Charles Bukowski and His Puzzling Attempt to Write Himself Right Sarah Ansani
The truth is, no matter where you are, you’re always in a little world of your own. You’re in your own world whether you’re a successful writer in Los Angeles, or a drunkard navigating from one slum apartment to the next, whether you can travel and appreciate other cities and the people in them, or are a young child stuck in suburbia listening to old records and holding your breath as long as you can while your parents are at work, just to see if you can beat your own record. We’re all in our own little world. The important thing to realize is that no matter who you are and no matter your situation, no matter who and what you have or don’t have, you’re in that little world as a loner, attempting to look beyond those walls and make sense of your puzzling life. Just like Charles Bukowski. I’d like to introduce you to a man named Henry Chinaski. He’s the reappearing character in Bukowski’s books. He’s a cynic. He’s a postal worker. He’s a womanizer. He’s a drunk. He’s ugly. He’s a poet. He’s a novelist. He’s sick of himself and he’s sick of you. Oh, and here’s the best part. Paradoxically, he’s so world-weary and jaundiced that he just doesn’t really care about all that, anyway. And remember this: don’t forget! Henry Chinaski is Charles Bukowski. Huh. We’ve got ourselves an alter ego. What is Bukowski hiding? He reminds me of my father, the puzzle piece smuggler. My father likes to take the last puzzle piece. As my mother and I start a jigsaw puzzle, gathering the edge pieces, he slyly takes one of the small, inconspicuous pieces of cardboard and puts it in his pocket like a quarter. My mother and I sit in the evenings around the kitchen table and complete the puzzle, making one big image out of hundreds or thousands of other smaller images and using our wit and sense to know which images connect. The most satisfying part about putting together a jigsaw puzzle is placing that one last piece into place. There’s that sense of completion and awe. Everyone wants to be the one to place that last image. It allows us to make what’s imperfect, perfect. It feels like we’re not only completing a job that was set out for us to accomplish, but that we’re also completing ourselves. Bukowski held a puzzle piece, keeping his reader at a distance, withholding information because if we really knew him, he would be unmasked. He’s afraid of being known and wants us to continue thinking he’s a bad-boy that doesn’t need the approval of others. But he’s human. Just like the rest of us. I can see it in his poems even if he thinks he’s not showing it to me. Pride. It’s the redheaded bimbo, all nails and legs, sitting alone at the end of the bar. It’s the man at the other end, checking her out and hiding the white, shiny skin where his wedding ring should be. It’s the cigarette, still glowing, left unfinished in the ashtray. Bukowski knew Pride. Some say he learned Pride through other writers. Others say he always knew Pride; they go way back! I say that it’s because he knew Pride’s alter ego: Shame. Take a look back for a moment. Is Shame not the redheaded bimbo, too? Is it not the man cheating on his wife? To know one, we must also know the other. Bukowski’s take on writing: “Unless it comes out of/your soul like a rocket,/unless being still would/drive you to madness or/suicide or murder,/don’t do it./Unless the sun inside you is/burning your gut/don’t do it”(Bukowski 3-5). Take a look at that pride. Take a look at Bukowski as he smiles and grabs his suspenders, pants hiked up above his belly button. So, let’s get this straight. According to Bukowski himself, the poems poured out of him like beer from the bottle to his lips. He never had to walk away from the typewriter, defeated, only to return an hour later, as empty as that bottle. If you ask me, he mistook that warm beer in his gut for some burning sun inside him. He didn’t fool me into thinking that he was a dilapidated machine, which, despite all the rust and corrosion, still managed to produce in abundance “a word, a line, a way”(Bukowski, Sifting). “Who does he think he is?” I asked myself. Bukowski claimed that ninety percent of his written work was autobiographical truth and that the other ten percent was fictional or embellished. It has been argued, however, that more like fifty percent is embellished, not ten (Miles 112). The question isn’t whether Bukowski lied about embellishment, but more importantly, what was it about his life that he felt was so important to document? It doesn’t make sense to possess such passion to creatively record experiences, ideas, and interactions in your life if you do not care about them in the first place. His desire to record these instances is sparked by his emotional attachments that he keeps locked and frozen inside him. Born in