New Convert

[justine]

so i just read my very first Bukowski: Factotum.

i loved it, loved it so much, i went back to my library for more. for some strange reason they keep all the Bukowski works behind the desk... anyway i told the lady just to give me any two of his novels so i now have in my temporary possession Hollywood and Pulp. as a newcomer blinded by love and admiration i'm not quite sure what - if any - formula/method should be applied to the reading of his body of work. any advice from oldskool fans?

i'm so excited about all the books ahead of me, yet to be read!!
(shame about the whole dead thing tho')

 

[bospress.net]

Hi Rubyred,
Factotum is great! Try "Post Office" & "Ham On Rye" also. Then maybe pick up "Septuagenarian Stew". That has a good mix of poems and stories. Then on to the earlier, more lyrical early poems, like the ones in "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame"

Oh and I almost forgot... Welcome to the madness!

Bill

 

[hoochmonkey9]

rubyred....start with the one in your hand and stop when the words run out.
and welcome.
careful, the punch is spiked.

 

[bospress.net]

TRUE.... Very true!

Bill

 

[Bobby D]

I'm jealous Rubyred, to imagine having all that Buk in front you, it'll be a great ride...feel free to post with great excitement. Whenever I first got into Buk I was running around looking for someone to tell in the office, heh heh, no internet, no one was interested :)

We all here definitely share your enthusiasm, but listen to hoochmonkey, the punch is spiked...

BD

 

[justine]

Bobby D, that's exactly why I'm excited! although tempted to just read everything of CB's right away, I'm conscious of the fact that there will be no more, so i'm gonna try and take my time with him - revel in the madness!
Factotum reminded me a lot of Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son - anyone else think so?

130 pages into Hollywood and loving it...

Thanks for the welcome guys :)

Rubyred

 

[poptop]

as a newcomer blinded by love and admiration i'm not quite sure what - if any - formula/method should be applied to the reading of his body of work. any advice from oldskool fans?

Welcome. I recommend taking the phone off the hook and having a favorite beverage handy as you turn the pages. You might also want to bookmark some favorite passages for your notebook or journal. Savor what you read, because there's no rush: he was prolific as hell and most of it is memorable. You've just tapped into one of the true mother lodes of goodness in literature. His poetry is just as good, and I'm sure you'll be tempted. Enjoy. "”Poptop.

 

[pig ear press]

Factotum reminded me a lot of Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son - anyone else think so?Rubyred

Is that any good? I saw the film which made me smile a bit:rolleyes:

 

[mjp]

for some strange reason they keep all the Bukowski works behind the desk...

Because people steal them from libraries.

 

[bongobill]

...and bookstores too

i've been to a couple of second hand bookstores where the bukowski's are behind the counter including the ecco & city lights editions

 

[jordan]

when i first really started getting into bukowski, i had the same experience wanting to share it with people... i was a caddy at the time, and so i brought some books to the caddyshack, and we all passed them around. when you have a shit job, reading about a guy having shit jobs is fun, and it passed the time really well. most of the acetate dustjackets of my editions are scuffed on the back, because we would slide them across the floor to each other as we finished them.

 

[Ninjerk]

I tried to find some Buk at a local used bookstore (one of like 4 in the entire fucking inbred, meth-infested, redneck county that Polk County, Florida is) and they had never heard of him. To add insult to injury when I asked where the "fiction" section was they brought me over. It was ALL serial romance. Those stupid Tom Clancy/military action books had their OWN section and romance was considered fiction.

 

[ROC]

Welcome to the implosion of your country

 

[Ninjerk]

*County* I prefer to believe there are places in the world where poorly grown facial hair and realtree camoflage aren't great things.

 

[Zapatos]

Like you Rubyred... I am just starting to ingest a lot of the old guy. when i was a young boy, i read notes of a dirty old man on a summer vacation... now i pound down 50 pages a day on underground trains while my ears are stuffed with headphones. an hour a day is all i really need i guess...

