One of the most prolific, incendiary and thought-provoking poets and authors of the latter part of the 20th century, Charles Bukowski firmly established himself as a unique voice in American popular culture. Focusing on the filth and grime of American masculinity and machismo, Bukowski’s works touched on the ‘real’ America, a place filled with alcohol, sex and depravity, taking place primarily in the city of Los Angeles. This highly influential writer has also been the subject of numerous critical discourse, attempting to break down his works into their subtextual and compositional elements to glean greater meaning from them. Starting from humble beginnings and surviving a difficult childhood, Bukowski quickly grew into one of the great culture makers of the 20th century.
Charles Bukowski, born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, grew up in South Central Los Angeles, the son of Heinrich Bukowski, a World War I veteran, and his German wife Katharina. From an early age, Bukowski experienced his fair share of hardships – his father’s unemployment left the man despondent, resorting to beating his son frequently to take out his frustration (Kirsch, 2005). Bukowski’s childhood abuses were many, with his father beating him when he missed a blade of grass after mowing the lawn; his problems were exacerbated further when his teenage years saw him suffer disfiguring acne which ostracized him further from his peers (Kirsch, 2005). However, it was through this isolation and pain that his creativity sprang forth – he grew a surprising intelligence which fed his ambition for literature. He learned about Eliot, Mann, Tolstoy et al. in his studies, fuelling his literary influences and finding inspiration from the New Critics (Kirsch, 2005). Moving on to Los Angeles City College, he continued his education with creative writing courses. When World War II came along, he was disqualified from the war for psychological reasons; this led him on a path to taking a road trip around the country on nearly nothing, learning about himself and America in the process.
The works of Bukowski himself are, on the surface, incredibly vulgar and seedy depictions of life on Skid Row: his poems were always rough-and-tumble, providing an intriguing mix of violence and sex that enticed and titillated readers who wanted to capture that young, foolish, rebellious spirit of the Beat Generation that Bukowski so disliked being associated with (Rothstein, 2008). This echoed Bukowski’s reputation as a drinker and womanizer; he has been described as “a dirty old man with a puritanical streak,” and he engaged in a variety of affairs throughout his life without ever really settling down (Malone 85). These hard-living, hedonistic experiences are the backbone of much of Bukowski’s writing, though the subtextual anxieties that lie underneath indicate a much greater sensibility.
Looking through Bukowski’s poetry, it is easy to identify his style and preferred content: in “Hell is a Lonely Place,” the poet writes the lamentable story of an elderly couple who fall victim to both their rapidly aging bodies and the system that drains them dry a bit more each day. The prose is blunt and simplistic; there are no metaphors or symbolism to be found here, no subtle turns of phrase to elevate the horrors of what is happening. Bukowski simply describes exactly their condition, right from the start:
“he was 65, his wife was 66, had
Alzheimer's disease
he had cancer of the
mouth” (Bukowski 126).
Bukowski’s matter-of-fact prose downplays the terrible and disturbing realities of aging and dying, especially the desperation that comes from being medicated out of house and home. Even the most terrible events are written simply, defining these tragedies as simply part of everyday life. No flowery details are used to enhance the scene of the murder-suicide that ends the couple’s life:
“she fell to the
left, he sat upon the
couch
put the gun into his
mouth, pulled the
trigger” (Bukowski 127).
Bukowski employs short, punctuated phrases and sentences, broken up to give the impression of stark reality – one that is not sugarcoated or played up for dramatic effect, but told honestly and truthfully. Critics have described this unique, truncated kind of prose as “at once misanthropic and comradely, aggressively vulgar and clandestinely sensitive” (Kirsch, 2005). In the case of “Hell is a Lonely Place,” he highlights the pathetic nature of this old couple and their world while also demonstrating great care for them. By ending the poem with the snidely optimistic assessment of the nice young couple moving in, Bukowski laments the strong implication that their fate will be the same as those they replace.
Bukowski showed great sympathy for the common man, whose ignorance often left them quietly unaware of the torture they go through in their monotonous, day-to-day lives. In “Safe,” Bukowski laments the misery-inducing routine of the couple next door:
“the people are nice people, I like them. but I feel them drowning.and I can't save them” (Bukowski 306).
Here, Bukowski lifts his veil of cynicism for a moment and considers the monotony of the capitalist society that simply demands people consume, breed, and consume again; being someone of little means, he never saw the point in these materialistic tendencies, which is why he felt bad for those who fell into those patterns. Poetry like that was Bukowski’s way of showing his aggravation with the Democratic system, which he tackles more directly in his poem “Democracy”. Here, he pinpoints the problem being the inherent greediness and evil of men, the “living parts which make up the Democratic System” (216):
“fellow citizens,
the problem never was the Democratic
System, the problem is
You” (Bukowski 216).
Bukowski’s work has always been slightly misanthropic; due to his traumatic childhood and tendency toward isolation, he has never held a high opinion of people or their institutions. This is cemented here by his premise that people are made up of “40 million” of “the next person you pass on the street,” which implies the reader shares Bukowski’s instant judgment of passersby as inferior to him (216). He refers to humanity as “chess pieces” who are naïve enough to believe they can make a change in the political system (216). In his poem “The Shoelace,” he moans that the worst part of life are all the small things that build up to misery:
“The dread of lifeis that swarm of trivialitiesthat can kill quicker than cancerand which are always there” (Bukowski 232).
