Bukowski and Classical Music - anyone else at a loss...

Bukowski - he drank, he wrote, he drank, he worked at a job he detested but paid the bills and let him, what, drink and write, not necessarily in that order. He was ruggedly ugly with the personality of a bull dog and the genius the likes of which we see one in a generation. Oh, and he bet on horses, every single day. Does anyone else have trouble connecting these dots to the gentile strains of Haydn and Debussy? Maybe I'm missing some Bukowski minutia - please friends, fill in this perplexing blank.

he was born in 1920, so it may be more of a generational thing.

Good point - but he would have been a teenager in late 30's, early 40's and radio ruled the world. Tons of crooners, then folk (which I believe he probably despised), rock and roll, and on and on. It's just interesting to try to rationalize such beauty against such gruff realism. But possibly he needed such an outlet to soften the pain he was so obviously in and the loneliness and despair over so much lost love. A thought.

If you view him in simplistic terms, then yeah, it doesn't fit. But there's much more to him than the drinking and gambling bit. Sure he did it, and it fit in well with the persona that he built, but I don't see that as the core of who he was. To me, the classical music fits perfectly with the more nuanced aspects of his personality.

I'm not trying to sound cryptic or condescending, but I really don't think it's something that can be easily summarized. Read enough of his poetry and you'll likely get it.

I like that; well put.

Another thing is that despite his integration, as it were, into the L.A. and hence U.S. existence - at least a part of it, I think it's fair to say that he retained a certain German identity. It's likely no coincidence that the Three B's, as he has referred to them: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, were all of German heritage and listed as among his favorites. Sorry, I can't cite a direct source, but having played in a Symphony Orchestra and having read probably a thousand of his poems, I know I read that in there somewhere.

According to Robert Sandarg in his "Classical Buk"essay:

"Bukowski's all-time, top ten classical composers would probably be, alphabetically: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, Mahler, Mozart, Shostakovich, Sibeliuis, Tchaikovsky and Wagner (with Stravinsky waiting in the wings)."

Certainly not me.
To me all this perfectly fits.

Do you mean "gentle" strains of Haydn and Debussy? The writers he admired were also hardly "popular": Dostoyevsky, Celine, Hamsun, Pound, Li Po, Catullus...Probably not the favorite reading of a "typical" "working class" ( I don't like these terms so use "") horseplaying, drinking...etc. But these are all stereotypes anyway.

I think Kalima meant "genteel."
Good point about the writers he admired being comparable to the music he loved. Just as he didn't respond much to popular music, I don't remember him reading (or commenting) much about pulp or mainstream writers. One reason he gravitated towards classical music is its relative lack of the human voice (I remember somewhere Buk talking about a classical piece of music being ruined by the human voice - maybe a Wagner piece). But it's not just the lack of the voice, otherwise jazz would have also appealed to him. I think he responded to the brooding quality of Germanic classical music, and the complex emotions it could evoke.

I would also ad Bruckner to the list...and, he was especially fond of Mahler.

Bukowski was a poet and it's well known he hated most poetry and I believe all the more so rhyming poetry, so it's not hard to fathom he hated music with lyrics.

There was a bluebird in his heart that wanted to get out.

My Dad was/is a lifelong blue collar worker (post office in fact). Younger than Bukowski by 17 years, he never cared for his generation's music either - early rock/rockabilly, doo-wop, or cool jazz never appealed to him. He preferred symphonic and chamber works of the Classical and Romantic periods. And he always revered Van Cliburn as the ultimate Cold War hero.

Wonderful replies and many thanks for clarifying some key points regarding more "Bukowski lore". It is quite logical that spending so much time wordsmithing, he would prefer music without words. It's just reading his work while listening to classical music is a rather surreal experience. Interesting, but surreal.

I don't consider it condescending at all and appreciate your viewpoint and suggestion.