Andernach, Germany in 1920, to his German mother and Polish father, Bukowski was an only child. He was his parents’ only offspring and was a typical loner throughout his adolescence, and throughout well, his whole life, pretty much. At the age of two, his family moved to Los Angeles, California; the city that added texture, style, and became the setting for the majority of his works. Bukowski had a persona: in a lot of his poems, his rebellion and cynicism allowed us to take all of his words to heart, believing Bukowski to be the brute he claimed to be. “...and there go your balls and your sanctity, Men’s Liberation,/they say, is not needed/and then you remember the bar/when you walked up behind the 7 foot giant and knocked his/cowboy hat off his head, yelling:/’I’ll bet you sucked your mother’s nipples until you were 12 years old”(Bukowski 77)! Critics and readers indulge in this persona, believing Bukowski to be frozen-hearted, a drunken bastard, and alcohol, the muscle that pushes the words from his tongue. “All that could be heard was the slashing of the leather strap against my naked ass. It had a curious and meaty and gruesome sound in the silence and I stared at the bathroom tiles”(Notes 84). Bukowski referred to his childhood self as The Frozen Boy. Acting as though nothing could penetrate him allowed his parents to believe they had no influence over their son, no control. The Frozen Boy didn’t speak to anyone willingly. I was also a quiet child. I still am. Though, no part of me would be frozen if a leather strap came slicing through the air towards my ass. No, I would not have been frozen, but hot with tears and hot from the friction of the leather against my hide. But I was never hit. I never meandered about the house with a secret in my pocket. I never had to witness my mother abide by ridiculous rules set by my father and I never witnessed my father paralyze in front of the kitchen counter, his heart stopping, his abuse ending as his glass of water shattered on the floor. But still, I didn’t trust anyone that I couldn’t make sense of. How timid I was around my mother’s friend Michael. Without touching me, he rubbed me the wrong way. The violins on his radio were peculiar compared to the popular music my sister often played. His apartment was dark and cluttered, unlike the spacious rooms and bright colored walls of the house I grew up in and still live in to this day. My walls were safe and comforting and Michael’s walls were never his. One day his walls were made of red metal, for my mother had found him digging through the public library’s dumpster. His walls were cinderblock the day I walked into our one car garage and found him sleeping on the dusty, cement ground in a sleeping bag. His walls were thin plastic the day my mother lent him a flimsy, green tent that smelled like fish so that he can sleep in our yard. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned that Michael was a paranoid schizophrenic. The conversations he had with my mother concerning the government finally made sense to me. His inability to keep a job, save money, trust people, and live in a place permanently, made sense. Before his tragic death, I was more comfortable around him for I had realized that although he didn’t possess the dependable walls I had, he had possessed something that I didn’t have, as well: no walls. Just his thick layer of skin. Thick it was, but not thick enough to repel a freight train screaming towards him on the tracks. Bukowski lacked tangible walls, living in dilapidated apartments, sleeping on a handful of park benches, and even passing out in the gutters of the streets in Los Angeles. He lived quite the reclusive lifestyle, preferring the cracks of the ceiling of a dingy apartment to the cracked-out minds of his fellow barflies. He veered away from fellow intellects and writers, too. He was trying to give the impression that he was beyond needing people. The Frozen Boy had become a man. “Being Frozen does not mean being unrealistic; being Frozen means to remain Frozen; all else is madness”(Notes 194). In an interview, his wife Linda said, “No, he really didn’t like to hang out with other writers at all. At all...Never in any time. He couldn’t stand the games. The egos”(bukowski.net). Is that really the reason? It’s claimed that Bukowski refused to discuss one of his favorite writers with an intellectual crowd, because he didn’t know how to pronounce Dostoevsky (Miles 219). Speaking of favorite writers, Hemingway was among them, as well. Wasn’t he, too, a sufferer disguised as a burly war veteran? Bukowski comes across to some as a carefree recluse, trying to fit into the flâneur lifestyle established by the late 19th century writer, Knut Hamsun, author of Hunger (Blohm). This lifestyle reflects the wandering vagabond; one who lives by little means and is satisfied by