Bukowski For Beginners

by Carlos Polimeni, Miguel Rep (Illustrator)

Overview

Charles Bukowski, poet, novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and cult figure of the dissident and rebellious was born in Germany in 1920 and died in the USA in 1994. During his life he was hailed as "laureate of American lowlife" by Time magazine literary critic Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote: "The secret of Bukowski's appeal...(is that) he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the largerthan-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero."

Bukowski was one of the most unconventional writers and cultural critics of the 20th century. He lived an unorthodox, idiosyncratic life and wrote in a style that was unique—one that is impossible to classify or categorize. His work was at times cynical or humorous, but was always brilliant and challenging. His life and work are distinguished not only by a remarkable talent for words, but also by his rejection of the dominant social and cultural values of American society. Bukowski began writing at the age of forty and published forty-five books, six of them novels. He is also considered one of the great literary voices of Los Angeles.

In Bukowski For Beginners, playwright Carlos Polimeni evaluates the life and literary achievements of the cult writer whose voice of dissidence and discontent is still heard and appreciated by readers worldwide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939994387
Publisher:	For Beginners
Publication date:	04/07/2015
Series:	For Beginners
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	25 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Carlos Polimeni is a journalist, writer, screenwriter, and television and radio host in Argentina. A journalist since 1978, he has worked in television, radio, magazines, news agencies, and newspapers, and has published twelve books on topics of their specialty. He also wrote plays and screenplays.
 

Miguel Repiso, better known as Miguel Rep or Rep-is a cartoonist and graphic humorist in Argentina.

Read an Excerpt

Bukowski

For Beginners

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By Carlos Polimeni, Miguel Rep

For Beginners

Copyright © 2000 Carlos Polimeni Miguel Rep
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-939994-38-7

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CHAPTER 1

Kindergarten

'I am not primarily a poet, I hate god gooey damned people poets messing the smears of their lives against the sniveling world ... what I write, is only one tenth of myself—the other 9/to hell tenths are looking over the edge of a cliff down into the sea of rock and wringing swirl and cheap damnation ...'

Though Henry Charles Bukowski has achieved 'cult' status as a writer, and acquired a world-wide following, he is rarely ranked amongst the literary greats by academics and critics. Bukowski, in their eyes, remains a controversial writer.

Perhaps the lack of establishment recognition is due partly to Bukowski's decadent, dangerous image, his refusal to conform to political correctness (I am the outsider') and partly to the fact that he was born in Germany.

And experts in German literature, consider Bukowski to be an American writer. Not surprising, since he wrote only in English and, like an Olympian god, ignored whatever was happening in the rest of the world. He was concerned primarily with his own world, his been own private hell: 'I have always one of those people who do everything wrong. This is essentially because I am not involved in the march'.

His father, Henry Bukowski, found himself in Germany as an enlisted soldier, one of many sent over by the US at the end of World War I.

Henry senior was the son of a German, Leonard Bukowski, who had emigrated to America at the end of the 19th century. There, in Cleveland, he married another German immigrant, Emilie Krause. They set up home in Pasadena and had six children. So, unlike many other American soldiers, Henry Bukowski did not consider Germany to be hell. It was his fatherland. Through one of her brothers, Henry met Katherine Fett, who worked in a bar. He was very tall, she very short. Katherine became his second wife and they lived in Germany until their only son, Charles, was two years old. They moved to the US and, in 1925, settled in Los Angeles.

Bukowski's failure to adapt socially stemmed from his own early life. When he tried to make friends with other children on the east side of Los Angeles where he lived, he found it difficult to fit in: he was shy, his upbringing was not that of the typical American middle classes and he was ridiculed because he had a slight German accent.

When she arrived in America, Bukowski's mother knew hardly any English. Hers was the traditional role in the patriarchal family; she had a master-slave relationship with her husband.

'I always got the idea that she wanted to be on my side but it was an entirely false idea gathered from sucking her nipples at one time.'

And the Bukowsk is were so old-fashioned. Perhaps lacking confidence in their own social standing, they were determined to maintain impeccably high standards, making, from the young boy's point of view, unreasonable demands.

