“The author of this essay is the proud owner of 25 books, poetry collections, and short story anthologies written by the man widely recognized as the godfather of the literary movement known as ‘dirty realism.'”
When it comes to famous writers born in the 20th century, the class of 1920 boasts some illustrious names: Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, and Howard Nemerov. The American poet Charles Bukowski is one name that often stands out as being conspicuously absent, despite the fact that he occupies the hearts, minds, and bookshelves of hundreds of thousands of lost and tortured souls.
I may easily be referred to in that last sentence. The author of this essay is the proud owner of 25 books, poetry collections, and short story anthologies written by the man widely recognized as the godfather of the literary movement known as “dirty realism.”
Although Bukowski has sold millions of books and had his work translated into over a dozen languages, he is often regarded as a literary outcast. “He is not a mainstream author and he will never have a mainstream public,” said Black Sparrow Press founder John Martin, who gave Bukowski his start. This paradox is a major factor in Bukowski’s attraction and the continued interest in his writing. Although he was shunned by mainstream literary critics, he went on to have a hugely successful career spanning five decades.
For Bukowski, writing came easily: “The wine does most of my writing…I just open a bottle and turn on the radio, and it just comes pouring out.” Shut away in his cheap, dilapidated Los Angeles apartment, he would type nonstop into the early hours of the morning, cigarette ash constantly falling onto the keys of his Underwood typewriter. He would only stop for his favorite beverage, the Boilermaker, which was a tall glass of beer with a shot of bourbon poured in. He was rarely troubled by hangovers. Despite his heavy drinking, Bukowski was a prolific poet; dozens of volumes of his poetry and prose have been published. There are also six novels and more than a dozen collections of short stories.
To be an effective writer, one must have experiences. Over his lifetime, Bukowski held a number of low-paying, menial jobs. The list, by no means exhaustive, includes working in a slaughterhouse and a dog biscuit factory; as a truck driver, gas station attendant, shipping clerk, and a stock boy at Sears-Roebuck; and, finally, as a mailman for the United States Postal Service. He worked this last job for 11 years. It turned out to be a great source of inspiration.
In his first novel Post Office, which was published in 1971, we are taken on an adventure via the book’s chief protagonist, Henry, a.k.a “Hank” Chinaski—Bukowski’s alter-ego. Working as a mailman, Chinaski lives a meaningless hand-to-mouth existence. Through a first-person narrative, the book depicts the repetition of the daily grind in a world where hope and grand ideas seem to pass one by.
We get to see the world once more through Chinaski’s eyes in the 1982 book Ham on Rye. In this semi-autobiographical novel, his often violent and traumatic relationship with his father is explored as Chinaski gradually turns to alcohol, masturbation, and girls for comfort. In the end, these themes would take center stage in most of Bukowski’s work.
In addition to alcohol, Bukowski also loved women, and he loved women a lot. The 1978 book Women describes a disturbing variety of abusive, dysfunctional, and violent relationships. The novel highlights the author’s fear of commitment, rejection, and mistrust, which is interpreted with his characteristically dark sense of humor. With his signature wit, Bukowski writes, “There is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes you ready to destroy.”
Bukowski was an atheist. But he was uninterested in humanity. He detested most people. “I dislike real people…I hate them,” he writes in his 1975 novel Factotum. The type of people that interested him were the downtrodden and the poor or, in his words, “…the desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways…They are full of surprises and explosions.”
For some authors, writing is a form of salvation. The Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård once observed that writing is a way to let go of shame. Not so for Bukowski. He wrote about the low-lifes, the junkies, the prostitutes, and the colorful cast of crazy characters that frequented early morning Los Angeles. His work is explicit and written with a candor that distinguishes him from many other writers of his generation.
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, some people are born posthumously. One can see where the German philosopher might have had a point, given the times Bukowski was raised in and the prevalent Victorian-era view of propriety. Yet he preferred the sexually provocative work of William Burroughs, Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, and Henry Miller. Regarding literary influences, Bukowski’s published works frequently incorporate the transgressive themes of these authors. One wonders if his work would have resonated as much had it been published today, when the real—tending toward the vulgar—is so commonplace.
His prose is devoid of ornamentation. In his books, the lilies are not gilded. The lack of descriptive adjectives in his writing lends it a deceptively simple clarity that only serves to heighten the impact of his words, which is part of the sheer joy of reading him. Bukowski’s straightforward, matter-of-fact style is credited with inspiring Hubert Selby Jr.
