Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994), was a Los Angeles poet and novelist often mistakenly associated with Beat Generation writers because of alleged similarities of style and attitude. Bukowski's writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles. He wrote more than fifty books and countless smaller pieces. He is often mentioned as an influence by contemporary authors, and his style is frequently imitated.

Life

Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in 1920. His mother, a native German, met his father, a German American serviceman, after the end of World War I and the family moved to Los Angeles when he was two years old. During Bukowski's childhood, his father was often unemployed, and according to Bukowski, verbally and physically abusive. After graduating from Los Angeles High School, Bukowski attended Los Angeles City College for two years, taking courses in art, journalism, and literature.

At 24, Bukowski's short-story "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip" was published in Story Magazine. Two years later, another short-story, "20 Tanks From Kasseldown," was published in Portfolio III's broadside-collection. Bukowski grew disillusioned with the publication-process and quit writing for almost a decade. During part of this period he went on living in Los Angeles, but also spent some time roaming around the United States, working odd jobs and staying in inexpensive rooming-houses. In the early 1950s Bukowski took a temporary job as a letter-carrier with the United States Postal Service in Los Angeles, but quit after less than two years. In 1955 he was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer that was nearly fatal. When he left the hospital, he began to write poetry. In 1957, he married writer and poet Barbara Frye, but they divorced in 1959. Frye insisted that their separation had nothing to do with literature, though she often doubted his skill as a poet. Following the divorce, Bukowski resumed drinking and continued to write poetry. He returned to the post office in Los Angeles, where he worked as a clerk for over a decade. In 1964, a daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski, was born to Bukowski and Frances Smith. Smith and Bukowski lived together but were never married. In 1969, after being promised a monthly stipend of $100 "for life" from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin, Bukowski quit his job at the post-office to make writing his full-time career. 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, entitled Post Office. In 1976, Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health-food-restaurant-owner. Two years later, the couple moved from the East Hollywood area, where Bukowski 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 in 1985.

Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9th, 1994 in San Pedro, California, at the age of 73, shortly after completing the novel "Pulp", his last. His funeral rites were conducted by Buddhist monks. His gravestone reads: "Don't Try".

According to Linda Lee Bukowski, her Husband's epitaph means something along the lines of "If you spend all your time trying, then all you're doing is trying. So don't try. Just do."

Work

Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the late 1950s and continuing on through the early 1990s, with the poems and stories being later republished by Black Sparrow Press (now HarperCollins/ECCO) as collected volumes of his work. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short-stories, and six novels, eventually having more than fifty books in print. ^*

Bukowski acknowledged Anton Chekhov, Knut Hamsun, Ernest Hemingway, John Fante, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, D.H. Lawrence, and others as influences, and often spoke of Los Angeles as his favorite subject. In a 1974 interview he said, "You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every street-corner. You've got the layout of the whole land. You have a picture of where you are. ... Since I was raised in L.A., I've always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. I've had time to learn this city. I can't see any other place than L.A." ^*

One critic has described Bukowski's fiction as a "detailed depiction of a certain taboo male fantasy: the uninhibited bachelor, slobby, anti-social, and utterly free." ^* Since his death, in 1994, Bukowski has been the subject of a number of critical articles and books about both his life and writings. Despite the fact that he has become an icon & heroic role-model for many of the disaffected and those with problems stemming from alcoholism, his work has received relatively little attention from academic critics. ECCO continues to release new collections of his poetry, culled from the thousands of works published in small literary magazines. Bukowski: Born Into This, a film documenting the author´s life, was released in 2004.

In June 2006, Bukowski's literary archive was donated by his widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, to the Huntington Library, in San Marino, CA.

