Has reading Bukowski changed your personal life?

Black Swan

Black Swan

Abord the Yorikke!
Reading Bukowski was for me an important road sign. It has affected me in my art, it brought some light where I couldn't see and words that I would no longer express.

I am sure that most of us have expressed their personal experience one way or the other in various posts but I would like to read them unscattered.
 
poptop

poptop

That's easy. He has enriched my life immeasurably. I read so much of him during my dark days of aimless depression that I feel I have absorbed him under my skin. His ability to cut his losses and move forward again after personal disaster kept me going. When I felt bad bad bad physically or emotionally - sometimes both together - I found solace and comfort. He was great reading on rainy days, and when I felt good I could see the laughter behind his words. How do you thank a guy like that? I became a better person and had a better understanding of the entire range of human behavior starting with myself. There's a secret source of humanity buried inside all of us, and Bukowski was my secret resource, which none of my closest friends ever knew about, to embrace it all, from the disgusting and the violent to the sublime and exalted - all of which he gave full expression and some of which I found within myself as a musician, writer and human being. In fact, when you love and absorb someone's creative courage to that degree, you don't even have to read him any more - the essence is in your blood and you're free to live. I would wish the same kind of peace to others. Hail to the chief!
 
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bospress.net

bospress.net

www.bospress.net
I came to the small press through Bukowski, so without him I would not have found the small press and would not have started a press. It has become such a large part of me, that I am not sure who I would be without him and the small press.

Bill
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
poptop said:
...when you love and absorb someone's creative courage to that degree, you don't even have to read him any more - the essence is in your blood and you're free to live.
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Because...help me out here...someone can't read books and live at the same time?

But apparently you can post to a forum and live?

The internet, man, I'll tell ya. Gotta love technology! Allowing us to really fully live the glorious beauty of this incredible life and still spend all day on a forum!

What peace. What exalted, sublime freedom.


Sorry Black Swan, carry on. I was just so moved by this deep, humane revelation that I had to interject.
 
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dijhony

dijhony

Before reading Bukowski I hated everyone, but after that I said, hey I am not alone. There are good people out there! so now I am more selective in hating people. Yeah, other than this, my life is the same shit. I don't really see a change.
 
liquor store

liquor store

During my childhood I read 'Hulk'-comics. I expected Hulk to help me, because in my fantasy he was always there. Today it's Hank, who helps me to keep cool during all those difficult and frustrating life situations you walk through, while rejecting the 9to5 nothingness.
 
LickTheStar

LickTheStar

Sad Flower in the Sand
Outside of causing me to spend ungodly amounts of money on Buk related crap... No.

But hell if it isn't enjoyable just the same.
 
Gerard K H Love

Gerard K H Love

Appreciate your friends
Because Bukowski is so easy to read, I started reading more. At first I read more of he wrote and now I am reading more of everything. But when I read lots of Bukowski I do drink more. And I like what mjp and poptop are writing about. They have such a brilliant interaction.
 
Dennis Loves The Beer

Dennis Loves The Beer

In some ways, finding and reading Bukowski allowed me to forgive myself for all the things I thought I was doing wrong. Growing up I thought I was supposed to love the 9to5 that my Dad did.

Now I know, it's ok to despise the sunrise.
 
Billville

Billville

liquor store said:
During my childhood I read 'Hulk'-comics. I expected Hulk to help me, because in my fantasy he was always there. Today it's Hank, who helps me to keep cool during all those difficult and frustrating life situations you walk through, while rejecting the 9to5 nothingness.
Click to expand...

You really shouldn't have to choose between the two.

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bogdan

bogdan

I didn't use to read too much, if anything. The school only made me hate it. They were pouring shit into your brain. Like a Romanian writer (Bacovia) once said - "Highschool, cemetery of my youth"; he knew what he was talking about. Me, I didn't know a god damned thing about anything at 18. Went to a technical university only to get away from home. I took my first breath of fresh air when I heard The Doors 15 years ago or so. Then I got into post-punk / industrial - Swans, New Model Army, The Chameleons, Joy Division and all the others... This was/still is the real thing. Great music, great lyrics, great performers. They were alive. Their words meant something. So, discovering Bukowski was the next logical step, I guess, in a world where nothing rhymes. Yes, he changed my life. Still is, as I continue to read his books.
 
Purple Stickpin

Purple Stickpin

Not so much my personal life, but how I perceive writing in general. Not by me, but in terms of books I consider buying. In addition to Buk, I'm a big fan of sea/polar exploration (Scott, Peary, Cook, etc.) and early aviation (Lindbergh, Earhart, etc.), so no influence there; you pretty much have to take what you get.

But in terms of poetry, short stories and novels in Buk's vein; well, I've pretty much given up that. Buk rules. But Buk drew me to Wormwood Review, and that, in turn brought me to Gerald Locklin, David Barker, Lyn Lifshin and writers of similar ilk. So there's been a big influence from Buk. But not so much in how I live. Just in how I read.
 
S

slimedog

I used to drink too much; have a lack of respect for authority, government, religion and society in general. And I hate to admit it but I could sometimes be politically incorrect.

Reading Buk has changed all this and I am happy to report that I am now a productive part of society.
 
Ambreen

Ambreen

Sordide Sentimental
I was suffering at law college : It took me three years to realize I did a mistake and would never fulfil myself in a legal career. I didn't know how to tell this to the parents, I easily guessed that it would be the beginning of hard times with them. I myself had a lot of difficulties to admit what was happening to me, considering it as a personal failure, I who had been a self-confident person till then, who had never met any obstacle on my way. The biggest problem was I had no idea of what I could do instead, I thus saw no future anymore. This situation became psychologically unbearable, I broke down and stopped eating. I felt useless and just wanted to disappear in some way or other.
Bukowski's appearance in that tense and confused context turned out to be salutary, he did change the course of my existence, no one has had such a decisive influence on it till now. The first book produced the same effect as an electric shock. Ouch ! It hurt ! But the sensation was far from being disagreeable ! And I laughed, which didn't happen since a long time. I wanted some more electric shocks like this one. As months went by, I had adopted him, he became a kind of ally, the best one, whose words progressively got me out of despondency and helped me to see things more clearly in life in general, then in my own life, to put everything into question and to finally overcome my troubles.
 
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Harald

Harald

found the first Bukowski books in the library
in the late 70's - autographed ones.
Buk learned me to enjoy poetry -
and that loneliness can be glorious at times

and yes, my son is born Aug 16
 
nervas

nervas

more crickets than friends
This is to say that Buk signed books actually ended up in the libraries back in the day? Has anyone else ever come across that?
 
hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
Moderator
Founding member
I have a signed hard back of Burning that was once a college library book. It's the regular signed blue spine, not the orange spine library specific edition. The library ticket shows it was only checked out once, in 1973 (and no that wasn't me :D). I guess that if libraries wanted Bukowski or any Black Sparrow books they'd want a hard back, which may have meant buying the signed copies. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still a few knocking around with a sig in the back.
 
Harald

Harald

it was in a huge german public library,
and I never saw other author signed books there,
apart from Buk's books from the 70s.
Guess the manager was a fan, too.
And please: books don't "end" in such a library.
There was no Internet in these times,
and that library was the window to the world to me, then.
I highly appreciated that.

==>I guess that if libraries wanted Bukowski or any Black Sparrow books they'd want a hard back, which may have meant buying the signed copies.<==
Yes, that might be the reason,
as all Black Sparrow books there had a hard back.
 
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