that. “One day I just upped and left the/place/like that/and I began to drink alone and I found the company/quite all right”(Bukowski 138). The ending couplets of some of his poems reflect small moments of contentment in his life despite the filthy sheets he slept under and the dim light that cast his large shadow over the typewriter on his desk. John Carroll said that “in part, these endings also suggest that the poet never took himself too seriously-as if once the poem was finished, his connection with it was no longer important to him. This attitude has much to do with his poetics”(Carroll 14). I disagree. As a matter of fact, I believe that Bukowski’s sensitivity made him start writing to begin with. He took writing more seriously than most would think. On the surface, Bukowski’s poetry often appears perverse in content. His poems consist of gross imagery, stains on the sheets of his bed, floozy women, like beer mugs, for when they’re not full of beer, they’re empty inside. The sound of his name (the Buk pronounced like puke, not pronounced like fuck) conjures up ideas of misogyny, booze, sex, cynicism, and downright filth; topics that may divert the reader’s attention from those tiny moments in his poetry where contentment resonates. Take this excerpt from his poem Bumming With Jane from his book You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense: “we barricaded ourselves/against the/police/and the other roomers/hated/us/and the desk clerk/of the hotel/feared/us/and it went on/and/on/and it was one of the/most wonderful times/of my/life". Bukowski wasn’t so insensitive and I believe that his sensitivity towards Jane reflects the sensitivity he had towards the poetry he wrote that chronicles these important people and moments in his life. Bukowski isn’t just a writer who mused upon the dirty, gross, and perverted. He possessed the sensitivity he needed in order to write in the first place. Why write if you don’t care? Even writing about how you don’t care shows there is some compassion in there somewhere, for something. The first poem in this book, “1813-1833,” represents solitude and unity that stands out in Bukowski’s poetry. Some people feel they need to complete the puzzle of themselves with the help of others. This was not the case for Bukowski. It wasn’t other people that completed him, but his observations of people and also, the situations he endured, whether they were in the back alley in the middle of the night with a big, threatening man named Eddie or sitting alone, staring out his window, petting one of his sleek, slender cats. This particular poem begins with him listening to Wagner and continues on by describing how Wagner’s music sets a mood and rhythm for his surroundings. Bukowski will use words such as “you” and “we,” in order to welcome the reader into his solitary moment where “everything here shakes/shivers/bends/blasts/in fierce gamble.” In his solitude, Bukowski was at ease and willing to share his contentment. At the end of the poem, he said, “some men never/die/and some men never/live/but we’re all alive/tonight.” Here, he establishes unity between himself and other people. This unity encourages the reader to accept how things are beyond the walls, and that what is beyond the walls can’t be changed. What’s most important is being able to accept your shame in your inability to make these changes and taking it out of your pocket, like a coin, to share so that everyone can complete the puzzle you’ve given them and of course, to complete themselves. In his book, he exhibits this sense of unity within his poetry. Among the last few poems in the book (there are hundreds of poems in this book and the rest of his books of poems), the poem “Hot” describes the passion Bukowski witnessed in every detail of his surroundings. “I am consumed with a glad sadness/there’s fire in the walls/and the snails in the garden only want love/and there’s fire in the crabgrass/we are burning burning burning.” Despite the cynical quips that Bukowski is notorious for, there seems to be hope in Bukowski concerning human nature. He says, “we are all burning together/burning brothers and sisters/I like it I like it I like/it.” The order in which these poems are set up reflects tumult within Bukowski. He knew he had the puzzle piece all along. He’d stick his hand in his pocket and flip it between his fingers, feeling it’s rounded and pointed edges. He’d rub his calloused fingers along the smooth, laminated side, wondering what that side looked like and just how it would fit into the puzzle. At the beginning of the book, his poems involve solitude and the peace that it offered him. Though, sometimes there seems to be more agitation as if he felt he was suffering from an “otherness” or an inability to be human that separated him from others. In his poem, “Beasts Bounding Through Time” he