I’ve avoided reading Charles Bukowski for years. I’d picked up his books in the book shop, read the blurb and then carefully replaced them. The last thing I needed was to read somebody that glamorised drinking. At the best of times I’m as impressionable as wet mud and as a role model or literary hero, an alcoholic was probably a bad bet.
Leave Bukowski for those who thought they were troubled but who, in fact, just had the same troubles as the rest of us, but who took themselves and their haircuts, tats and piercings far, far too seriously.
Then I saw that this year, one of the shows at the Edinburgh festival was ‘Barflies’. This, apparently, was to be site-specific theatre. In particular, it was set in a bar. FanTAStic. Surely this was the perfect distillation of the theatre experience, somebody had realised that many theatre-goers resented having to abandon their pre-theatre drink, then rush their interval drink, then scramble for a drink after the theatre let out and before the pubs shut, all for the sake of watching a load of thesps strut and fret. But a play where you were sat in the bar? Genius!
So to prepare I bought some booze and some Bukowski. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect (from Bukowski, I was fairly confident I knew what to expect from the booze). By the time I had finished the first page of ‘Post Office’ I was wondering why the hell I had not read this guy years ago. Was there some sort of conspiracy? Why had nobody simply pulled me aside and hissed ‘read this’? By the time I had finished the book, I was profoundly glad that I had not read this years ago.
Because Christ alone knows what sort of effect this would have on a teenager reading it. You’d probably form an opinion that you too can be a babe magnet, a legendary writer with an astonishing legacy, your own man uncorrupted and uncorruptable and, let’s not forget, an outstanding alcoholic.
Charles Bukowski, poet, writer, alcoholic, writes about a character called Henry Chinaski, a poet, a writer and an alcoholic. Obviously, Hank Chinaski is the alter-ego of Charlie Bukowski and by writing about Chinaski, Bukowski is free to (very) narrowly disguise the other characters in his book. This achieves two effects, firstly, it lends an air of authenticity and intimacy to the novel, the people that Bukowski writes about Chinaski encountering are real people. It also means that, like Waugh, he’s guaranteed at least a few sales of his book, as friends and acquaintances rush to acquire his new novel to see what the bastard has written about them or, even worse, to see if the bastard has not written about them.
For a writer writing about, basically, himself, Bukowski disappoints slightly by not giving Chinaski at least one super power. I mean really, not even X ray vision? He comes close though, as Chinaski is able to drink like a fish, screw like a weasel and still find time for more drinking, writing, poetry recitals and readings and, oh yea, more drinking. Chinaski drinks so much and so often that after reading one section of the book where he does not have a drink for three pages, I got the shakes.
Henry Chinaski’s youth is anything but untroubled. Early troubles are visited upon him and, in forming his character, he eventually learns to bring trouble upon himself and upon others. ‘Ham on Rye’ is a book to hurl at any sulking teen who thinks the world is ending because they can’t have digital telly in their bedroom. It makes ‘Angela’s Ashes’ look like ‘Anne of Green Gables’’. There’s beatings, from the father, the teachers, the other kids. There’s alienation and social cruelty, there’s hopelessness and desperation and envy and grim, grim, grim poverty. There’s also unexpected tenderness and occasional flashes of humour.
The other thing Chinaski does a lot, an awful lot, in his books, is fuck. Which is surprising at first, because early on in the book you formulate the idea that he doesn’t like women very much. Read on, and you discover that his ire is not confined to misogyny, he hates men too (mistersogyny), people in general (sodthelotofyousogyny) and, most of all and most deeply and bitterly, he hates himself (Isogyny).
In ‘Women’ Hank is a successful writer, giving readings and recitals and also, as a direct consequence, fielding star-stuck young women who want to screw a celebrity. Hank obliges. Being a writer is a respectable profession for an alcoholic and Hank is obviously a good writer (he supports himself doing it) and an outstanding alcoholic (on one sequence shaming the local liquor store into making a delivery because he spends so much money there). Alternative professions for alcoholics are the priesthood, medicine or, a far far more popular option, hanging around public transport hubs begging in clothes that reek of piss.
Make no mistake, if you’re reading his books book in public, on the bus or train, then you will feel at least ten percent shame at all times, and you will have a defensive line prepared in case somebody is reading over your shoulder and realises that you’re reading filth. And this is filthy stuff. They ought to make waterproof editions so that you can read it in the shower and so not finish a passage and consider that you need a good going over with a scrubbing brush and some disinfectant. The sex is grimy and gratuitous and continues for page after page after page (a different woman each time, rather than a remarkably long description or remarkable stamina).
