Charles Bukowski, Who Didn’t Hold Back
Thursday, September 7th, 2006
The best writers don’t hold back. They not only tell the stories most of us don’t normally reveal, but they do it well. I was thinking about this while I read Factotum by Charles Bukowski. The guy told his hard luck, hard drink, hard women stories in a brutally honest and straightforward way, with a poetic charge careening masterfully at the end of every line.
What got me reading Bukowski again recently was watching the Born Into This documentary. I wrote about that at 52projects.com. You watch that documentary and think, How did he get all that writing done?
The answer, or at least one answer to that question, is in his poem “So You Want to Be A Writer?”:
“if it doesn’t come bursting out of you,
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.”
And in terms of not telling the story, the poem covers that as well:
“if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.”
The first ten people who leave a comment about Bukowski (and come on, we all have a thought or feeling about Bukowski and his writing, a favorite Bukowski book, a “how I discovered Bukowski” tale), will get a free copy of Factotum.
It was in Baltimore that I first acquainted myself with Bukowski’s writing. I was staying with my sister in a dirty old warehouse full of film reels that had been scavenged from the dumpster outside. Her friends, who ultimately became my friends, would come over every night, drink cheap bear, eat chinese food, and project onto the wall old Department of Education films about pig farming and the industrial revolution. Records were traded back and forth. Books were traded back and forth. Saliva was traded back and forth.
On one of those nights, a guy named Jeff gave me Bukowski’s “Women.” He had just finished it. Like, right then, as I recall. Bukowski was already an old man when he wrote it, and like many of his books, it doesn’t follow a traditional narrative trajectory… doesn’t subject the characters to the form. Rather the form serves his memories of the misery, paranoia, sex and small warm moments with the women he’d fucked and in some cases loved. Wonderful book.
Living in Baltimore at the time was like being in a Bukowski book. Bent and drunken artists trying to enjoy themselves and make as much trouble as possible.
Speaking as a native Baltimoron (who has, I am ashamed to admit, read no Bukowski), I’ve got to say that what your experience sounds like, Zach - especially set in Baltimore as it is - is a John Waters movie. Probably a good one, I might add.
I first read Bukowski’s Women at the age of 15 or so. It was mind-bending and frightening but I couldn’t put it down. The main thing I didn’t get was how such an ugly man - tortured and borderline misogynistic to boot - had such young pretty girlfriends. There’s something to be said for having an aura of not giving a shit. Me, I always tried too hard and cared too much. Since then, I met the perfect woman for me and it was effortless.
I happened to catch the “Born Into This” documentary and it is rather incredible how someone who lives so hard is then compelled to sit down and document so unreservedly, and not only compelled, as Jeffrey points out, but is egregiously prolific. You have to be thankful for such a human who is so 100% himself that like him or not, you can’t help being more yourself, no matter what that is, after watching (or reading). If all you out there in internetland never checked it out, you should seek out Bukowski’s collaborations with cartoonist Robert Crumb
“The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The ShipBring Me Your Love” and “Bring Me Your Love” … Two peas in pod who are the opposite of pod people.
Bukowski fucked and drank and pissed on a threshold of a hell that most of us cannot fathom, and he did it unapologetically, and lots of the time smiling. I first started reading Bukowski in college, at the recommendation of a friend. I immediately became enamored with his cold and brutal honesty about himself and the world around him. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about ruining my own life just so I could be like him. The pain, the carelessness, the women, and the unbelievable ability to pen it down. It was an admirable way to do it, sure, but it was also a horrifying thought. I think that what I love about Bukowski the most is his sense that, in the midst of all of the turpitude in his own life, and the world around him, he also found something delicate and tender that evoked beauty in his life and his writing. I would have liked to share a few bottles of wine with Mr. Bukowski, and then maybe a few more.