reflected upon this notion by describing prominent, yet troubled figures of the past and how their “impossibility of being human” led to their ruin or death: “Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench/Chatterton drinking rat poison/Shakespeare a plagiarist/Beethoven with a horn stuck in his head against deafness/the impossibility the impossibility.” This poem suggests the threat of becoming inhumane by simply being human. Just by living, Bukowski, in the eyes of his audience, is seen as the “other”. This otherness led to loneliness whether or not Bukowski liked it. “Sarah, short and fat!” Brian Marzullo, my fifth grade nemesis, yelled while the whole class waited in line to be taken to lunch. He thought he was clever, for in class we had just finished reading Sarah Plain and Tall. Everyone laughed and began shuffling their feet forward to lunch. I excused myself to the bathroom and cried. I didn’t cry because he called me names or because everyone laughed. His grandmother, Darlene, was my neighbor. She wore a perfume so strong that I can still smell it to this day. Her hair was as white as hair can get and it was a treasure for me to watch her, smell her, as she left her house, shutting the white, wooden door behind her. I’d say hi to her, which was brave of me, for I was so shy. She was classy and I was awkward. She told me about Brian and his family. She was always on her way to take Brian’s family shopping for food, or shoes, or clothes, or toys because Brian’s family was poor. Poorer than mine. I stared at the tiles of the bathroom floor thinking of all the things I could say to humiliate Brian in front of his friends. I thought about how unfair it was that his misfortunes didn’t show on the outside because he had brand new clothes and shoes to mask it. That’s not why I cried. I cried because I never said anything. I was frozen and alone. Bukowski’s loneliness allows readers to also indulge in moments that they’re alone. As a child left alone on Sundays when his parents were out, Bukowski listened only to the records with the purple labels on them. He pressed down on the record to hear the singer’s voice lower a few octaves and released his finger for it to go back to normal. He rolled around on the carpeted floor, holding his breath, hoping to set a new record for himself. After each record-breaking feat, he drank a glass of water. When his parents came home and asked how his day was, he never shared those moments because they were his alone. This was the moment in which Bukowski recollected being the happiest. Towards the end of the book, Bukowski’s poems return to loneliness and solitude in which he finds contentment. This transition takes place in the last section of the book where his poems involve his passion—writing. This section begins with his poem, “You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense.” In this poem, he explains his ten-year hiatus in writing and how he felt inspired to write again. He was “ready to give it another shot in the/dark.” The absolute last poem of the book, “It’s Ours,” unites Bukowski with his readers and perhaps reunites Bukowski with himself, his missing piece. there is always that space there that it’s worth centuries of say just to scratch your neck that space ever (Sometimes 216). Writing. Let me tell you what it was like for Bukowski. It’s a hot shower after walking the cold streets to go home from the bar. It’s the relief that the creak of the door isn’t from the whore last night, but the hungry cat. It’s setting a new record for holding your breath. It’s drinking a refreshing glass of water after beating that record. What else is it? Work, of course. Bukowski had plenty of odd jobs that turned him into an odd job himself. It was these odd jobs that made readers like Bukowski. It’s comparable to the factors of what make a movie frightening. It isn’t the man behind the mask that scares us. It isn’t the blob-like substance that swallows us whole that scares us. It’s the ordinary and mundane becoming not-so-ordinary and mundane that scares and keeps us interested. Bukowski’s works revolve around his ordinary and mundane jobs. They’re what attract readers to his work. For about a decade, he worked for the United States Postal Service in Los Angeles. A month after he left, he finished his first novel Post Office in 1969. This novel detailed the life of a mail carrier/sorter, the protagonist of course being Henry Chinaski. The novel is an autobiographical account of Bukowski’s later life; the novel Ham on Rye being an autobiographical account of his childhood. His book Notes Of A Dirty Old Man also depicts his solitary lifestyle. “I walked along the streets I didn’t know the name It may seem like he was writing about a particular instance where he was alone and meandering the streets, struggling with a feeling that