Back to the future?

Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
Great drawing and nice article! - Exept the line, "He had several failed marriages."...
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Looks like that will appear in the print edition on Nov. 25. Maybe the dates on the site correspond to when they appear in print, even if that hasn't happened yet.

"...many of his most ardent fans are nitwits who love him to the exclusion of any of his contemporaries."
 
hoochmonkey9

hoochmonkey9

Art should be its own hammer.
Moderator
Founding member
I am not inclined to make elaborate claims for Bukowski, because there is no one to compare him to, plus or minus. He wrote in the language of his class as surely as Wallace Stevens wrote in the language of his own. This book offers you a fair chance to make up your own mind on this quarrelsome monster. It is ironical that those who man the gates of the canon will rarely if ever make it inside themselves. Bukowski came in a secret back door.

nice.
finally a fair review by a very good writer.
 
hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
Moderator
Founding member
Yeah I like this part.

Even more surprising in this large collection are the number of poems characterized by fragility and delicacy; I've been reading Bukowski occasionally for 50 years and had not noted this before, which means I was most likely listening too closely to his critics.
Click to expand...

I guess that I'm one of those "nitwits who love him to the exclusion of any of his contemporaries."
 
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chronic

chronic

old and in the way
A good review, but I get the sense that Harrison, while praising the writing, views Bukowski as being beneath him. It has the smell of literary snobbishness, as if the author is slumming in writing the review.
 
ROC

ROC

It is what it is
Not in the least.
My love of Bukowskis writing is bullet proof.
Anyone could call me anything they wanted and the pleasure I get from reading his stuff would not diminish one bit.
It is, as chronic says, that this guy has a tone that irks me.
A certain remove is essential for effective literary criticism. But the distance should not be from above looking down.
 
M

MULLINAX

Have you seen that New Yorker piece some time ago? The writer tries to put Buk's popularity down to snivelling adolescents feeling vindicated by Buk's youthful failures. He compares our Buk to J.D. Salinger; a gross error. Holden in Catcher in the Rye is a suburban chump who talks a lot and does nothing during his New York City weekend. He gazes at whores but doesn't go into rooms with them, wheareas OUR MAN BUK takes us into those rooms and beyond.

Buk's critique of the working life seems to have been ignored by critics who see him only as a writer of smut and bodily functions.
 
hoochmonkey9

hoochmonkey9

Art should be its own hammer.
Moderator
Founding member
I've heard Harrison talk about Buk before, and it's always been positive. can't remember where or when, tho.
 
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