By
Sebastian Bullhorn
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Charles Bukowski ~
Charles Bukowski, or as some might know him better - Henry Chinaski, the protagonist of most of his short stories and novels, was a rebel. If only for the fact that he spent all his life drinking like a maniac and finally died at the age of 73. Not from cirrhosis or suicide addled by delirium tremens, but from leukaemia. But of course, there’s more to it than that.
Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in 1920 as the son of a US army sergeant stationed there and a local seamstress. Following the collapse of the German economy in 1923 they relocated to America, finally settling in Los Angeles after short stays in Baltimore and Pasadena.
His father, unhappy with how his work situation had turned out after being demobilized from the army, was a cruel man. Young Bukowski’s life didn’t get a good start. Constant beatings made him hate his father and lose all respect for his mother, who never dared to intervene. His rather misanthropic views were most likely a result from his tough childhood. A severe case of acne, that was so bad it required continuous medical treatment once he hit puberty, completed his life of misery.
Around that time he discovered his love of reading, and spent most of his time by himself in his room devouring the works of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and the great Russian writers from the 19th century.
Still in his teens, he also developed a great interest in alcohol that fuelled many a poem he later wrote and that didn’t wear off until he died.
After finishing high school, followed by a short stint in college, he read John Fante’s book “Ask The Dust”, which dealt with a man in a situation similar to his. This inspired him a great deal, and he began to think he might want to become a writer.
He spent some more time doing manual labor in LA, drinking in the local bars and composing his first short stories, before deciding to go on a journey through the United States. This period of time is commonly referred to as “his lost years”. It also become the foundation for a screenplay he later wrote called “Barfly”, ultimately starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway in lead roles.
In between trips back to LA, he spent about a decade travelling around the country, working factory jobs, drinking all the time and writing short stories and poems. He mailed these to New York and Philadelphia based underground magazines. He wrote about low-life America. He wrote about the world he had to face every day. His early works were often melancholic, but spiced up with a certain humor and recklessness that saved them from becoming maudlin. This sombre sense of humor always remained part of his trademark style. He had close to no success in the beginning of his career, though.
It wasn’t until he met John Martin, who had read some of Bukowski’s work in small literary magazines and books that some supporters had published on their own in low quantities, that his luck changed. John Martin founded Black Sparrow Press, mostly to publish Bukowski exclusively. At the same time Buk started to write a weekly column for a radical underground newspaper from LA, called Open City. The installments of his column, which was called “Notes Of A Dirty Old Man”, later got published in a book by the same name and is regarded as one of his best outputs by many people to this day. Shortly after, the success of his column, and the first books Black Sparrow published, allowed him to quit his day job at the post office (as recorded in his popular novel “Post Office”) and become a full-time writer.
In the late 70’s he started to gain immense success in Europe, which remained by far his biggest market until he died. That allowed him to finally get away from East Hollywood where he’d been living for a big part of his life and where he staged many of his stories.
He was married two times, had several long-lasting affairs, mostly to women who admired him as a writer, and had one daughter. In his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose.
Nowadays he’s appreciated by many for his simple, direct language that doesn’t try to euphemize anything. Some people loved the way he openly wrote about sexuality, a way that made every feminist’s stomach turn in disgust. Bukowski didn’t know any taboos. He never compromised his work, even if it meant he’d die starving, living on the streets like the bums in his stories. He refused to lead the secure life of most people surrounding him. A life that decidedly would have made him puke. He was indeed a rebel who wouldn’t have traded his real life - the one that took place in bars, at the race tracks and in front of his typewriter at home - for any money.
He’s really the only writer whose stuff I can read over and over again and that immediately changes my mood. If I’m depressed there’s nothing like downing a tall glass of Scotch and water, fighting back the vomit and starting to read some of his poems. When I feel like I am ready to kill myself I’m fraught with a certain recklessness all of a sudden that just sets me free. His stoic “who gives a flying fuck” attitude towards whatever happens to him is contagious.
His autobiographical “Ham On Rye” is my favorite book of all time. Most people say Bukowski was for the less intelligent, who took his books for nothing more than vulgar dime novels, but there’s no other book that ever touched me like that one. Not even close. It almost made me cry at times. At others, it made me laugh, and most of the time it made me pick up my courage. That book alone, along with everything else he wrote as well, is like therapy.
