Yup, "Buke" (It rhymes with puke) would have been 88 yesterday. You don't know who I am talking about? That's not so strange. Wikipedia tells us this about him:
Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994), German-American poet and novelist. Gained fame, phenomenal sales and critical recognition in Europe but continues to be generally ignored by the American literary establishment. Bukowski's writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles, and is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of marginalized poor American Whites, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, the drudgery of work and horseracing. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually having 110 books in print. He is often remembered as "The Poet Laureate of Skid Row" and, in a nod to his somewhat irregular lifestyle and habits, the "Swamp King of L.A.".
He was ignored by most, but those of us who read him were irreversibly changed. Look below the break to find out why.
I read him during the '60s and '70s when his hard, abusive, crude approach to women and other things were clearly not PC. I also was that way about Norman Mailer who also rubbed many folks the wrong way. Why did I find so much to like about his writing ? I really still have to struggle to answer that. I guess there is a side to me that identifies with his raw, almost animal-like approach to relationships with women. No, I am neither proud of or ashamed to see that in myself. Bringing things into the conscious has never been bad. Maybe that is why he was more popular in Europe than in the US. Europeans have always seemed more in touch with those parts of their being that are not always the ones that we even are willing to admit exist here in America.
We just saw Woody Allen's latest film Vicky Cristina Barcelonayesterday and it was an appropriate way to celebrate Buke's birthday. That film also touched on many of those parts of our humanity that we like to deny.
I think that were Americans to learn how to approach their inner selves with this kind of openness, we would have far fewer problems with hate and intolerance. Oh yes, they have them in Europe too. Yet I think we have a puritanical cloud over us that they have never had to live with. It makes a difference. Each time I have lived in Europe and returned to the US I have had a kind of culture shock. This topic touches on the reason for that.
Garrison Keilor mentions Buke in his Writer's Almanac:
born in Andernach, Germany (1920). His family moved to Los Angeles when he was just two years old. His father was so frustrated by the difficulty of earning a living in the United States that he became abusive. He once beat Bukowski with a two-by-four. The kids in the neighborhood picked on Bukowski because he came from Germany, and at the time Germans were still considered the enemy. When he was a teenager, he developed terrible acne and he decided that he hated his father, and he hated the America Dream.
His life was in many ways refective of experiences many of us who are children or grandchildren of immigrants shared. In my case , growing up in Chicago's South Side, sharing a home made "duplex" with my immigrant grandparents who were peasants from Lithuania, much of what made Buke what he was had a familiar ring to it:
Bukowski was also subjected to discrimination from Anglo neighbor children who mocked his thick German accent and the "sissy" German-style clothing that his parents insisted he wear. During his youth Bukowski suffered from shyness and alienation - later exacerbated by an extreme case of acne vulgaris.
In his early teens an epiphany came to Charles Bukowski when he was first introduced to alcohol by friend William "Baldy" Mullinax, son of an alcoholic surgeon. "This (alcohol) is going to help me for a very long time", he later wrote, describing the genesis of his life-long love affair with the bottle.
His books were autobiographical and often described his need to be drunk before reading his poems in public. He had a very hard life and that is reflected in all that he wrote.
Beginning in 1967, Bukowski wrote the column "Notes of A Dirty Old Man" for Los Angeles' Open City underground newspaper, and it also appeared in Charles Plymell's Underground Tabloid The Last Times Vol. 1, No. 1 from the Fall 1967 where it may have been "lifted" from Open City. When Open City was shut down in 1969, the column was picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press. In 1969, Bukowski and his friend Neeli Cherkovski launched their own mimeographed literary magazine, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. They produced three issues over the next two years.
This is a side of the sixties that few hear about. The underground press, the explosions of creativity that did not get snuffed out by the establishment's rigid control on publication.
In 1969, he accepted an offer from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing. He was then 49 years old. As he explained in a letter at the time, "I have one of two choices — stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve." Less than one month after leaving the postal service, he finished his first novel, Post Office. As a measure of respect for Martin's financial support and faith in a then relatively unknown writer, Bukowski published almost all of his subsequent work with Black Sparrow.
With increasing notoriety and growing fame Bukowski embarked on a series of love affairs and one-night stands with poetry groupies, fans and celebrity seekers. His most important relationships were with Linda King, a poet and sculptress, Liza Williams, a recording executive and "Tammie", a red-headed single mother. All of these relationships provided material for his stories and poems. Another important Muse was "Tanya", pseudonym of "Amber O'Neil" (also a pseudonym), hilariously described in Charles Bukowski's "Women" as a pen-pal that evolved into a week-end tryst at Bukowski's modest DeLongpre residence in L.A. in the 1970s. "Amber O'Neil" later wrote a book about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero". The book was suppressed due to inclusion of several love-letters written by Bukowski. A graceful and intelligent work, it contradicted Bukowski's version of events, and in later years Amber O'Neil has further clarified and elaborated on her relationship with Bukowski.
In 1976, Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health food restaurant owner, aspiring actress and devotee of Meher Baba, leader of an Indian religious society. Two years later, Bukowski moved from the East Hollywood area, where he had lived for most of his life, to the harborside community of San Pedro, the southernmost district of the City of Los Angeles. Bukowski and Beighle were married by Manly Palmer Hall, a Canadian-born author and mystic, in 1985. Linda Lee Beighle is referred to as "Sara" in Bukowski's novels Women and Hollywood.
Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9th, 1994, in San Pedro, California, at the age of 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. The funeral rites, orchestrated by the widow, were conducted by Buddhist monks. An account of the proceedings can be found in Gerald Locklin - Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet. His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", an epitath that has sparked much speculation over its true meaning.
He was also involved in the film industry and I'll never forget Barfly.
Henry Charles Bukowski and his works have been the subject of several films. The earliest is Tales of Ordinary Madness (original title: Storie di ordinaria follia) by Italian director Marco Ferreri and starring Ben Gazzara and Ornella Muti. The movie, which is largely based on some of Bukowski's tales, was not very commercially successful, possibly because of its uncompromising style.
Next came his own autobiographical screenplay for the 1987 film Barfly. In the documentary, Bukowski: Born Into This, he offers his opinion that the Mickey Rourke portrayal of him in Barfly was "misdone". Also released in 1987 was the Belgian movie Crazy love, which in part was based on the short story The copulating mermaid of Venice, California. 2005 saw the release of the movie Factotum starring Matt Dillon; the movie is based on the novel of the same name, which centers on Henry Chinaski, the fictional alter-ego of Bukowski, as he struggles from one job to the next, all the while pursuing his true interests: alcohol, women and writing. This latter film appears to be a second attempt at verisimilitude in depicting a portion of his life even though it makes no pretense of occurring in the appropriate decade. Whereas in Barfly the focus is more on women, drinking and bare-knuckle boxing, in Factotum it is the writing which receives greater emphasis.
So what does all this have to do with the upcoming election? Maybe nothing, maybe everything? All I know is that the juxtaposition of his birthday, the film, and the many hours I spent culling through diaries and the news made yesterday a strange day. The fact that we were at the opening of the Obama, Warner, Day joint office in Glocester yesterday morning also contributed.
For those who have read my past diaries on the sixties and seventies you will possibly detect my lingering question in all this. We failed to stop the horror back then and it is upon us again. We have no one like Buke this time around and things seem very different. I want to be comforted by that awareness, but strangely it almost frightens me. Getting old is a funny business. Maybe it affects one's mind? After all, I am the same age as John McCain.