Psychedelics_r_best said:
Mr. Charles Bukowski doesnt sound like a very happy person. Have any one you ever read The Raven by E.A.P
Well think about it...who is ALWAYS ever happy anyway? And im NOT even going to go there...thats such a preposterous question lol. This is an excellent article on him : I
u HANK!!!
From the Orange County Register
on a san pedro, calif. hillside opposite the pacific, dirt covers the man whose once-expressive appetite for life continues to sustain his cult hero status beyond this grave where movie stars and drinkers laid him three years
ago this month.
the simple headstone of henry charles bukowski, 1920-1994, tells those who visit him: "don't try."
good advice rarely followed, that ambiguous message from his grave is a
challenge outlasting the man whose life and art compels thousands to try, try, try to understand, analyze and even emulate the illegitimate father of poetic intemperance.
in more than 60 books of poetry, short stories, novels and a screenplay ("barfly") about a brief but remarkable period of his life, charles, "hank", bukowski wrote from the twisted guts of his own incredible life, fashioning those experiences into provocative shapes for our amusement.
Since his death, bukowski has become something of a worldwide industry, with copies of his work multiplying in value, new fans finding him on dozens of bukowski-related internet sites and old ones sporting team bukowski sweatshirts. his publishers plan at least one book of unpublished work a year for the next five years.
bukowski gave the finger to poetry as effete intellectualism and replaced adorned sentiment with naked, disturbing,
compelling, repulsive,
vicious truth.
he was a drunk and a genius, and he beat life to hell and lived longer than most expected and better than most knew. These years after his death, the legend grows, sustained by a body of work so deep that books of poetry are planned through 2001.
he was a southern california god, but even before this country acknowledged him, europeans were already treating bukowski with the pop iconoclasm of movie stars. now, his work is translated into at least 21 languages, with his newest fans building a bukowski movement in japan.
an orange county, calif., college professor claims bukowski as an
influence. so does an irish rock star.
to his fans, the mythic man who settled with a view of the grimy harbor of san pedro is an adorable bastard, a voice that rumbled from a blue collar to offend, challenge, stimulate the complacent, and to console the disenfranchised for whom labor was survival.
to linda lee bukowski, he is the man whose passing left a bottomless
hole in her heart.
there are women who dismiss Bukowski as chauvinistic, as misogynistic.
the woman who loved him for many years and was married to him for the
last nine says this:
"To you," linda lee bukowski says, "he is the great writer.
but to me, first, he is the great man.
"i cry every day and night. it's horrible, horrible, horrible. right down in the human gut level, it's terrible. i miss him like, boy, half of me
is gone."
there is little middle ground with charles bukowski.
critics dismissed his writing as abusive and indulgent, about which he wrote to a friend:
"we don't write to be judged, we write to get it out of us so we don't
do something worse."
and those who loved him became disciples.
bono of u2 dedicated a los angeles show to hank and linda and sent a
limo to bring them to the concert, along with other devotees, actors harry
dean stanton and sean penn, whom the bukowskis' referred to as their
"surrogate son."
he was gentle to animals, mean to those who crossed him, encouraging to
younger talents and never too far from an immigrant child whose father beat
him with a razor strap.
at 13 bukowski discovered alcohol; he said it saved his life.
to his friend gerald locklin, a writer and professor at california state university, long beach, bukowski (in one of a volume of letters over
two decades) wrote:
"i don't trust men who don't drink. There is something about drinking
which opens a man to extraordinary disaster: you meet all the wrong women and you step out into alleys to duke it with all the wrong men. It's kind of a lesson in stupidity but you learn more in that kind of life than most men
who live 10 lives."
that life, glorified by the mickey rourke-faye dunaway characters of"barfly," is as much a part of the bukowski legacy as are his poems, novels, recordings and even paintings.
but those who focus on his love of drink, his tolerance for abuse, and
his impulse toward denigration of the cognoscenti _ without considering the
effect of these things on his sizable contribution to literature _ miss, sadly, a greater part of charles bukowski.
in one of his several books of poetry, locklin writes a poem to address
the single-minded bukowski reader:
those who would write like bukowski
know that he, as a young man, loved
classical music, wrote every day,
read world literature, supported himself
without parental or government assistance, and drank a lot. but when it comes to modeling themselves on him as writers they tend to forget everything except the drinking.
in his novel "ham on rye" bukowski chronicles a childhood full of severe and capricious punishment by his father.
a central element of the bukowski house in an l.a. neighborhood was his
father's razor strap, which hung above the bathroom sink area where young
charles bukowski would be forced to disrobe and be lashed, often for minor
childish indiscretions.
the stress of his life caused a nervous reaction that resulted in boils
over his body, leaving his skin pockmarked for life. his rough appearance contributed to his aloofness from other kids, which in later years would become a general distaste for people whose allegiance to mainstream existence bukowski saw as a betrayal of the soul.
his legend as a barroom fighter, as a drinker, a womanizer and a proud
maverick who rejected self-restraint was well earned.
but even when he was flopping in dirtbag hotels and working day labor
for liquor, bukowski was no bum.
his life was a notebook in which he documented experiences few could
survive but millions found meaningful.
