Bukowski v.s. his father: who would win in an all-out fight?

G

Garret

Gather 'round children...

We all know very well the story of how Buk beat up his father from Factotum, Notes, and other stories and poems--Buk came home drunk, puked on the tree of life rug, his father tried to force his face into it, Buk punched him hard, his mother then clawed the shit out of his face.

About this time, Buk was young and full of hatred and rage towards his father. Buk's father was getting on in his years.

bukowski041.jpg


I ask you all now this "alternative universe"-like question: if Buk and his father were to fight each other, both in their "prime", who would win? Buk? His father? A draw?

Speculate away
 
hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
Moderator
Founding member
Is it too soon to award the 'Stupid question of the Year' trophy?

Okay.

Stupid question, sensible answer. Former soldier Henry Senior would be the winner.

Not because he was a soldier. No.

a father is always your master even when he's gone
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mjp

mjp

Founding member
To award it to you, yes. Though I would argue that it should be changed to the stupidest question of all time award in this case. But I only get one vote.






And to answer the stupidest question of all time: me. I would win the fight, bitches. Look at those two pussies. I could floss my teeth with them.
 
homeless mind

homeless mind

hank solo said:
Is it too soon to award the 'Stupid question of the Year' trophy?
Click to expand...
My vote. Rock-em-sock-em Robots are collectibles. This isn't. It's where stupidity realizes there's no cliff to fall off...Lock and load (lock), mods....As a card carrying member of free speech, sorry, this shits on my shit. Toss it in the trash bin. Or let it die a natural death here, as it will....
 
Carterofmars

Carterofmars

Well, considering that I punched my Father in the face and knocked him over the kitchen table when I was 16, I would say, speaking from experience, that after having done that I was paralyzed by shock and fear. Not because I thought really that my Father could necessarily take me in a throw of hands, but that I had crossed a line that I could never cross back over. I had struck my Father, and something died in the both of us that day.

Buk prob experienced the same I think. He had to have. He'd loose that fight before it began. And he lost that day as well.
 
Ambreen

Ambreen

Sordide Sentimental
His uppercut no doubt made their links go bad forever. But at the same time, it turned out to be an act of deliverance for Hank. From that day, his father beat him no more again, which was a great relief for Buk, though he was all life long haunted by his father's violence.
Do you really think he felt shocked, feared or remorseful ? Remember his happiness when he learnt his father's death.
 
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mjp

mjp

Founding member
He wasn't happy to learn of his father's death, he was ambivalent and conflicted, as you might expect. Big difference.
 
Ambreen

Ambreen

Sordide Sentimental
In Sounes' biography, I remember Buk being described as happy and saying to himself something like "At last, he dies !" But maybe it was just a description of his very first reaction. I don't remember the rest :D
 
ESO9

ESO9

Ambreen said:
In Sounes' biography, I remember Buk being described as happy and saying to himself something like "At last, he dies !" But maybe it was just a description of his very first reaction. I don't remember the rest :D
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Or just a way to blow it off and hide his true feelings in front of others. Like a defense mechanism.
 
Ponder

Ponder

"So fuck Doubleday Doran"
RIP
Here is a clip where Buk explains how he felt after his father passed away.

[This video is unavailable.]

Don't buy the dvd...it's a pirate copy and the seller is an asshole.
 
Carterofmars

Carterofmars

mjp said:
He wasn't happy to learn of his father's death, he was ambivalent and conflicted, as you might expect. Big difference.
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I agree.

Buk doesn't seem to be the type of guy to tip his hand to everyone. He's not going to come out to someone he really doesn't know and pour his heart out about his Father. He prob never poured his heart out to anyone (except maybe that little bluebird at night) and his typewriter. He said he didn't hate him yet says that maybe he wanted him to die. Very conflicting statements here.

Buk was an intelligent man. He didn't hate his Father because most likely he realized that his Father was a sick man. You wouldn't hate a relative with a cancer. People can be, because of their life experiences and circumstances, ill in the head. And, it doesn't make what they do excusable, but one can have a realization of this... find some peace.
 
strangegirl

strangegirl

Yeah good video Ponder.
I have always wondered if you can Hate someone you don't love.
I know maybe a long shot.
But to hate someone, you have to put a lot of energy into it. And you wouldn't necessarily do that for someone you didn't have deep feelings for.
But maybe he was just indifferent, but tied by blood.
So there was maybe a very slight feeling of loss.... maybe.
He was his father....

And Gerard you right, pretty clear in a vague way.
 
Socratease

Socratease

It's an interesting hypothetical. My guess is that Hank, given sufficient motivation in the moment and assuming his mother were not present to crack Hank over the head with a blunt instrument, would have beaten his father to a pulp, with little or no resistance from the latter. Being a bully, and hence a coward at heart, I reckon that his father would not have had the guts to fight back.

