Charles Bukowski (1920–1994)

Se este não é o melhor livro do Bukowski, nenhum outro o é.

Um leitor

meu gato cagou nos meus arquivos
ele trepou na minha caixa de laranjas
de Golden State Sunkist
e cagou nos meus poemas
meus originais de poemas
preservados para os arquivos das universidades.

esse crítico preto gordo de uma orelha só
ele encerrou as minhas atividades.

Ter um monte de gatos em volta é bom. Quando você não se sente bem, é só olhar para os gatos, você logo se sente melhor, porque eles sabem que tudo é show more simplesmente do jeito que é. Não há nenhum motivo para grandes exaltações. Eles simplesmente sabem. São salvadores. Quanto mais gatos tem, mais tempo você vive. Se tiver cem gatos, vai viver dez vezes mais tempo do que se tiver dez. Um dia vão descobrir isso, e as pessoas vão ter mil gatos e viver pra sempre. É verdadeiramente ridículo.

meus gatos

eu sei. eu sei.
eles são limitados, têm diferentes
necessidades e
preocupações.

mas observo e aprendo com eles.
gosto do pouco que eles sabem,
que é
tanto.

eles reclamam mas nunca
se inquietam.
caminham com uma dignidade surpreendente.
dormem com uma simplicidade direta que
os humanos simplesmente não conseguem
entender.

seus olhos são mais
belos do que nossos olhos.
e eles conseguem doremir 20 horas
por dia
sem
hesitação ou
remorso.

quando estou me sentindo
pra baixo
tudo que preciso fazer é
observar meus gatos
e a minha
coragem retorna.

estudo essas
criaturas.

são meus
professores. show less

Charles Bukowski's final novel, Pulp, is hard to assess. On one level, it's rubbish. It makes no sense, what with its space aliens and red sparrows, and at times it seems like a rough draft that could have used a bit more polish. Bukowski's work has always had that rough-around-the-edges feel, but it didn't feel like that here. It felt incomplete, unfocused - the 'Red Sparrow as metaphor for death' angle was clearly intended, but difficult to reason out. One can see the strands - Lady Death show more is obviously the Grim Reaper (What a babe. Never let you down." (pg. 142)), and the loan that Nicky Belane, the protagonist, is "suckered into and never saw" a dime of (pg. 170) is clearly a metaphor for life itself. Bukowski is confronting life's biggest mystery - death - and so chooses a detective mystery setting; perhaps this novel is the only known instance of 'existential pulp fiction'. It's an idea which never comes fully to fruition, but is intriguing nonetheless.

Yet on another level, Pulp is immensely enjoyable, as Bukowski takes away what few shackles may have influenced his previous writing and just lets rip with gleeful abandon. Pulp shows Bukowski at his most batshit crazy; the book is absurd, and all the more entertaining for being so. Why are there space aliens? Just because. Why are there grapefruits on the floor? "Because I like them like that." (pg. 36). The Buk is clearly enjoying himself; at one point he stops half-way through a pervy description of a beautiful woman with the words: "Don't bother me now. I want to think about it." (pg. 4). There's a lot more identifiable humour than in his previous books; his character of Nicky Belane is essentially Chinaski, the protagonist of his other novels, but with a gun. This, after all, is a private detective whose idea of investigative work is just to walk into a random bar and shout at the baffled patrons: "Has anybody here seen Cindy, Celine or the Red Sparrow?" (pg. 31). He's also a large ham - note his 'choo-choo' speech to Brewster on page 47. All in all, it's just a riot to read, especially when Belane has his camcorder with him.

That said, it's not for apprentice Bukowski-ites. I think the reason I enjoyed Pulp so much is because I was familiar with the author's style, so it helps if readers have read some of his other novels first. As a pulp detective novel, it is rather less than ordinary, but as 'Bukowski-pulp' for ardent Bukowski fans, it's a real treat." show less

"We have come to terms". Sorry, just wanted to start my review with a nicely terminal quote from a relatively obscure show (the fabulous anime The Big O for those interested) before jumping in. Here we have Bukowski's final published novel and for all its various flaws (and there are quite a few don't get me wrong) the work still succeeds through a rare combination of authorial resignation, acceptance, the tragedy of the mortal human condition, and the inverted triumph that results from all show more this which can all be discerned in the books dedication "To bad writing".

I've mentioned in my past reviews of Bukowski's work that I read him in that period between community college and university, wherein I fantasized about the life he so viscerally put to the page. That life was the writing life. Not just any writing life mind you, but Bukowksi's singular interpretation of this, of the lone writer, cast off, mocked and derided by his fellow man, left sadly but ultimately beautifully to his own devices (and vices, of course) to occasionally cobble together a piece of poetry or prose that would rock the literary world..or his small corner of it at least. And all this while he wasn't slowly killing himself with drugs (mostly alcohol) women (mostly the female equivalents of himself) and just plain apathy and lack of output.

I like to think that I've hopefully matured in outlook since then but I can't help but look back on those years and my concomitant reading of Bukowksi during those years with fondness, even affection. I feel like despite his boastful and boisterous (and at times despairing, wrathful, and lachrymose) moods, nobody understood Bukowski better than Bukowski himself. And it's this level of self-cognizance that lends itself so beautifully to the flawed but ultimately fascinating (and hence worth reading) text of Pulp.

I won't spoil anything but suffice it to say the book stands decently on its own but even better if you, like me, have made acquainted yourself with Buk's oeuvre, his tropes and hangups, and yes, even his repeated weaknesses in the craft. But Bukowski, maybe more so than any other writer I've yet read, not only understood his shortcomings, he embraced them and, again unlike most writers I've seen up until now, he actually managed a level of writerly evolution and transcendence that goes beyond what the superficially minded might deride as just 'weak' writing. There's more to this book and Bukowksi as an author than that.

This idea of Bukowski's is I think best represented with an anecdote I've heard about him. It was regarding a review of one of his then recent collections of poetry that a reviewer had written, maybe facetiously, maybe earnestly, that Bukowksi (then in his 60's I think) was finally 'showing improvement'. Bukowski ackowledged this to his laughing audience and herein, I believe, lies his singular status as a writer, even a thinker.

Is it perfect? No. Is it a masterwork? Hell no. And has Bukowski written better work than this? Oh undoubtedly. But where Bukowski succeeds is exactly where few writers, save Kafka, have succeeded, that is, he succeeds in the realm of failure, a realm too few writers and artists are afraid to acknowledge let alone transcend.

On Charles Bukowski's grave it reads "Don't Try" and to that I can only say, write, "Damn, I think you were right,". show less

Read this without fully realizing that Bukowski dies back in 1994, which ironicly is the same year I first discovered him when I cam across Post Office in a used bookstore (I was working for the USPS at the time). I didn't get him then. Much more on his wavelength thirty years later.

Shakespeare Never Did This is more of a travelogue along the lines of The Curse of Lono, famous author paid to write about their trip to a foreign country, in this case a reading/signing tour of Germany and show more France.

Reading this, I can see the casual brilliance that has drawn people to Bukowski's work. He'll just prattle on in concise, matter-of-fact language, flippant and casual, and then suddenly he'll spit out a clump of pure, deep, profound prose that makes you go back and read that sentence over and over. The quote from Picasso that opens this book serves a perfect definition of what Bukowski means to his audiences; living, breathing evidence that there is the potential a poet in all of us, and with that proof a glimmer of hope for humanity, if not for us personally. show less