he couldn’t fathom. Truth is, the struggle for him was not fathoming, but facing the struggle of being alone. People did not warm up to the Frozen Bukowski for who he really was. In the above excerpt, he might as well have been talking about the loneliness caused by his recluse writing lifestyle. If it weren’t for his many menial jobs, his loneliness wouldn’t be so intriguing. When I was younger, I judged people and put them into categories so to better understand them. This can work sometimes, but you can’t count on it. Oddly enough, someone surprises you. For the past two summers, I’ve been working in a factory where a bunch of menial jobs, when put together, get one big job done. Upon entering this line of work, I expected to be surrounded by “low-lifes” that didn’t have any substance to themselves but their rash comments towards one another and why the hell stamping gets paid more than silkscreen. Partly, I was right! But then again, there was Woody, the one legged, rebellious, motorcyclist that carried peach pits in his pockets. During break, he’d carve them into little monkey figurines. There was Roy, who outside work, owned his own company that made independent films that won awards at festivals. He also writes and illustrates comic books. People disregard the fact that the simplest life consists of the most perplexing, misshapen pieces of a puzzle. This is the reason why the simple and mundane can be just as intriguing as a car accident or someone’s house burning down. Our hidden puzzle piece allows us to stand and watch the house burst into flames and give us permission to stop and gawk at someone’s body being pulled from a mangled vehicle. Everyone standing along with you in front of the burning house is hiding the same puzzle piece in their pocket. “Oh, this is very good”(Miles 150), rare book collector, John Martin, a “balding, red-faced man with a high forehead and well-scrubbed face wearing a faint, perpetual grin”(Miles 149) said to Bukowski of his poetry. He welcomed himself into Bukowski’s apartment, asking to read some of his poetry and sat on Bukowski’s filthy floor in front of a closet-full of manuscripts avalanching to his knees. He read every poem hiding in the closet. Bukowski let Martin go to town once learning that Martin was starting his own press, which eventually became the Black Sparrow Press. If it weren’t for Martin flipping through Outsider Magazine, Bukowski would just be another driveling drunk that writes. Or not a drunk, for he wouldn’t have been able to afford the amount of alcohol he would need or the amount of patience to remain Frozen. Thanks to Martin, Bukowski had his seat saved at the bar of literature. Literature reveals itself piece by piece. The reader takes apart the puzzle; a perfected idea that was already formed elegantly and beautifully by someone else. The reader knows that the pieces within the puzzle connect, but it’s up to them to figure out how. It varies from person to person. We read books and we love them or hate them. We’re over-critical or in denial about how something came about. We’re fascinated by things we wouldn’t dare share with another person. People wonder why there are books that bring to life the profane, morbid, and grotesque, as seen in the majority of Bukowski’s work. These genres and themes exist because there are people out there that do connect or desire to connect with each idea within the enigma. When we’re gathering the pieces of the puzzle in order to connect and make sense of them, we’re also connecting pieces of our life in order to make sense of it. The reason why we are often disappointed by a book is because we failed to find that last piece of the puzzle. The missing puzzle piece is a missing piece of yourself or a piece that you deny. While reading literature, you are not only taking apart the ideas within the book for scrutiny, but you’re taking yourself apart for scrutiny as well. Through the interpretation of literature, you become the author of yourself, as well as the reader. Just like Bukowski. His books of poetry chronicle not only his loneliness, but his inspiration in writing. It was during those quiet, solitary moments that his poems burned like fire across the paper in his typewriter. Sometimes it is loneliness that you need in order to make sense of life and yourself—to bust down the walls. Works Cited 1. Charles Bukowski by Barry Miles 2. Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way by Charles Bukowski 3. Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski 4. You Get So Alone at Times that it Just Makes Sense by Charles Bukowski 5. http://www.bukowski.net/vault/manuscripts.php 6. “Charles Bukowski” by Gary Blohm, The Literary Encyclopedia 7. “The Word, the Look, the Way: Another Side of Charles Bukowski” by John Carroll
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