Half way through ‘Women’ there’s a description of anal sex and one wonders if it was put there by Bukowski so that the reader is reading the description of sex while holding the book open at the half way point, the pages spread each side like pale white buttocks…covered in print, like somebody with a very detailed tattoo, or who wipes their ass with newspaper.
The sex is not always successful, but for somebody who drinks as much as Chinaski, it’s too successful too often. Maybe that’s Chinaski’s super power? I thought that it was slightly incongruous that, given the many women he sleeps with over the course of the novel, there are few, if any, bedroom disasters. (Christ, my big book of sexual disasters would be up to chapter five before it started to get into occasions when there was another person present).
His writing roars along, captivating and repulsive and compelling. Bukowski knows his craft. A poet as well as a short story writer and novelist, he has the poets’ sensibility for knowing just how to place a word, so, in a sentence and how to structure a sentence, just so, in a paragraph that makes the story stunning. He also makes free use of capital letters, WHEN HIS CHARACTERS ARE EXCITED AND FREAKING WELL TRYING TO GET A FREAKING POINT ACROSS YOU FREAKING FREAKERS!
There’s an odd incongruity about somebody who essentially drifts from job to job in his youth. For all the boozing and the hangover hells, Chinaski is hardly lazy or feckless. Nor is he stupid, indeed a reoccurring problem is that because the sort of jobs he consistently takes are pointless and menial, his ‘superiors’ are pretty pointless and menial too, something Chinaski is not afraid to point out, although this is inevitably followed by his looking for another pointless, menial job. Chinaski drifts in his youth, drifting into and out of different jobs, or at least different variations of the same job, and drifting from city to city, or at least variations of the same city or rather the same part of the city – the poor part, with the poor people in the poor bars and their poor rooming houses where the walls are too thin, the crush of humanity is too loud and escape is not on the first train out of Dodge but rather in uncorking lunch.
Chinaski gets away with turning up to work hungover – a maschocistic measure of his contempt for himself, he makes an unpleasant job unbearable – because he’s an eternal back-room boy, not let near any customers he might scare off, concealed in the half light of the warehouse with the other trolls and misfits.
Because what Bukowski really brings home in his work is that if you’re in a job that is chipping away at you, you have to fill that growing void with something and if it’s not something that’s generally accepted as wholesome, like family, or religion, or something that’s just accepted as bachelor pursuits, like enjoying internet pornography or making model sailboats and sailing them at the weekend, or, god help you, MMRPGs, then booze will do fine. As long as you leave time for the screwing and the gambling, and realise there’s never enough booze in the world.
But there is the occasional ‘wait a second’ moment here. Chinaski (and, by extension Bukowski), writes late at night, in his digs, using a typewriter. Initially I thought this was far too far-fetched. I used to own a typewriter, not even a mechanical job like Bukowski would have had (probably constructed of cast iron and solid gravity), but an slick electronic thing, made of plastic. And when the key was struck and the hammer hit the letter in the daisy wheel, the report was like something you’d expect to hear coming from the open door of the village blacksmith as he knocked up a horseshoe for a Clydesdale. When I lived in a shared house I learned how to write longhand after dark, for fear my flatmates would use the typewriter as a Frisbee and me as a football to eliminate noise nuisance. How the hell did Chinaski write, drunk, at night? Because the boy that starts the novel under a table ends it a young man staying in a rooming house with thin walls but in a part of town where the midnight banging of a typewriter is neither the loudest, nor most disturbing sound to be heard.
If you want low life, it’s here. Bukowski’s alter-ego, Chinaski, comes loaded with a full compliment of vices, he’s like a Swiss-army knife of immorality, alcoholic, a gambler, unfaithful. On the question of identity, you do wonder why change the name, to protect the innocent? It’s obvious that Hank is Charlie and there are no innocents in his books.
The writing’s almost as powerful as the liquor that spawned it. One thing this writer does is make you think about drinking. If you drink, it’s a cautionary tale. If you don’t you’ll wonder what all the fuss is about and maybe try a glass or two yourself, probably after watching the news. Because Bukowski’s revelation is this: if you drink because the world is such a terrible place, stop feeling guilty, open another bottle, but make sure it’s GOOD red wine. Because the world is a terrible place.
Labels: Buckowski, Charles Bukowski, Writing
