Charles Bukowski

Byrnzie

I heart Scout Niblett wrote:

big fan

did you like either of the movies based on him? i liked Factotum better than Bar Fly

I never liked Barfly, probably because I've always thought that Mickey Rourke was a tosser.

Factotum was really good.

Although the best movie IMO is 'Tales of Ordinary Madness' starring Ben Gazzara - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Ordinary_Madness

Byrnzie

Has anyone read any of his books of letters?

They're some of the best things I've ever read.

eMMI

a few years ago I read every novel by Bukowski that my library had to offer. I can't remember much, except that I did like all of them I think.

I've never read his poems though.. and I think I should re-read something..

Byrnzie

eMMI wrote:

a few years ago I read every novel by Bukowski that my library had to offer. I can't remember much, except that I did like all of them I think.

I've never read his poems though.. and I think I should re-read something..

His poems are better than his fiction. Check out 'You Get So Alone...', and 'Betting on The Muse'.

he still stands

I've read some of his poems, although I'm not a 'poetry type o' guy' I thought they were at least very entertaining. More than anything I am intrigued about how he lived his life and the stories that I've read about his experiences.

The one thing that stuck out to me was the story about Bukowski and his girlfriend out day-drinking and they ran out of money... somehow they ended up at a fire station and one thing lead to another... his girlfriend romped around with several of the firefighters. Bukowski was playing cards with the other guys while several of them were taking turns with the girl. She got some cash from them, then they went back to the bar and got some more booze. The best part is how Bukowski acts like he doesn't know what was going on with his girl and the firefighters... and how he laments his girl for doing it but he certainly didn't stop it from happening either.

Maybe that was a short story or on YouTube? I don't remember...

Byrnzie

he still stands wrote:

I've read some of his poems, although I'm not a 'poetry type o' guy' I thought they were at least very entertaining. More than anything I am intrigued about how he lived his life and the stories that I've read about his experiences.

The one thing that stuck out to me was the story about Bukowski and his girlfriend out day-drinking and they ran out of money... somehow they ended up at a fire station and one thing lead to another... his girlfriend romped around with several of the firefighters. Bukowski was playing cards with the other guys while several of them were taking turns with the girl. She got some cash from them, then they went back to the bar and got some more booze. The best part is how Bukowski acts like he doesn't know what was going on with his girl and the firefighters... and how he laments his girl for doing it but he certainly didn't stop it from happening either.

Maybe that was a short story or on YouTube? I don't remember...

That one doesn't ring a bell, but it sure sounds like him. A great book of his short stories is an old 'City Lights' book called 'Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness' - http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/cha ... al-tal.htm
It has some great stories like 'The Gut-Wringing Machine' about a factory where people are sent to have their souls squeezed out them so that they can be ready for a 9-5 life, and 'Kid Stardust on the Porterhouse' about a baseball player with wings who takes his team to the tournament final.

orig_long red

Buk gave me some direction in my directionless youth.

a couple of good clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdWaOXgDQM4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHOHi5ue ... 3B&index=3

JohnWesleyHarding27

he's good...(only read post office)

Byrnzie

JohnWesleyHarding27 wrote:

he's good...(only read post office)

First line of the book 'Post Office':

"It began as a mistake."

orig_long red

Byrnzie wrote:

JohnWesleyHarding27 wrote:

he's good...(only read post office)

First line of the book 'Post Office':

"It began as a mistake."

best opening line of any book i've ever read.

you gotta go out and read Notes of a Dirty Old Man ... short stories and assorted ramblings. the most inspiring of all his collections.

Byrnzie

long red wrote:

you gotta go out and read Notes of a Dirty Old Man ... short stories and assorted ramblings. the most inspiring of all his collections.

I've got the original city lights copy at home.

I also have a signed copy of Septuagenarian Stew. :ugeek:

Edit: Whilst I'm bragging...I have a pretty hard-to-get book of poems of his called 'Poems written before Jumping out of an 8 Story Window'.