For Bukowski, words must have power. To use his phrase, each line needs to contain “juice.” One should be compelled to turn the page. In a poem titled “So you wanna be a writer?,” he writes, “if it doesn’t come bursting out of you/in spite of everything,/don’t do it.” Bukowski claims that many contemporary writers spend far too much time describing things, often taking numerous pages to set the scene. As a result, when the big emotional moment does come, it usually does so halfheartedly or not at all. Writing should not be boring, above all. He was highly disdainful of Malcolm Lowry for this reason. When asked if he had read Under the Volcano by a Dutch interviewer, Bukowski replied that Lowery’s book made him “yawn himself to shit.”
Heinrich Karl Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in 1920 to Katharina and Heinrich. Post-war Germany was a challenging place to be alive. Bukowski’s family had a difficult time making ends meet. In 1923, the family decided to relocate to the United States in pursuit of a better life overseas, and they settled in Los Angeles.
He was quiet and reclusive as a child, in part due to his severe acne. His appearance would haunt him all of his life. Writer Paul Ciotti described him as having a “sandblasted face, warts on his eyelids and a dominating nose that looks as if it was assembled in a junkyard.”
Despite his appearance he was a cause celebre in the literary underground. Everywhere he went, he was followed by admirers and treated like a rock star. Shakespeare Never Did This, a photo essay of his 1978 European tour, provides evidence of this. Fans, including female groupies, would frequently attend his appearances at literary events, giving him bottles of wine to add some “spirit” to his spoken word readings.
Bukowski, however, had a contradictory nature. Although he appeared to enjoy the attention, he frequently struggled with a manufactured persona that was based only on a partial truth. As evidenced in the poem, “Bluebird”:
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
Howard Sounes’ Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life is considered the definitive biography of the man. In documenting Bukowski’s refusal to follow a conventional working life, Sounes views him as a radical writer. Describing a scene from his second novel Factotum, Sounes describes in detail Bukowski’s attitude toward employment. While working in an auto-parts warehouse, Bukowski’s boss berates him for his laziness and sacks him. He fires back telling his employer: “I’ve given you my time. It’s all I’ve got to give. It’s all any man has.”
With respect to Dr. Johnson, who famously mused, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” Bukowski had little interest in writing for financial gain.
Although he was irreligious, the closest Bukowski came to worship was the awe he felt for John Fante, a writer he discovered while hanging out in the Los Angeles Public Library. He read Fante’s 1939 novel Ask the Dust and was greatly influenced by it. According to Bukowski, Fante’s words were “written from the gut and the heart,” encapsulating both humor and suffering.
Throughout his career, Bukowski captured the world from the perspective of the darker side of the road. He was a writer who documented the bars, brothels, and insane asylums of America. But what is frequently overlooked about the man is that, despite the turmoil and alcohol-fueled chaos of his own life, he was prone to fleeting moments of beauty. Would you recognize the man I just described if he said this?
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Bukowski was a contentious and divisive figure in the literary community, during his life and still. Laconic, raw, and highly expressive, he is among a select group of writers who can say a lot with few words. He is famously known for saying, “don’t try,” when someone once asked him how to write. This is frequently taken to mean don’t bother. In fact, he was making a reference to how people have a tendency to overthink things. When it comes to the creative process, Bukowski believes if nothing happens, one should keep waiting: “It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out, and kill it.”
On March 9, 1994, Charles Bukowski passed away at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital. He was 73. Contrary to some authors, the laureate of American lowlife had no fear of dying. When asked about mortality during that same interview referenced earlier, the interviewer mentioned William Faulkner, who is said to have died from complications related to alcoholism. Here, more than anywhere else, is where we discover the most about the author and his entire writing process.“ If you write dull shit it doesn’t matter what you die from,” came the reply in his signature gruff tone.
Many things have changed in the 30 years since his passing. Recently, the rise of sensitivity readers has meant writers face a new threat to artistic creativity. Sensitivity readers are hired by publishers to go through new manuscripts and weed out any instances of politically incorrect language, which these days seems to include just about anything. But the writer’s vision can only flourish when it is not constrained by threat of censorship. Writers must be free to be provocative, daring, and challenging. Sensitivity readers would never have let Bukowski’s work get to print.
Whether one loves or loathes him, there is no denying his profound influence on literature in the 21st century. Read Ham on Rye if you do not believe me.
Noel Yaxley is an independent journalist in the United Kingdom. He writes regularly for The Spectator Australia and City Journal and has also contributed to numerous other publications, including Quillette and Compact.