In the Depression following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Charles found himself growing up in a family ruled by the iron hand of an intolerant father who was also not averse to inflicting corporal punishment for the slightest perceived infringement.

As a child, Bukowski was ugly, gloomy and reserved. His complex nature would often make him resort to sarcasm. He felt like a prisoner at home and an outsider at school. The rebelliousness that would inform his entire life was developing inside him.

'I had some pretty terrible parents, and your parents are pretty much your world. That's all there is.'

Henry Bukowski believed in the American dream. He was efficient at work and he had married the woman that God had sent him. He had a house with a garden that was fruitful. He rested on Sunday and abstained from alcohol. He paid his taxes. He was proud to have been a soldier. In public he played the good citizen.

Charles Bukowski (he eventually dropped his first name, Henry) spent half a century doing exactly the opposite. When he could find work, he was the worst possible kind of employee. He set up home with several women and split up with all of them. Only at the end of his life did he own a house with a garden. He drank gallons of alcohol. He avoided paying taxes. He made plain his dislike of 'good' citizens. Although, during World War II, many of his acquaintances enlisted, Bukowski never wore uniform.

As a child, Bukowski suffered from severe acne which would scar him forever; 'I felt as if no woman would ever want to be with me. I saw myself as some kind of freak ...'

But the young Bukowski found that when he started drinking alcohol, the pain that had marked his life disappeared for the first time. Also, alcohol would lead to independence. Emboldened by drink, he stood up to his father who merely banished him to sleep in the garage when he smelled alcohol on his breath. And then one day, when he was 19, Hank knocked his father out with a single punch and ran away from home. He would return a few times, but only for brief periods.

In some ways, the psychological experiences of Bukowski's youth seemed to parallel the harsh reality of the time, when the entire country agonized over its destiny, when everyone was hoping for a better tomorrow. He described the breeding ground for his personality in 'Waiting':

Hank (as he was known to his friends) felt himself in fierce conflict with the world. He believed that his parents loved the prestige of having a college student for a son, but showed no interest in his academic studies. On the street, it became clear that the only way he could command respect from his peers was by standing up for himself.

'I don't know how this works, you have to experience it to understand it, but after two people beat on each other eight or nine hours a strange kind of brotherhood emerges.'

In his seventies, Hank would write his memoirs, Son of Satan, published in 1990. There he portrayed himself at age 11, as the leader of a gang that had to turn to crime in order to survive: they smoked, got into fights, and even tried to hang a neighbour as a silly practical joke. The account ends with Hank challenging his father to a duel, in which, according to him, he received a brutal punch, straight in the face. He ended up hiding under the bed, cursing his father.

One might imagine that a terrible beating would ensue, but the writer preferred to leave the story open-ended. So, we see Hank in those days as a boy abused by an adult, resigned to the batterings of fate, but not inclined to expect any mercy. And he was prepared to fight back, if necessary.

CHAPTER 2

Poetics and the Bleeding Life

When Hank was in the fifth grade, US President Herbert Hoover was due to attend a ceremony at the Coliseum in Exposition Park, Los Angeles.

But Bukowski had not even been to the ceremony in the Park. He had simply invented the precisely-detailed story, as he later admitted to his teacher. She was even more impressed. Bukowski had found his vocation. But some time would pass before he could realise his ambition.

In 1932, at the start of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term as President, Hank was entering high school. However, his real studies would be conducted in his local public library. There, he read Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, William Saroyan, Carson McCullers and a little-known writer, John Fante. Those were the writers who most influenced Bukowski's early apprenticeship. Then, in a disordered way, he went on to dip into a host of other writers: ancient Chinese poets, Rabelais, Maupassant, Gorky, Turgenev, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dreiser, Ezra Pound, Shakespeare, Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, e. e. cummings, Conrad, Schopenhauer, Steinbeck, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche. Bukowski never felt more alone than when reading after dark in that old brownstone building, and never more comforted.

The image of a trapped creature ...