Bibliography

55 beds in the same direction (1974)
A Bukowski Sampler (1969)
A Love Poem (1979)
A New War (1997)
All the Assholes in the World and Mine (1966)
Alone In A Time Of Armies (1985)
Another Academy (1970)
Art (1977)
as Buddha smiles (2004)
At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968)
Beauti-Ful (1988)
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001)
Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)
Between The Earthquake (1993)
Bone Palace Ballet (1997)
Bring Me Your Love (illustrated by Robert Crumb) (1983) ISBN 0876856067
Burning in Water Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973 (1974)
Cold Dogs in the Courtyard (1965)
Come On In!: New Poems (2006)
Confession Of A Coward (1995)
Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts (1965)
Crucifix in a Deathhand (1965)
Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
Darkness & Ice (1990)
Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (1972)
Factotum (1975)
Fire Station (1970)
Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960)
Going Modern (1984)
Gold In Your Eye (1986)
Grip the walls (1964)
Ham On Rye (1982)
Heat Wave (1995)
Hollywood (1989)
Horsemeat (1982)
Horses Don't Bet on People and Neither Do I (1984)
Hot Water Music (1983)
If we take (1969)
If You Let Them Kill You They Will (1989)
In The Morning And At Night (1991)
In The Shadow Of The Rose (1991)
It Catches My Heart in Its Hand (1963)
Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Legs, Hips and Behind (1978)
Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s, Volume 2 (1995)
Longshot Pomes for Broke Players (1962)
Love is a Dog from Hell (1977)
Luck (1987)
Me and your sometimes love poems (1972)
Mockingbird, Wish Me Luck (1972)
Night's work (1966)
Not Quite Bernadette (1990)
Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)
Now (1992)
One For The Old Boy (1984)
Open All Night (2000)
People Poems (1991)
Pink Silks (2001)
Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)
Poems Written Before Jumping out of an 8 Story Window (1968)
Popcorn In The Dark (2000)
Post Office (1971) ISBN 0876850875
Pulp (1994)
Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994, Volume 3 (1999)
Red (1989)
Relentless As The Tarantula (1986)
Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (1988)
Run with the Hunted (1962)
Run with the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader (1993)
Scarlet (1976)
Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993)
Septuagenarian Stew: Stories and Poems (1990)
Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)
Shakespeare Never Did This (augmented edition) (1995)
Sifting Through The Madness for the Word, The Line, The Way: New Poems (2003) ISBN 00600568232
Slouching Toward Nirvana (2005)
South of No North (1973)
Sparks (1983)
The Bukowski/Purdy Letters (1983)
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
The Day it Snowed in L.A. (1986)
The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems (2004) ISBN 0060577010
The Genius of the Crowd (1966)
The Last Generation (1982)
The Last Poem & Tough Company (1976)
The Laughing Heart (1996)
The Movie "Barfly" (1987)
The Movie Critics (1988)
The night torn mad with footsteps (2001)
The Simple Truth (2002)
The Singer (1999)
The Wedding (1986)
There's No Business (illustrated by Robert Crumb) (1984)
This (1990)
Those Marvelous Lunches (1993)
Three Poems (1992)
To Lean Back Into It (1998)
War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984 (1984)
We Ain't Got No Money Honey (1989)
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999)
Women (1978)
You Get So Alone at Times It Just Makes Sense (1986)
You Kissed Lilly (1978)

Criticism and Biographies

Hugh Fox - Charles Bukowski A Critical and Bibliographical Study - 1969
Jory Sherman - Bukowski: Friendship, Fame & Bestial Myth - 1981
Neeli Cherkowski - Bukowski - A Life - 1991
Russell Harrison - Against The American Dream - 1994
Amber O'Neil - Blowing My Hero - 1995
Gerald Locklin - Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet - 1996
Steve Richmond - Spinning Off Bukowski - 1996
A.D. Winans - The Charles Bukowski/Second Coming Years - 1996
Gay Brewer - Charles Bukowski, Twayne's United States Authors Series - 1997
Jim Christy - The Buk Book - 1997
John Thomas - Bukowski In The Bathtub - 1997
Ann Menebroker - Surviving Bukowski - 1998
Carlos Polimeni - Bukowski For Beginners - 1998
Howard Sounes - Charles Bukowski. Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life - 1998
Jean-Francois Duval - Bukowski and The Beats - 2000
Gundolf S. Freyermuth - That's it. - 2000
Daniel Weizmann (editor) - Drinking with Bukowski - Recollections of the Poet Laureate of Skid Row - 2000
Aubrey Malone - the hunchback of east Hollywood - 2003
Jon Edgar Webb Jr. - Jon, Lou, Bukowski and Me - 2003
Ben Pleasants - Visceral Bukowski - 2004
Michael Gray Baughan - Charles Bukowski - 2004
Enrico Francheschini - I'm Bukowski, and then? - 2005
Barry Miles - Charles Bukowski - 2005
Tom Russell - Tough Company - 2005 .
David Charlson - Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast - 2005
Linda King - Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski - 2006