While I have to confess that I haven’t read the poem (or any of his works), I have to wonder if Mr. Bukowski would contend that real writers–people who are meant to be writers–are also secretly (or not-so-secretly) miserable, tortured souls. Good writing too often seems to come from pain, from teetering on the edge of sanity at times, from feeling, even when surrounded by others (including, in this case, beautiful, available women), totally and utterly alone. If we are happy in our selves and in our lives, should we then also not even bother trying to write? And even if we did, would anyone be nearly as interested in what we have to say?
I may not love everything that I’ve read by Bukowski, but he’s one of those rare voices that has writing cooties–I find him catching. I just want to set to the page after I’ve read him. To me, to be a good writer, you have to be in love with your life a little. Ifyou’re miserable, you have to be in love with your misery. Bukowski loved writing and loved his misery. Miraculously, niether dried up. I love the catchiness of his work, which is the apparent joy in his work. Even when he is miserable, you can tell Bukowski is enjoying writing about it. I keep going back for the honesty and the hard cracked, crusty joy.
It’s all your fault, Jeffrey. After I read your post about Bukowski at 52 Projects, I went straight to the library and checked-out “Post Office” and three volumes of his poetry. I read all night and all the next day. I laughed. I cried. I shook my head and wondered how he managed to find his voice in spite of himself. We should all be so lucky.
I recently went on a trip to see Tom Waits in Detroit. I dressed for the occasion, wearing the same suit for the three day trip. On my layover in Dallas, I stopped into the book store in the airport and had this exchange:
Me: Do you have any Bukowski?
Clerk: Let me check how do you spell that.
Me: B-u-k-o-w-s-k-i
Clerk: No, we don’t have any right now.
Me: But you do carry him normally, right? That would be great.
Clerk: Yes we do . . . Are you him?
My old lady called me Hank for the rest of the trip.
The best writers may not hold back, but many of the rest of us do because we think that we’re going to hurt our loved ones beyond repair. Fortunately, our friends and relatives are not as fragile as we may think. I recently self-published a memoir that I thought would break the hearts of my brothers and sisters. After reading my description of our shared childhood, my brother complained of a sleepless night, my sister left a tearful message on my voice mail. And then the next day, they both got over it. I wish now that I had not held back as much as I did. Not that full self-disclosure is all that separates Bukowski from the rest of us.
I would only submit that it is easy “not[to] hold back” when you rely on some substance be it alcohol or some other drug. These substances may provide for you a certain literary carelessness about what you are saying, thus overcoming normal inhibitions that are intrensic to those attempting to express themselves. Bukowski sort of reminds me of the late Dr. John Lily. Lily was an amazing man. He was able to articulate without restraint, but he also used a lot of LSD and ketamine!!! The use of mood/mind altering substances(and i am speaking of chemical substances) no matter how subtle they are…have some profound abilities to turn off the internal censor. I do agree that one should not hold back in her or his writing, unless in the process of so doing another person is wronged or their character is damaged. I believe Thoreau said it best with this quote:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do…if you would be a man, speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
I think Bukowski was correct in the sense that we should not be afraid to express ourselves without limit…unless of course in the expressing, someone else suffers because of it. I think that should be the limit. but who am i?
kyle
All great posts — excellent personal stories and thoughts about Bukowski. I’ll be emailing all posters shortly to get your mailing addresses to send you a copy of Factotum. Thanks very much for the fantastic comments.
Your post reminded me that I hadn’t read Bukowski for many years. I bought a copy of, “The Post Office”, that day; read it through without stopping and enjoyed it all over again. I dug out, “Notes of a dirty old man”, from the attic and I’m now reading that. Wonderful stuff!
Post Office was assigned in a class I took in school. Had no idea who this borracho Bukowski was and, frankly, wasn’t thrilled about having to read him. I was busy after all. By the second page of the book I had fallen hard, fast, and deep. So deep that I’m still drowning in Bukowski. Post Office is my limitus test for friends.
zach - are you there? i’d like to talk to you about baltimore
I resisted Buskowski for the longest time because he was popular. I thought, “If he’s popular, I won’t be interested, because almost all that’s popular is dull.”… How wrong I was.
Bukowski is one of the very few popular things in this world that not only matches, but exceeds, its own hype.
-Bobby.N