Essential to an understanding of Bukowski's literary personality is an appreciation of his anarchic training at the public library. On the one hand, nothing of the academic approach rubbed off on him Indeed, his style would seem to defy literary logic—his punctuation, for instance, ignored basic grammatical rules. On the other hand, his voracious and compulsive reading—almost a fundamental need for survival—would give him a poetic sensitivity which was direct, without affectation, and unique to him.

In the poem 'The Burning of the Dream', written after a fire had destroyed the library where he had discovered the world of literature, Hank acknowledges his debt:

It was as if Hank was living his life through those books in the library; escaping from the violence and mundanity of his daily life, making friends with the characters and writers he encountered. In an article entitled 'A Rambling Essay on Poetics and the Bleeding Life Written while Drinking a Six-Pack (Tall)', published in 1965, Hank describes his view of those days:

The next day, Charles had a pivotal conversation with his parents. His father derided his wish to become a writer and they had an argument in which both parents seemed united against him. His mother cried. From that moment, Charles decided that, as soon as possible, he had to get on with the rest of his life. His priorities were:

CHAPTER 3

Running in the Cage

In order to escape the parental home, Hank accepted the first job he found which was with the Sears Roebuck department store on Olympic Boulevard in LA.

So began Bukowski's experiences as a wage slave.

'This would be one of my first lessons. They expected people to give their entire lives, and all their loyalty, to some shit job.'

But the employers were not the only ones to blame:

'... don't kid yourself—many people want SLAVERY, a job, 2 jobs, anything to keep them running in the cage.'

The young would-be writer had little respect for his workmates, who were of his parents' generation. In 1982, he would describe them in the novel Ham on Rye:

He did not last long in his first job. However, he had, in 1940, enrolled at Los Angeles University. At City College on Western Avenue, his gaunt appearance caused a stir and his air of superiority did not go down well. But Bukowski created a distinct impression.

He signed up for several courses including journalism, dramatic art, English and history. He felt it would not be a bad idea to earn his living as a journalist. In the end, it was all writing. But it would be twenty years before he would write regularly for a daily newspaper.

At the time, the university was full of left-wing militants, but politics were not important to Hank. Naturally, he set himself against the general tide of student thinking.

'I used to lean slightly toward the liberal left but the crew that's involved, in spite of the ideas, are a thin & grafted-like type of human, blank-eyed and throwing words like vomit. essentially they are very lonely. the secret is really that they have not put society down but that society has put them down and so now they gather and hand-hold through 1/4 souls and play at tinkertoy games with 1/8 minds. there's nothing left to do except admit that they are slugs, worms, and they are not going to do that.'

Despite continuing battles with his father, and an inhospitable home life, Bukowski had found some solace: he was writing short stories. Although he felt that he needed to embark on the course the rest of his life would take, he was anaesthetised by the relative physical comfort of his home life. He was not happy, but he had grown accustomed to it.

Ironically, it was Hank's early attempts at writing that would forcibly launch him into his new life. His father had found some of Hank's manuscripts in a desk drawer and was so disgusted by what he read that he threw the papers and the typewriter out of the window.

His mother told Hank what had happened. He went back to the house and, shouting from the street, challenged his father to a fight. Henry senior stayed indoors. Hank knew that the time had come to leave.

Now that he was free at last from any parental control, and with all the writing in the world ahead of him, the country itself suddenly stood on a precipice. The threat of another war was all over the newspapers, but Hank was not willing to subscribe blindly to the tide of patriotism:

'It wasn't long before all the tall blond boys had formed The Abraham Lincoln Brigade—to hold off the hordes of fascism in Spain. And then had their asses shot off by trained troops. Some of them did it for adventure and a trip to Spain but they still got their asses shot off. I liked my ass.'

From now on, for the next thirty years, until the publication of Post Office, Bukowski would choose to escape from the mainstream, hiding on the dark side of the American dream.

In fact, most of his literary output hinges on the adventures and misadventures of his descent into hell—the hell of being poor in a society that only values the ability to make money.