So, I know he liked Beethoven and Mozart as most people do but there are two other composers he mentions a lot. One is Brahms and I'm not sure if he talks about Haydn but I could swear there was one other guy I was just thinking of the other day. and I got my Pleasures of the Damned at the place in the suburbs... so if you can help a brothah out, and shed some light on who else he really liked please do. And Please don't just say Wagner!!! I know he mentioned him a bit but there was one other guy I could swear...

thanks!

j

MAHLER was the guy that I was trying to think of!!! thanks so much for this thread!!! and pointing out a few more composers!

http://www.realbeer.com/buk/classicbuk/cb1.html

... plus this more recent one, again by Robert Sandarg.

Ever listened to Classical Music?
Didn't he write about simplicity?

http://www.realbeer.com/buk/classicbuk/cb1.html

He compared himself to Bruckner - " ...he came so close, but never hit that home run, something like me..." or something close to that. It's been awhile since I read it, but cannot recall the exact source book or poem.

Hmm, I don't really agree. Once I got into his poetry it never really struck me as surprising at all. Classical music is full of conflicting moods: brutal, dark, beautiful, sad. It compliments his work (I couldn't imagine any other music doing so) There's something fitting - dare I say poetic - in the vision of Buk bent over his typewriter in a cheap roominghouse, blaring out classical music. A long with the booze, the street tough, machoism, the love of cats, the obvious sensitivity - it all just completes the paradoxical nature of the man and his work (IMO what makes him so great)

The absence of lyrics in most classical music may have been a big factor. He had no tolerance for bad writing, and lyrics are often the worse writing around. Add the "brooding" thing (as someone pointed out), the simplicity, and the high quality of artistry, and it's easy to see why he would prefer Classical music over other forms.

Try Stravinsky
The Firebird isn't bad.

Hi all, Bukowski newby just starting to really dig in. I come at this as an aspiring writer and there is something that nobody has really touched on and it's just pure speculation on my part as to how this pertains to Mr. Bukowski.

Writing (or any kind of creative process) for some people is dependent on "opening up the flow" and tapping into the subconscious. That can be really hard to do for some people with music playing that demands attention and constantly breaks into one's thoughts. Music with words can often tend to seep into one's writing, sometimes in subliminal ways or sometimes obvious. Pop music jars and involves, and to some that is good but to some it isn't. I've found that the noisier genres of jazz does this also, and have personally found I work purest with almost ambient music or classical playing, better than with nothing playing. It can act as a focusing lens, like sonic wallpaper, that lets a person get into the creative zone. Maybe he just found something that focused him.

It seems he liked classical whether creating or not so maybe this invalidates my whole line of thought but this all just occurs to me because I like jarring noisy music 90% of the time but during the times I am trying to write or create it is always classical or something else that I can just kind of soak up without it breaking into my flow. Like I said I'm fairly new to the Bukowski world and have no idea if this has any relationship to his reality at all, but the thoughts occurred to me in an insistent enough manner as a remote possibility that they made a lurker sign up for an account! Cheers all.

P.S. I live in Minneapolis and am friends with people in the building where Factotum had it's "bike shop" segments filmed in. The building is actually anchored by a bike shop called One on One Bikes and it was years and years between when the movie was shot and when it finally came out. Matt Dillon visited the bike shop a few times and apparently was quite the friendly and "normal" dude, no pretense or star trip.

Hi sgraham! welcome to the site.
You may want to introduce yourself in the "New blood-introduce yourself" section and let us know how you got to know Bukowski, or how his writings have inspired you.

Two further reasons why Buk might have preferred classical over swing and jazz:
1. If a song has words, often the lyrics read like bad poetry. Who wants to listen bad poetry? (esp. if you are trying to compose your own poems at the same time?) I often write listening to things but I can't type and listen to talk radio. (Of course, Buk listened to music without writing also.) Also classical lieder are generally not in English, so you don't get this friction between heard words and writing your own words. As I recall, Buk wasn't fluent in any foreign languages.
2. Buk was an individualist (think of his favourite authors). I think he wanted to stand apart from the crowd, so classical music may have spoken to him as an outsider.
Just a couple of thoughts.

I'm pretty sure that Buk once stated that it was music more than the written word that sustained him through all the bullshit in life.

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist making this lame joke, but, you're a bit late, procrastinator!