E-bay can be pretty useful at times!

catefrances

Jeremy1012 wrote:

MattCameronKicksButt wrote:

I've read a couple of his books. I like them but I wouldn't say I'm a fan. I think they're more for men.

Bukowski's definitely kind of like that. I would normally say that the idea of a book being for men is silly but for writer's like him and Hemingway, they really are full of macho posturing and I can imagine women, and definitely some men (me for one) who aren't like that, being a bit alienated by them.

im not alienated by bukowski at all. i love the way he writes. i have confidence enough in myself as a person that the 'macho posturing' just makes me roll my eyes and smirk. the worlds not a pretty place and writers like bukowski remind us of that. admittedly though the man can be a pig.

Byrnzie

Jeremy1012 wrote:

writer's like him and Hemingway, they really are full of macho posturing

Writers like him and Hemmingway? WTF? Like Bukowski is anything like Hemmingway?

Seriously, have you read anything by Bukowski in between studying the Iambic pentameters, and mathematical equations of the rhyming schemes of Shelley and Alfred Lord Tennyson?

'Macho posturing'!? Please name me one book, short story, or poem by Bukowski that contains macho Posturing.

Shit, even his worst book 'Women' didn't involve any macho posturing. Bukowski disliked macho posturing just as much as he disliked politicians, and English professors.

I know Bukowski isn't studied at Oxford and Cambridge, but that doesn't change the fact that he's the most important poet of the past 50 years.

Edit: Do you think that Bukowski wrote the way he did by accident, or due to a lack of talent? Do you think he was just an uneducated bum who had no knowledge of classical poetry?
The fact is, he had read all of these poets who are so revered by professors and he made a conscious decision to steer poetry in another direction. You should read his early letters for a better understanding of how & why he wrote the way he did.

Byrnzie

catefrances wrote:

i have confidence enough in myself as a person that the 'macho posturing' just makes me roll my eyes and smirk.

I'd like for you to find me an example of Bukowski's 'macho posturing'. I've read practically everything he ever wrote and I've never seen any macho posturing. Maybe you can enlighten me?

catefrances

Byrnzie wrote:

catefrances wrote:

i have confidence enough in myself as a person that the 'macho posturing' just makes me roll my eyes and smirk.

I'd like for you to find me an example of Bukowski's 'macho posturing'. I've read practically everything he ever wrote and I've never seen any macho posturing. Maybe you can enlighten me?

did you not see my use of inverted commas??? i was being facetious. what some people call male posturing others call candidness. clearly i am in the latter half... which is why i enclosed the term male posturing in inverted commas. bukowskis writing can seem to some sensitive folk to be caustic cocksure and dare i say it misogynstic in the way he straight talks about his relations with women.

though i still think the man can be a pig sometimes.

BhagavadGita

A friend turned me onto this particular one...

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Byrnzie

Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You . . .


We have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it --
one
two
three
and then you've got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it's always early enough to die and
it's always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

we have everything and we have nothing --
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss -- worse than shit;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
fagged interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
humping it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
bluejays and wrens netted in and sucked a flakey
grey.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
when you can laugh at the breadman
because his legs are too long, days
of looking at hedges . . .

and nothing, and nothing, the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who'd kill you
because they're crazy and justify it because
it's the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and nothing, getting your last paycheck
at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
barbershop, at a job you didn't want
anyway.
income tax, sickness, servility, broken
arms, broken heads -- all the stuffing
come out like an old pillow.

we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay --
the man you knew yesterday hooking
for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! -- all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes the last.
the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
wax museums frozen into their best sterility
are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for
breakfast the coffee hot enough you
know your tongue is still there, three
geraniums outside a window, trying to be
red and trying to be pink and trying to be
geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women
cry, no wonder the mules don't want
to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
good day. a little bit of it. and as
the nurses come out of the building after
their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
with different names and different places
to go -- walking across the lawn, some of them
want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
hot bath, some of them want a man, some
of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere.

BhagavadGita

Reading "Women" .......