In 1942 there began a period of travelling, through New Orleans, Atlanta, Fort Worth, Sacramento, Philadelphia, St Louis, San Francisco and New York, moving from job to job, fight to fight, woman to woman and one drunken binge to another

During those first years of his adult life, Bukowski cultivated a rather romantic image of himself. He felt that one day the world would come to know of his suffering. So he would accept the sacrifice; a life of deprivation was a necessary part of the story of his life. He was like a boxer in training for the toughest of fights.

Through those hard times, Hank kept on writing, in miserable guest houses and hotels. He sent his writings to magazines and reviews throughout the country. He gambled what little money he won at the races. He liked the minimalist lifestyle, having no greater dream than literary glory.

He felt like a member of the underground before the underground movement even existed. He was one of life's deviants, eccentrics, dissidents—a refugee and fugitive from Parnassus, at a time when nobody knew that any 'counterculture' was possible.

He was a tough character who lived from day to day, thinking only of getting enough money for his next drink and cheap meal. When he pawned his typewriter, he wrote in notebooks and jotters. But he did not get depressed; his cure was to go to the races, and he got over it.

If, when he left home, he saw himself as the hero of an action adventure, the young writer gradually realised that, in order to earn a little money, the only possible adventure was survival:

'... fun and danger hardly put margarine on toast or fed the cat. You give up toast and end up eating the cat.'

Meanwhile, thousands of young men, filled with patriotism, were being drafted into the army. But Bukowski had, unintentionally, managed to elude the government while roaming from city to city. He was arrested in Philadelphia and spent a night in jail. However, he was declared insane by a military psychiatrist. The doctor had in his files some papers that the FBI had seized from the hotel room where Bukowski was arrested. A line from one of them read:

CHAPTER 4

I Don't Know Who I Am

Hank had been writing copiously, and collecting numerous rejections. His first published essay, in Story magazine, had reflected the situation. It was called

The young writer became deeply depressed. He had persuaded himself that either the publishers were doing him a favour, or it was perseverance that had finally won them over. Bukowski had ceased to be the impulsive, optimistic young man. He often thought of suicide. As a result, Bukowski says, he gave up writing—the thing that mattered most to him—for the next ten years:

'I packed it in. I threw away all the stories and concentrated upon drinking. I didn't feel that the publishers were ready and that although I was ready, I could be readier ...'

He may well have given up writing consistently, but during that period, a number of short stories were published.

Working on the theory that people wanted 'beautiful lies', he had not yet discovered that his own life was of literary interest. Caresse Crosby, the publisher of the review Portfolio, was amazed at the quality and style of a Bukowski piece called 'Twenty Tanks from Kasseldown', which she wanted to publish. She wrote to him, asking 'Who are you?' Bukowski, reflecting his self-doubt, replied:

A major contributory factor in Bukowski's reluctance to write was his relationship with Jane Cooney Baker.

Jane Cooney Baker was ten years older than Bukowski. She had diligently devoted herself to becoming an alcoholic in an attempt to overcome a personal tragedy: her husband, from whom she was separated, but whom she still loved, had died in a car crash.

The story of Jane and Bukowski played an important part in his later work. It inspired much of the script for the film Barfly, which Barbet Schroeder was to direct in 1987. Jane appeared under different names and guises in many of Bukowski's writings. Apart from his last wife, she was the woman who had the greatest immediate influence on him.

If in previous years the writer had condemned himself to economic and social hardship, in this long, ill-fated period he descended into his own personal hell: that of alcoholism with its consequent health problems.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Bukowski by Carlos Polimeni, Miguel Rep. Copyright © 2000 Carlos Polimeni Miguel Rep. Excerpted by permission of For Beginners.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

1 Kindergarten,
2 Poetics and the Bleeding Life,
3 Running in the Cage,
4 I Don't Know Who I Am,
5 Blood on the Line,
6 Post Office,
7 A Duel to the Death,
8 Europe,
9 A Taste of Honey, Then the Knife,
10 Hollywood,
11 An Old Writer with a Yellow Notebook,
Index,
Bibliography,