 

[justine]

i've just finished Hollywood... Loved it! Very very funny... a much different feel to it than Factotum - he's much more the teller of the story than an actual participant in the action. the juxtapositions of all the craziness that's occurring around him and the quiet life he leads at home with Sarah and the cats is interesting. there's that constant repetition through out the novel, of weird characters and mad situations, but at the end of every day Chinaski knows that his woman and his felines and his typer are always there.. there's a line somewhere in there about how he chooses what he does in life - life doesn't choose what it is does to him. i like that: there's a satisfaction with the life he's led and a sense of accountability that goes along with it. there's no "poor me and my alcoholism".

i also had fun trying to figure out the pseudonyms he used for all the characters..

 

[Bukfan]

i also had fun trying to figure out the pseudonyms he used for all the characters..

You can read who's behind all the pseudonyms in "Hollywood" and "Women" in another thread...

 

[justine]

Is that any good? I saw the film which made me smile a bit:rolleyes:

yes, it's gorgeous. it's a small collection of short stories, narrated by the same character. it documents all these odd drunken & drugged-out situations that have occurred in this guy's youth.
(i think it's at least semi-autobiographical: from what i've read about Johnson, he was contracted to write a book for his publishing house. the deadline was almost up and he hadn't written anything so he just decided to write about some stuff that had happened to him. and now it's probably his most famous work)
it's darkly funny, much like Factotum. my favourite story is "Emergency Room".
the major difference between Buk and Johnson's work is probably the levels of self-pity: Johnson is definitely more "down & out" than Buk.

Because people steal them from libraries.

yeah, that's what i thought at first... accept when i went up and asked for some Buk, they just gave it to me - i didn't have to issue the book right there and then, and i didn't have to furnish them with any personal information... very odd... saw some Kerouac and Ken Kesey hidden back there aswell
:rolleyes:

 

[pig ear press]

yes, it's gorgeous. it's a small collection of short stories, narrated by the same character...

I am glad to say my local library actually had it (hooray), for such a big library I struggle to find the writers I'm looking for.
This week I went looking for some of the writers mentioned on these boards and the only two out of the long list were Denis Johnson and Philip Roth. So I had to fill my bag up with 'Vernon God Little' and some Poe short stories.

I went to pay my fine (96p) and the girl told me that I didn't need to pay it straight away as you're allowed up to £10 credit, I asked if I could have cashback.

She said no.

One last thing, has anyone read 'The third Policeman' by Flann O'brien? Unsurprisingly the library didn't have it and I was considering buying it when I get paid, however they pay me peanuts so I have to plan my spending carefully (week 1-rice n beans, week 2-potatoes, week 3....)

 

[jordan]

the thrid policeman is great. i read it in grad school for a paper i was writing on bicycles. very bizarre- not like the other books dicussed in this thread. but certainly worth a read (it goes by pretty quickly).

 

[pig ear press]

Thanks Jordan. I shall be on Amazon on the 31st ready with plastic then!

 

[justine]

Finished Post Office last night in one sitting - another masterpiece!

the fun never ends... i'm off to the library on my lunch break today to get more Buk!

 

[HenryChinaski]

Ah, I remember when I first got into the madness. I started with Post Office, went to MockingBird Wish Me Luck, then to Ham On Rye.

Rubyred, don't you feel like you've discovered something so amazing that now you can't imagine what you'd be like if you hadn't discovered it?

Bukowski, was and is my salvation. It's always great to hear of somebody else who experienced what I have.

I'm sure it will become an obsession of yours, like all of the rest of us here. And boy oh boy, you're in for the ride of your life.

The next thing you'll do, after you read all the library books, is buy every single one of them yourself. Collecting Buk is addictive...and I bet you money that it'll happen to you too.

 

[Bukfan]

Amen! - and don't forget the cd's. Listening to Buk reading his poems is so much better than reading them yourself...