Bukowski, in his poetry, manages to capture this fascinating perspective on nihilism and misanthropy, while also offering an almost caveman-like clarity in the simplicity of his prose: “Bukowski’s free verse is really a series of declarative sentences broken up into a long, narrow column, the short lines giving an impression of speed and terseness even when the language is sentimental or clichéd” (Kirsch, 2005). His free-verse poetry readers like very poorly-written short stories, and yet there is a majesty and great character to his bluntness. While “he rejected on principle the notion of poetry as a craft, a matter of labor and revision”, this unpolished nature to his writing is part of what makes it so refreshing (Kirsch, 2005).
Bukowski’s work most certainly shares parallels with many other poets – there is a great deal of Ernest Hemingway in Bukowski, for instance, given both of their predilections for discussing man’s relationship to its civilization, taking a decidedly bushido perspective that favors isolation and viewing from a distance as opposed to being an active participant in civilization. Bukowski was definitely impressed by Hemingway’s work early in his young life, having discovered the author in the late 1940s at school: “along came Hemingway. What a thrill! He knew how to lay down a line” (Charlson 31). Hemingway’s use of ‘line,’ in this context meaning his directness in conveying messages through efficient language, is something that Bukowski incorporates into his own writing.
Hemingway’s influence on Bukowski remained a shadow that loomed over the latter’s career: stories like “Stop Staring at My Tits, Mother,” echo Hemingway stories while emphasizing the lewdness of sexual liaisons (as compared to Hemingway’s somber examination of human relationships (Charlson 95). At one point, the similarities were pointed out with sufficient frequency that Bukowski’s short story, “Class,” features author-avatar Henry Chinaski punching out a fictionalized Hemingway, ideally putting the matter to rest (Charlson 95).
This kind of violence and crudeness was part and parcel of Bukowski’s character; he was a loud, boisterous and raucous man, which carried over into his poetry readings. These affairs would often become drunken fistfights, as he threatened to punch out hecklers in between drink after drink (Rothstein, 2008). However, beneath all of this was a highly intelligent and creative man whose works seemed to transcend their vulgarity and touch on the need for rebellion in an increasingly ordered society, as well as the pitfalls of capitalism and bureaucracy. Being beaten down, both literally and figuratively, by authority figures ranging from his father to the police, Bukowski fostered a healthy distrust for people telling other people what to do, which translated into his larger-than-life persona (Charlson 95).
This vagabond-like attitude has not gone unnoticed by critics, either; much of the appeal of Bukowski comes in the rebellious and alluring appeal of his writing, for better or worse. He has been described as “a mythic roughneck, a figure out of a tall tale—brawler, gambler, companion of bums and whores, boozehound with an oceanic thirst” (Kirsch, 2005). At the same time, there are critics who lambast Bukowski for his overly-blunt prose, as well as the lack of care taken in actually selling the reader on his ideas: “Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval” (Kirsch, 2005). Despite criticisms that “Bukowski’s work is strictly for intellectual adolescents and literary amateurs,” many believe that his work is worth literary merit (Walsh 2). In particular, Walsh believes that Bukowski’s frank depiction of sexuality has helped open up discussions of sexuality in the world of poetry (43).
Charles Bukowski has been, and likely always will be, a cult author - John Martin, Bukowski’s chief publisher, has maintained that “he is not a mainstream author and he will never have a mainstream public” (Kirsch, 2005). However, there is an elegance to his simplicity that keeps young, rebellious readers coming back for more. Bukowski’s chief appeal is that “he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero” (Kirsch, 2005). By opening up to his audiences about the horrors of the American experience (fuelled by his terrible childhood, his decades of shiftless drinking, and his confusion and despair over the future of society), Bukowski speaks the anxieties of generations who cannot articulate how they feel during times of difficulty, or are afraid to discuss the taboo things they do or think about doing. All of this is couched in rough language that is vulgar, yet impossibly readable, and also speaks to the loneliness of a modern world in which no one can be bothered to care for their neighbor. It is through Bukowski’s hardcore persona that this inkling of sensitivity shines through, making his work even more relevant to continuing generations.
Works Cited
Bukowski, Charles. The Pleasures of the Damned. Ed. John Martin. Ecco/HarperCollins
Publishers, 2007. Print.
Charlson, David. Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast. Trafford
Publishing, 2005. Print.
Malone, Aubrey. The Hunchback of East Hollywood: Biography of Charles Bukowski.
Headpress/Critical Vision, 2003. Print.
Rothstein, Craig. “Tender Love and Whores: Why Alcoholic Womanizer Poet Charles Bukowski
Endures 14 Years After his Death.” Columbia News Service. March 18, 2008. Print.
Walsh, Vincent. Charles Bukowski: Maverick, Misfit and Anomaly. Academic Thesis.
Academia. Edu. 2008. Web. <http://www.academia.edu/1164634/Charles_Bukowski_--_Outsider_Maverick_and_Misfit>.
Kirsch, Adam. “Smashed: The Pulp Poetry of Charles Bukowski.” The New Yorker. March 14,
2005. Web. <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/03/14/050314crbo_books?currentPage=all>.
