Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

"I photograph and record what I see and what happens to me. I am not a guru or leader of any sort. I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it. In Europe where my work is having much luck,

various groups have put a claim on me, revolutionaries, anarchists, so forth, because I have written of the common man of the streets, but in interviews over there I have had to disclaim a conscious working relationship with them because there isn't any. I have compassion for almost all the individuals of the world; at the same time, they repulse me."--Charles Bukowski (Dougherty 1)

Taken from one of the few interviews of length that Charles Bukowski ever gave, this quotation underscores one of the primary paradoxes of his ideology: a simultaneous repugnance toward and attraction to the characters that populate his work. Perhaps he's repulsed by his characters because so many of them reflect himself and his life.

Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany on August 16, 1920, and came with his family to the United States when he was three. Bukowski had been a writer for most of his childhood, published his first story at the age of twenty-four, and his first poem at thirty-five. Although Bukowski was never really associated with Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg, or other major Beat writers, his informal style and non-conforming literary approach has endeared him to readers of the Beat genre (Dougherty 4).

Henry Chinaski was an autobiographical character that Bukowski used in four novels, as well as in many short stories and narrative poems. The main character in the movie Barfly, for example, was Henry Chinaski. This characterization is similar to Hemingway's Nick Adams, Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, or Kerouac's Jack Dulouz (or Sal Paradise). Because of the realistic, bitterly honest style of Bukowski's writing, it is difficult to tell where Henry Chinaski ends and Bukowski begins. Many people consider the character and the man to be one and the same. However, Bukowski the man and Chinaski the character are actually really different. Without a doubt, Chinaski is certainly a version of Bukowski, and they do overlap, but they are independent entities. For example, the fact that Charles Bukowski, the author, was an intense and prolific letter writer, corresponding on a regular basis with many different people, and that he personally answered nearly all mail directed toward him, contrasts greatly with the image of Henry Chinaski, the disenfranchised outsider, fiercely independent (Litkicks 1-2).

Ham on Rye, published in 1982, is basically the story of Bukowski's childhood and young adulthood,through the eyes of Chinaski. It begins with his earliest memory, that of several pairs of legs viewed from beneath a table. "The first thing I remember is being under something. It was a table, I saw a table leg. I saw the legs of the people, and a portion of the tablecloth hanging down. It was dark under there, I liked being under there. It must have been Germany. I must have been between one and two years old. It was 1922. " (Bukowski 1) Both comic and poignant, Ham on Rye is a book that focuses on three influences that had a huge impact on Bukowski's life and work. Firstly, his father's severe cruelty. "I had begun to dislike my father. He was always angry about something...Another clerk asked my mother, "Who is that horrible man?"...I liked the lady who taught kindergarten, I liked her better than my parents." (Bukowski 2)

The second influence studied throughout Bukowski's writing and most notably, Ham on Rye, was his severe, disfiguring acne, which Henry Chinaski also suffers from. "I was ashamed of my boils. At Chelsey you had a choice between gym and R.O.T.C and I chose the latter because then I didn't have to wear a gym suit so no one could see the boils on my body...They were as large as walnuts and covered my face and body...Then the boy screamed out, "Mommy, what's wrong with that man's face?" (Bukowski 55)

The third study in Bukowski's writing are his early experiences with alcohol, leading to him becoming an alcoholic. "I went from wine barrel to wine barrel. It was magic. Why hadn't somebody told me? With booze, life was great, a man was perfect, nothing could touch him." (Bukowski 45) Bukowski's other books chronicle other important pieces of his/Chinaski's history. Factotum is a 1975 novel in which Henry Chinaski gets and loses many different jobs. The plot is simple but many fans have stated that the tone is "fascinating". Chinaski's journey through different jobs is always accompanied by alcohol, sex, women, and the