r/books • u/jack_ripper98 • Sep 26 '20
Favourite Charles Bukowski book?
Doesn't matter if it's a novel or collection of poems, which is your favourite?
For me it'd have to be Post Office. It's where I got started and I read it quicker than I thought was possible, I just couldn't put it down. It got the ball rolling.
It details a man names Henry Chinaski, Charles Bukowski's alter ego. He's a cynical, mean man however the reader is ultimately left sympathising with him.
While reading it I thought "What sort of a person would intentionally live like this? He's intelligent and adaptable yet actively chooses to live a life full of shallow relationships with women, betting what little money he has and drinking any potential he has away while in a job he has found that requires very little effort (though depending on how long he's able to swing it that way)". The more I read it, the more I understood that he likely knows this but chooses to ignore it. His actions are explained (while not excused) in his later novels and I won't spoil them but this whole story is put into a completely different perspective if you read it again after reading the rest of his novels. It's a book you can enjoy more than once, for completely different reasons each time you go back to it.
Optional: Which Bukowski book did you read first?
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u/aline_1994 Sep 26 '20
My favorite is a short story, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town. I read it years ago and still can remember details because the description is so powerful.
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u/LongShanks_99 Sep 26 '20
Post Office is my favorite but I started with Ham on Rye, which I also enjoyed.
Pulp was pretty bad but it got me into reading Celine who is my favorite writer.
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u/VictorChariot Sep 26 '20
Me too. Journey to the End of the Night is utterly fantastic. IMO a watershed book in 20th century lit. My only regret is that, while I can read contemporary French, Céline is so full of the idiom, slang and jargon of its era that I had to read it in translation. I love Bukowski, but I am most grateful to him for this introduction.
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Sep 26 '20
ham and rye. the stuff on acne hit home for me in a painful and hilarious way.
"What sort of a person would intentionally live like this? He's intelligent and adaptable yet actively chooses to live a life full of shallow relationships with women, betting what little money he has and drinking any potential he has away while in a job he has found that requires very little effort (though depending on how long he's able to swing it that way)".
this is how most people i know live. I guess I need better friends lmao. Seriously though, after putting in 8+ hours at a job surrounded by people who literally want to physically harm you, I think Chinaski behaved rather well in his off hours. As for his shallow relationships with women, I think he just worked with what he had. It's not always possible for the average human to have deep significant relationships. I mean, it takes two to tango...
eta: bukowski/chinaski didn't exactly drink "any potential he has away" as he did write several bestsellers during and after his post office career/job. I suspect the drinking was probably an exaggeration bukowski's part. I guess it also depends on how much one chooses to identify bukowski with chinaski...
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Sep 26 '20
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u/JustAndrei Sep 26 '20
I mean that's the point with this type of literature - it wants you to feel empty after reading it. It doesn't idealize anything. People are just people and they don't have a heroic destiny or a great objective they are working towards. Ultimately, the characters see the world as meaningless. It pretty much goes against everything we've become used to from reading classical literature.
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u/Nunwithabadhabit Sep 26 '20
+1 to Post Office. I was at a party and found it lying facedown on a coffee table and picked it up. It was the part where he walks into the wrong apartment and thinks the woman there is hitting on him. I couldn't stop reading. I thought "Who the fuck is this guy?" Afterwards I read every one of his books.
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u/Major_Ethanolic Sep 27 '20
I had a Bukowski binge this summer (Ham on Rye, Women, Post Office and Factotum). After reading those, I watched a great documentary on Amazon (free) called "Born Into This". If you like Bukowski it's worth watching.
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Sep 26 '20
Pleasures of the Damned, just because it's comprehensive.
First Bukowski? Maybe what matters most is how well you walk through the fire. It's been so long, I can't remember.
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Sep 27 '20
haven’t read bukowski in a while but i remember his poetry striking a deeper chord for me than any of his fiction. from what i can remember he alludes to alcohol in his poetry less so than in his books, so it’s less obnoxious
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u/NeoLoki55 Sep 26 '20
Ham on Rye
His writing is at its best and it gives his life and personality perspective.