Essay on Charles Bukowski
I am a word addict, so for me, finding Bukowski on the shelf was better luck than tripping over solid bricks of crack. After reading him, I am hooked on his love for women, booze, and the racetracks (translucent as it is). And if you were to ask me, 'why should I read Bukowski?' I would wrinkle my brow. Because to me, that is like asking 'why should I even bother to breathe?'.
I am not here to glorify Bukowski, or say that he is the greatest, or even the 'best of our time'. I will say, however, that this writer can pry my cold and callused heart wide open, and make it do a little dance.
Bukowski grabs hold of any thoughts you don’t have bolted down and he throws them out the window, no, he brings in a wrecking ball to the side of your head, and all that you once knew you just don't anymore. Then there you are, broken on the sidewalk and empty as hell, waiting to be filled.
And here comes, Bukowski, and he walks right along. But if you are very lucky he might turn his head to say, "Hey buddy buy my book, daddy needs a new pair of boots." and trust me, you'll worship him for it.
Charles Bukowski, or Buk as he calls himself, has the gift to inspire people that no one else can. His poem “So you want to be a writer?” inspired me to the realization that I can write. It fell firmly into my mind like dozens of bowling balls falling into newly laid concrete, it stuck, and its hard to ignore. So I started college (and stopped using drugs).
He writes with a confidence and conviction that tells you a story about where he has been. He paints a world of flop houses and spidery veined whores that “suck the life right out of you”. And as your eyes are dancing nervously over the words, your mouth is dry, then you look up feeling guilty, and that is the moment when the impossible happens, it happens right before you slam the book closed swearing to never read Bukowski again, it happens just as you let your down your guard.
BOOM! And there it is. A glimmer of truth shouting from the text, it’s hard and it’s thoughtful. It seizes you. It draws you in. It binds your attention. And you are his. You belong to Bukowski. And he will never let you go again.
Evan Sheline, my childhood friend, swears that he was reborn the day he found Bukowski in the bookstore. He became a missionary for the man. Evan bought books just to give to family and friends.
He would preach at shopping malls and coffee shops, “Charles Bukowski,” he would say, “is the only one in this world, and maybe the next, with any real clue as to what the hell is going on.” And as he put the book into your hands he would say, “This man’s words make me feel better about being alive.”
Evan became extremely successful. And he attributes that success to Charles Bukowski. Evan says that Bukowski’s words kept him “two doors down from the nutty house”, and got him back on track when he was lost in the streets.
Bukowski’s friends could tell you that he had one hell of a poker face. And throughout most of his works, it seemed as though he was playing cards with life. Playing white knuckled games, with a tiger grin; and saying “mother fucker bring me your best”.
The poker face is common within his writings, and is most likely what you will see if you read just a few of his poems or stories, but he has his rare writings when raw and unadulterated brilliance owns the pages. It is these stories that give him away as being just like the rest of us, unsure as hell and waiting for something.
In his short story, “A .45 to pay the rent” Bukowski forces/invites his readers to reevaluate how they look at crime and the lives that criminals lead. Bukowski asks the question: what if you encounter a two-bit crook that likes classical music and bitches about philosophy and has a beautiful young daughter full of questions and promise. After reading this short the question is not “who is this criminal?” The question is, “who am I?” Me with a good job and a warm bed, my life resembling nothing like what Bukowski writes. All the same, my soul sings with his when he writes about a family moment (argument) in the front room before dad leaves for work (to rob a liquor store):
“Fuck Dillinger! He’s dead. Justice? There ain’t no justice in America. There’s only one justice. Ask the Kennedy’s, ask the dead, ask anybody!”
Duke got up out of the rocker, walked to the closet, dipped under the box of Christmas tree ornaments and got the heat. A .45.
“This, this. This IS the only justice in America, this in the only thing that anybody understands.”
(his daughter) Lala was playing with a spaceman on the floor. The parachute didn’t open right. It figured: a con. Another con. Like the dead-eyed seagull. Like the ballpoint pen. Like Christ hollering for Papa with the lines cut.
(Tales of Ordinary Madness, “A .45 to pay the rent” pg 5)
Duke waves his gun around shouting that force is the only thing that America understands. It is my bet that he didn’t always feel that way. He was driven to a life of crime. Duke once had love and passion for the world; and saw it for the beautiful and bright thing that it is.
But, he wants to be understood, he knows that he has some kind of special purpose in the world. He refuses to conform. Duke will not be beaten. He will not play by their rules. And in the end, he will survive.
Duke is part of Bukowski. Many of the characters that Bukowski writes about are an extension of some part of the man himself. He shows characters saying and acting in ways that he himself has acted, or wishes he had or could act.
Bukowski says that life is simple, if you are. In his short story “Doing time with public enemy number 1” he writes about his personal experience in jail with a cellmate who had things all figured out:
He sat on the pot all day and said, TARA BUBBA EAT, TARA BUBBA SHEET! Over and over he’d say this. He had life figured: eat and shit…
The old man never left the cell, even to shower. He had committed no crime, they said, just wanted to stay there, and they let him…
You old fuck, I’d scream at him, I’ve already killed one man already, and unless you straighten up I’ll make it two!
He’d just sit on his pot and laugh at me and say TARA BUBBA EAT, TARA BUBBA SHEET!
(Tales of Ordinary Madness “Doing time with public enemy number 1” pg 12)
Bukowski’s stories are often manifestations of his wildest dreams, but with a bit of real life experience mixed in. It is hard to know how much of what he says in what he writes is real, and what is complete and total fabrication, I wonder at times if he himself knows the difference:
Barney got her in the ass while she sucked me off; Barney finished first, put his toe in her ass, wiggled it, asked, “how ya like that?” she couldn’t answer right then. She finished me off. Then we drank an hour or so. Then I switched to the bunghole. Barney took the mouth . After that, he went to his place and I went to mine.
(Tales of Ordinary Madness “No Stockings” pg 127)
Bukowski is not afraid to say how things really are. He is honest. If a guy gets poked in the butt, he is not shy about saying a dude got “ripped apart”. I am grateful for that type of honesty. He admits, often, that he has spent most of his life as a bum and a drunkard. And he said, before he died, that he was not ashamed to be a rich writer, making the big dollars, and he couldn’t “give a fuck less” as to if any of us like him or not.
Bukowski appeals to the vagrant, the mistrusted, the hopeless, the vain and the lonely. Rebels like him; he paints them a world that they find a home in. We can breathe easy, because Bukowski does not discriminate. I myself curl up beneath his words for comfort, and find peace in his profanity.
This is a love letter. A tribute. And one I have been wanting to write, but never felt able to express, until now. Bukowski is not the “end all” answer to everything. He does not steal the hearts of everyone that reads his words. He didn’t raise the dead.
But in my mind, he is about as okay as anyone I know. |