"people like to ask me, `did that really happen to you?'" he wrote to locklin. "and i used to tell them. now, i don't. i think it's good for them to wonder. ok. then most did and what didn't should have."
although he drew on experiences beginning with the earliest moments of
his life, bukowski, who at times had been a shipping clerk and a postal
employee, was middle-aged before he was ``discovered.''
some of bukowski's earliest published work was for open city and la
weekly in the late '60s, which later became his book, "notes of a dirty
old man."
in the comfortable home where linda lee bukowski's life is a vigil to
her artist husband, the walls, the bookshelves, the picture frames, the
swimming pool, the spa, the photo albums and the numerous sketches from the great man's hand, tell a fuller story than most are privileged to know. he loved cats and would sit for hours enticing a stray.
we know from his work, of course, that horseracing was part of his daily
routine. but who would have known that he enjoyed relaxing, alcohol-free, in the whirlpool upon returning from hollywood park or santa anita?
he is easily pictured, almost boxer-like, pounding the keys of an
underwood manual "typer." but his work tripled, say both linda and his
black sparrow editor, john martin, when he got a computer.
near the end of his life, he meditated: twice a day, 20 minutes at a time.
and for all his reputation as a devotee of cheap liquor and easy women, the older bukowski enjoyed good wine and imported beer, and was loyal to the woman he loved. There are, in the bukowski household, relics to mark his presence everywhere:
"linda will ya be my valentine," says one of many child-like paintings that reveal a side of the man more capable of common feeling than his sandpaper exterior would suggest.
one bukowski painting _ a poem really _ reveals a man we might have
suspected but rarely find exposed this way through his writing:
"arrange for me this splendid insecurity."
"i don't even want to go into that," linda bukowski says. "it means
what it means." bukowski once wrote to his friend locklin that he liked
eating at the glide'er inn in seal beach, where he was a frequent sunday guest
for crab legs.
"those booths," he wrote, "with high walls hide me away from the
humans."
he was the most human, hank bukowksi was.
whatever misrepresentation "barfly" might have left on the legacy
of the "poet laureate of los angeles," one scene perhaps speaks for all
those whose devotion made bukowski a wealthy man, after long years of writing in obscure poverty.
during a scene in the golden horn bar, a crusty patron says to jim the
bartender, regarding the bukowski character:
"i don't see what you see in the guy."
says the bartender: "he's as right as any of us."
and so he was. and so, too, are those who find comfort, acceptance and
escape from lives of incredible normalcy in the writing of bukowski.
"what he taught me is that you can make poetry out of your daily life,"
locklin says. "You don't have to wait for the great moments; it doesn't
have to be love, death, war."
it is a lesson learned by the professor, yes, but also by a contract
painter-turned-poet whose life change was sparked partly by bukowski's
influence. Or by a merchant who recognizes her own life in the drastically different reference of an artist whose work transcended common experience.
raindog, a san pedro housepainter, poet and literary magazine publisher
who used to follow bukowski around but was too reverential ever to introduce himself to the man, says now: "i felt like bukowski was pinning a narrative in the back of my head, like, `ok, i'm not alone. there's someone out there like me."
andrea kuwalski, proprietor of vinegar hill books, where the poet used to visit to hang out with chet, the store cat, now devotes a whole shelf to
bukowski.
"i can't take offense as a woman at any of what he said, because he's
right; things do get goofy," she says. "and i don't think he painted such
a rosy picture of his own gender."
rancho santiago college professor and poet lee mallory, who used to show up at bukowski's door with a 12-pack of beer and an appetite to learn, says bukowski "lived his work, and in the sense that he did, the body of work is totally authentic. you knew he was writing from a base of experience, which is where the best poetry comes from."
to mallory, bukowksi wrote: "on mornings of doom, have a drink or two
and wait. wait on the word. she's more faithful than any woman. it's our final
love ..."
he was, probably, an alcoholic. he was, decidedly, a workaholic.
"he was a brilliant machine," his widow says. no one knows that
better than his editor, john martin at black sparrow press in santa rosa.
"a couple or three times a week," martin says, "(bukowski) would
send me a batch of poems. and he did that for 30 years. he's one of the few
writers who has made substantial money just off royalties."
martin says he has enough bukowski material for four or five more books and next month will publish "bone palace ballet" a 370-page collection of previously unpublished work.
"his work will always be there and always have an avid readership,"
locklin says, "in the same way of henry miller and e.e. cummings and poets
who are read out of a sense of pleasure rather than a sense of duty."
"don't try."
linda lee bukowski laughs at her husband's epitaph, on the grave that she refers to as another room of the house.
"i think it means, if you spend all your time trying, then all you're
doing is trying. so, the thing is to do. don't try. just do."
he tried. he did.
and henry charles bukowski left us richer for the effort.
we read him like watching a daredevil, from the safety of complacent comfort. we revel in his lifestyle. but we dishonor his powerful voice if we leave him and his work at the bottom of a bottle.
"people are always pointing out things about me," bukowski wrote to
gerald locklin. "i'm a drunk or i'm rich or i'm something else. how about the
writing? Does it work or doesn't it?"
(c) March, 1997, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).
Amen.
