He sometimes refers to the "bottom" as being a place where he hoped to find "real" men - and the belief he would find some integrity, most times what he learned the hard way, was the place he was looking for didn't really exist. That he sought solace and security in his cheap rooms, for me is a continuance of the only comfort he found at home - his room, especially after a beating.
Many beaten, battered women maintain the capacity and the desire to comfort their children, even if it is done secretly, that is absent for Bukowski. Often the scene where he turns and hits his father is discussed, but for me it's the part where his mum screams at him, then attacks him, scratching and tearing his face, he doesn't retaliate but goes to his room, the next day when asked about it, he says "some woman did it".
I think throughout, there is a definite fear of intimacy, "entrapment" for him with women. Time and again he rejects relationships which border on
normalcy, with a good get out clause of "she was crazy", "she was a whore".
You see this in Factotum with Gertrude, seemingly normal, decent girl, she is beautiful, she makes it clear she likes him,
he dates her once or twice then orchestrates a split "love is for real people" " I hate them".
The misogyny label is wrong, there is no pathological hatred of women, chauvinism yes. But there is for me, definite damage to him by his grim home life and his relationship with his mother, that follows him well into adulthood and his mistrust of women.
I like the poem Cancer where you see him and his mum finally agreeing on where the madness lay in their family (the father).
I can find very little on his mum or her incarceration or how it affected him. But it's interesting.
I like the quote in the interview with Douglas Howard for Grapevine 1975 - in Sunlight Here I Am, pg 119
GV: I wanted to ask you about Women
CB: Women? oh boy I know all about them. I've been on the earth fifty-four years and I've lived with many of them.
GV: Do you...
CB: What the hell are they?
I think the second answer is more accurate for him.:)
Sorry I've veered away a bit from the insanity theme.