at some point or another. I know I'll read through everything the bastard wrote at some point or another. I can't keep away, even though it's the same as lapping up the putrid filth of existence and expecting not to get sick. It draws you in, it spits you out. Then it urinates all over you.

Why do I do this to myself? show less

There are books you admire, and then there are books that feel like they’ve been living inside your ribcage for years, just waiting for someone else to say it first. Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit by Charles Bukowski is the latter.

This isn’t poetry dressed up for approval. It doesn’t ask for permission, doesn’t polish itself for classrooms or careful readers. It staggers in, already half-cut, already honest, already past the show more point of caring whether you flinch. Bukowski writes about failure, women, alcohol, work, boredom—the long slow bleed of being alive—and he does it with a kind of blunt-force clarity that feels less like reading and more like being cornered into a confession you didn’t know you were holding.

The language is stripped down to the bone. No excess. No decoration. Just impact. And yet, somewhere between the repetition of bad nights and worse decisions, something almost holy emerges. Not redemption—Bukowski isn’t interested in saving you—but recognition. The quiet understanding that most people are stumbling through the same dark, just with better lighting.

What makes this collection endure isn’t the mythology of Bukowski the drunk, or Bukowski the womanizer. It’s the precision beneath the chaos. He knows exactly where to land the line. Exactly when to stop. The poems feel reckless, but they’re not careless.

This book is for readers who have grown tired of curated lives and filtered emotions. It’s for anyone who has sat alone too long, who has felt the weight of routine pressing down until it almost becomes identity. If you’ve ever questioned the performance of normalcy, Bukowski hands you a cracked mirror and says, look closer.

This isn’t a comfortable read. It’s not meant to be. But if you’re willing to meet it where it lives—in the mess, in the repetition, in the unvarnished truth—it will leave a mark. Not clean. Not pretty. But real. show less