However, I'm not convinced that Buk was as a good a fighter as he sometimes claimed to be. Maybe he won a few bar brawls depending on the opponent and their state of inebriation. As Mickey Rourke is quoted in Sounes, "You can't be any sort of physical specimen if you live out of a beer can. I saw him as a man who was more physical with his mouth than his fists."

Nonetheless, seems he continued to issue drunken challenges to men way into his latter years. Again in Sounes, this time quoting and episode at a party when he decided to take on Norman Mailer: "You know, Norman, you and me may have to go outside to fight," said Bukowski. Mailer says he felt a rush of adrenaline as he contemplated flying at Bukowski with murderous intent. "It so happened at the time I was in good shape and was still boxing, and Bukowski by then was in awful shape -- huge belly, bad liver, all of it," ... [Mailer] leaned forward and said, "Hank, don't even think about it."
 
Ponder

Ponder

"So fuck Doubleday Doran"
RIP
Who cares what Rourke said...
Buk was just drunk and joking when he challenged Mailer.
He was almost 70 years of age. It's all so pointless.
The man had strong legs you know, strong legs.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
However, I'm not convinced that Buk was as a good a fighter as he sometimes claimed to be. Maybe he won a few bar brawls depending on the opponent and their state of inebriation. As Mickey Rourke is quoted in Sounes, "You can't be any sort of physical specimen if you live out of a beer can. I saw him as a man who was more physical with his mouth than his fists."
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Since when do you have to be a "physical specimen" to win a fight? That's the most stupid thing Rourke has said, and he's said some pretty stupid things. He knows less about Bukowski than most of the kids who come in here looking for the title of a poem.

Note that Bukowski didn't often write about winning a fight, just fighting.

Don't forget that he brutally insulted Arnold Schwarzenegger and his work (to his face) at Spago one night. Yes, he was "Bukowski," and most people at that point would have been amused or flattered to get the Bukowski treatment. But anyone who has ever challenged people who are unlikely to fight knows that "unlikely" doesn't mean "will not." You still have to be prepared to get your ass kicked.

Whether he was a good fighter or not isn't the point. He was an angry man for most of his life, and that often gets you into trouble.
 
Socratease

Socratease

Good points, and there is the lapse of quite a few years between the time Buk wrote Barfly (and when Rourke was dealing with him on a daily basis on the set) and the era Buk was writing about, so Rourke was making a judgement on the middle aged version.

As I wrote in my intro, Buk bears a passable resemblance to a guy I knew who frequented "my" bars. He was a volatile, argumentative drunk and his preferred way of settling any difference was to go out to the parking lot and fight. This guy was a hopeless fighter but he kept on going and could wear his often equally drunken opponents down and score a moral victory when they walked away, although he would be a pitiful bloodied mess. He would tell me with black eyes how he beat so-and-so the other night but I was there and, in reality, he was pummelled into the ground by the other guy and should have been put into an ambulance.

Perhaps there was a bit of that about Bukowski, too, although it's said that Buk would fight to entertain the bar crowd and to earn drinks. The guy I knew never did that. It was always to settle some dumb argument or bet.
 
d gray

d gray

tried to do his best but could not
Founding member
i laugh at the title of this thread every time i see it - so ridiculously stupid that it's hilarious - is this why garret got 86'd?
 
d gray

d gray

tried to do his best but could not
Founding member
oh dear...now i see. on a serious note, it's so twisted that he wouldn't have been the artist he was if he didn't grow up in that brutal environment - there's a canadian painter i like - alex colville - who feels that in order for an artist to have something profound to express he/she needs to have experienced some sort of profound trauma - he was a war artist at the concentration camps and talks about how that blew his mind and changed him forever and hugely affected his work. i have a vague memory of bukowski talking somewhere about whether he'd sacrifice the type of artist he became for having had a happy well adjusted childhood but can't place it.
 
hoochmonkey9

hoochmonkey9

Art should be its own hammer.
Moderator
Founding member
just to go slightly off topic here, and to d gray's point, I was watching a documentary on Colville once, and Colville had a bookshelf displaying all the books that used his artwork for the cover. one was a Bukowski book. can't remember which book, or what country it was published in.
 
d gray

d gray

tried to do his best but could not
Founding member
really? wow, what a coincidence. i would guess a german publication, because colville is really popular over there, so i've read. i wonder if he read the book and what he thought if so...
 
Koya Volkovich

Koya Volkovich

mjp said:
You can't even see all his posts. Some had to be yanked and moved to the secret moderator candyland, where really offensive, idiotic and ill conceived posts go to die.
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what a nice young man!

I think this thread is ridiculous...its like asking who would win in a fight between me and my dad...when we both at our physical prime? Well i'm at my physical prime and i'm a drunk hunk of shit and hes long past his prime...and he was pretty fat even at his prime...

I think that his gut would have softened the most horrific blows and then i would have had a heart attack from the exertion of trying to fight the fatman....

i lose...


SHIT
 
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