Film

Bukowski (1973) - an hour-long video documentary produced by Taylor Hackford for the educational television-station KCET in Los Angeles (won the Silver Reel Award at the San Francisco Film Festival).
Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) - Ben Gazzara plays Charles Serking, a character loosely based on Bukowski's autobiographical character Henry Chinaski. The slow and stiffly acted film never found an audience, and Bukowski - though friendly with Gazzara - panned the actor's performance.
The film Barfly (1987) starring Mickey Rourke and written by Bukowski himself, was based on his life, the main character being his alter-ego, Henry Chinaski. His novel Hollywood was based on the tribulations of making this film.
The same year in which Barfly debuted (1987), the Belgian film Crazy Love, directed by Dominique Deruddere, was released. Based on the Bukowski story, The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California, and portions of Ham on Rye, the film tells the story of a man's life by spotlighting three different nights spread over 20 years. Crazy Love was cited by Bukowski as his favorite film-adaptation of his work.
In 1988, French Director Patrick Bouchitey directed the short movie Lune Froide (English title: Cold Moon). The story is an interpretation of The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California. It was then edited in a longer version in 1991, with the same title, but this time including parts taken from Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness.
A documentary entitled Bukowski: Born Into This was released in American theaters on July 9, 2004, generally to good reviews. Actor Sean Penn as well as musicians Tom Waits and Bono, friends and fans of Bukowski, appear in the film.
An adaptation of Bukowski's second novel, Factotum, was shot in Minnesota in 2004 and premiered 2005-04-12 at the Kosmorama film-festival in Trondheim, Norway. It was directed by Bent Hamer, and Matt Dillon plays the role of Henry Chinaski. The film remains unreleased in the US, despite modest success in Europe.
An adaptation of Bukowski's illustrated short-story, Bring Me Your Love, was shot in New York City in 2006. It was directed by independent filmmaker Gui Teixeira.

Music References

The popular indie rock band Modest Mouse featured a song entitled Bukowski on their 2004 hit album Good News For People Who Love Bad News
The Greek post-rock band 2 By Bukowski takes its name from the 1967 book of same title.
The Good Life, a band fronted by Tim Kasher has a song entitled: Album of the Year. A lyric included in the song states: "I was reading Fante at the time, I had Bukowski on my mind."
Wayne Kramer has a song titled "So Long, Hank". It is on the album The Hard Stuff
The Red Hot Chili Peppers' song, "Mellowship Slinky in B Major" features the lyric, "I'm on my porch 'cause I lost my house key, pick up my book I read Bukowski"
Legendary Florida punk rock group Hot Water Music named after the short story book of the same name.

References

An Introduction to Charles Bukowski ^*
The Hunchback of East Hollywood : A Biography of Charles Bukowski by Aubrey Malone (Critical Vision, 2003)
Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes (Grove Press, 1999)
Aaron Krumhansl - A Descriptive Bibliography of the Primary Publications of Charles Bukowski (Black Sparrow Press, 1999)
Sanford Dorbin - A Bibliography of Charles Bukowski (Black Sparrow Press, 1969)
University of Southern California Department of Special Collections

External links

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