 

[HenryChinaski]

Exactly, man, I know I'm guilty of this, and if anybody else does the same thing, confess it here.
sometimes, I'll listen to a cd, and find the poem in a collection of poetry and follow it along in the book as buk reads it.

yeah I know, I'm really fucked up.
My favorite work to do this with is the Little Tailor, from Notes Of A Dirty Old Man. I swear to god I've read that story at least fifty times.

 

[justine]

it IS exciting to have this whole new world opened up to me... but now all i wanna do is sit around and read and talk about reading!!

i find it interesting that Buk's work gets so much abusive criticism. before i read his stuff i had heard various comments about his brutishness, misogyny and violence etc. but it's nowhere near the levels people make it out to be. i actually find him to be a really compassionate, generous character in his novels. there' that scene in Post Office where G.G. has a nervous breakdown, and Chinaski is the only one who cares or tries to help. and then when Betty ends up in hospital in an alcoholic coma, it's Chinaski who combs her hair and washes her and demands the medical staff do more for her. what kind of "nasty misogynist" behaves like that??? None that i know!!

 

[justine]

Ah, I remember when I first got into the madness. I started with Post Office, went to MockingBird Wish Me Luck, then to Ham On Rye.

Rubyred, don't you feel like you've discovered something so amazing that now you can't imagine what you'd be like if you hadn't discovered it?

Bukowski, was and is my salvation. It's always great to hear of somebody else who experienced what I have.

I'm sure it will become an obsession of yours, like all of the rest of us here. And boy oh boy, you're in for the ride of your life.

The next thing you'll do, after you read all the library books, is buy every single one of them yourself. Collecting Buk is addictive...and I bet you money that it'll happen to you too.

i'm actually an avid book-buyer, i HAVE to own the books i love. unfortunately the financial status of being a student means i can only afford
2nd-hand books, and Buk is nowhere to be found in any local stores (yes, i've already begun searching high and low!).

i love how everyone on this website is so enthusiastic and not wanky or pretentious about Buk... it's heartwarming :)
there was one other book-lovers forum i used to post on but everyone there had there head up there ass most of the time, and because i wasn't uber-erudite i basically got ignored.

i guess considering the kind of guy Buk was, it would be pretty ironic to be a literary snob AND like Buk's work ;)

 

[Bukfan]

Exactly, man, I know I'm guilty of this, and if anybody else does the same thing, confess it here.
sometimes, I'll listen to a cd, and find the poem in a collection of poetry and follow it along in the book as buk reads it.

yeah I know, I'm really fucked up.
My favorite work to do this with is the Little Tailor, from Notes Of A Dirty Old Man. I swear to god I've read that story at least fifty times.

You're not the only one who does that...;) That's the way I found out that the poem "Style" is much shorter in print than when he reads it on "Poems & insults"!
Thanks for mentioning the little tailor story, called "Short story" on the "Solid Citizen" cd. I wasn't aware it's in "Notes...". Just checked it out and found it on page 75...

 

[bug77]

Hey folks, brand new on Bukowski, I got my first book two months ago. I started with Post Office, love it! then Run with the hunted, followed by Women, now I am Septuagenarian stew, after all of these great pieces..I got to buy the DVD Born in to this and the Buk Tapes...love this change in my life...well...since I read the first book, somehow I am reading Buk everyday..at least a poem...keeps me sane in this unsane world...Glad to join this forum and share this new passion

 

[HenryChinaski]

You're not the only one who does that...;) That's the way I found out that the poem "Style" is much shorter in print than when he reads it on "Poems & insults"!
Thanks for mentioning the little tailor story, called "Short story" on the "Solid Citizen" cd. I wasn't aware it's in "Notes...". Just checked it out and found it on page 75...

actually The Little Tailor isn't on Solid Citizen. Or, at least not on mine.

actually, I forget what disc it's on. I think it might be King Of Poets.
I know he starts off by saying...

"I get very tired of poetry. Lets have a short story..." or something along those lines.