Hey!!

I discovered Bukowski a few years ago.

I had worked a job I hated for a over a year, I'd dated a few troubled women, I was lost, but I felt alive sometimes. I picked up Post Office and from the first page I thought 'I should have written something like this!'

I mean I guess that's arrogant but that's what I thought

to be able to write about...just everyday stuff but make it feels so alive despite it all. Man it really blew my mind. Then I went crazy and read a lot of it. Bukowski continues to influence my thinking even if I did have to cut back on the drinking. It was also his LINES that go me.

I look forward to meeting you guys,

EWOK
 

hoochmonkey9

Art should be its own hammer.
Moderator
Founding member
Always a pleasure to have the son of The Unknown Comic on board.

I just really dated myself, didn't I?

Welcome.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mjp
to be able to write about...just everyday stuff but make it feels so alive despite it all.

Agree. It's inspiring how Buk turned the absurdity/dullness of everyday life into art. No need for sci-fi gimmicks or sweeping landscapes. Vincent van Gogh once described the scene in my profile picture as "...something noble, that can't be meant for the worms." I feel the same about Buk's writing.
 
Yeah - it was an epiphany in a way. I was always a big reader and I studied literature in school but I felt so frustrated that I wasn't an 'art person' and I wasn't intellectual. When I first read Bukowski it felt like he captured what it feels like to be alive. To an extent he romanticised a dull depressing life, but isn't that what we all try to do? Everyone is living in their own little movie. I think the documentary on him 'born into this' confirmed he was a far more conservative acting person in real life than he seems in his writing.

He really gave me good company at a time I needed it badly. I was hopelessly lost and confused and depressed and reading those books gave me this feeling that in a time gone by there was another guy suffering along through it just like me yet refusing to be beaten by it. It strangely gave me strength.
 
Top