Charles Bukowski

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by hidari

..

And remember he aint no feminist.....

Truth.

[orlok]

Just noticed this other thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=187252, for anyone interested in acquiring some of Bukowski's stuff.

[Angst]

If you've seen the movie "Barfly", it was written by Charles Bukowski. Partly auto-biographical in that he based the main character on himself.

[Coops]

If you like Bukowski... then you may also enjoy some Henry Miller... but all else pales besides Céline... aah, Céline... splenetic splendour... marvellous.

Really.

Read "Death on the Installment Plan" by Céline.

As long as you're in the mood for it.

[Echase]

Originally Posted by orlok

I tried plugging his name into the literature-map tool. Have a look at the results: http://www.literature-map.com/charles+bukowski.html

I didn't know about this site...that's pretty cool!

[rkomar]

Bukowski and Al Purdy (Canadian poet) were pen-pals back in the 60's and 70's, and thought they had something in common. Purdy's writing is more "dignified" than Bukowski's, in that small-town Canadian way. Purdy's poetry is probably hard to find outside Canada, but is worth looking for if you enjoy Bukowski's poetry.

[hidari]

Celine was the godfather of this genre... read him as well, not for the fainthearted...love Miller as well....

Originally Posted by Coops

If you like Bukowski... then you may also enjoy some Henry Miller... but all else pales besides Céline... aah, Céline... splenetic splendour... marvellous.

Really.

Read "Death on the Installment Plan" by Céline.

As long as you're in the mood for it.

[John A. A. Logan]

Yes, Richard Brautigan, and Henry Miller, sometimes mining the same vein of experience as Bukowski.
John Fante, author of ASK THE DUST, is the greatest influence on Bukowski perhaps, according to Bukowski himself.
Knut Hamsun, Alexander Trocchi, Nelson Algren, come to mind also in relation to Bukowski's feral honesty/grit etc....perhaps even Dostoyevsky's NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND prefigures it all.
The apex of the lone, enduring, self-destructive "Holy Sinner" though, in literature, must be Knut Hamsun's 1890 chronicle of destitution and half-madness, HUNGER.

[hidari]

If I remember...the blurb for Notes...Tolstoy said it was Dostoyevsky's best work...... Read all of the ones you mentioned...and.... Really Love Hunger... IF there is one book to define 20th century writing that is it.... Hemingway as a big fan of it...as well as a plethora of other great early 20th Century writers........ and to finish off...my favorite Bukowski quote.....more or less paraphrased...: "It's not that I don't like people... it's just that I don't like to be around them".....

Originally Posted by John A. A. Logan

Yes, Richard Brautigan, and Henry Miller, sometimes mining the same vein of experience as Bukowski.
John Fante, author of ASK THE DUST, is the greatest influence on Bukowski perhaps, according to Bukowski himself.
Knut Hamsun, Alexander Trocchi, Nelson Algren, come to mind also in relation to Bukowski's feral honesty/grit etc....perhaps even Dostoyevsky's NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND prefigures it all.
The apex of the lone, enduring, self-destructive "Holy Sinner" though, in literature, must be Knut Hamsun's 1890 chronicle of destitution and half-madness, HUNGER.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by hidari

Start with POST OFFICE... methinks you will not regret it...

And remember he aint no feminist.....

I wasn't expecting anything else. I switched my selection for next year to Post Office on your recommendation.

[John A. A. Logan]

Originally Posted by hidari

If I remember...the blurb for Notes...Tolstoy said it was Dostoyevsky's best work...... Read all of the ones you mentioned...and.... Really Love Hunger... IF there is one book to define 20th century writing that is it.... Hemingway as a big fan of it...as well as a plethora of other great early 20th Century writers........ and to finish off...my favorite Bukowski quote.....more or less paraphrased...: "It's not that I don't like people... it's just that I don't like to be around them".....

I first heard about HUNGER and Knut Hamsun in Henry Miller's SEXUS...he mentions a relatively unknown Norwegian author who he sent a letter to after reading his work, and from whom he had a reply, in which Hamsun asked for financial assistance from Miller I think, or help in getting more American readers...some story like that...when I first read it I wasn't sure Knut Hamsun was a real author, hadn't heard of him and it had the feel of being somehow made up by Miller...but a couple of years later a friend told me he'd found a book at the library he thought i'd really like, and it was HUNGER, and I recognised Hamsun's name from the Miller story...
That Bukowski quote reminds me of Sartre's "Hell is other people"
Which in turn reminds me of what Colin Wilson in THE OUTSIDER called "the pessimistic tradition in European literature"....though he included Hemingway's short story, SOLDIER'S HOME, as an example...maybe he thought Hemingway caught the virus in WW1 France...

[hidari]

Hamsun won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920.... Unfortunately...He and Heidegger showed their dark side (Pro-Nazi) during the war which has tarnished their reputations... even Celine joined the Nazi party but, I figure he did it just to piss people off.... I mean a Doctor that basically did not like people...gotta love that one...I think some of the black literature in the early sixities in the States is also under the Celine genre... for example... Iceberg Slim...."Pimp; the story of my life" is a real pleasure..and the rappers Ice Cube and Ice Tea named themselves in honor of him....

[hidari]

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski
tags: humour
1,735 people liked it
like
“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women
tags: alcohol
1,628 people liked it
like
“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
1,607 people liked it
like
“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by hidari

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski
tags: humour
1,735 people liked it
like
“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women
tags: alcohol
1,628 people liked it
like
“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
1,607 people liked it
like
“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

Copied to my quotes file!

[John A. A. Logan]

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

I like that one best.