Describing Buk to some who has never read? (1 Viewer)

I just had a rather frustrating conversation with a "friend" of mine.

He wikipedia'd (verb, now?) Bukowski because I mentioned I was listening to some readings and he went off like this:

James: hi, im chuck, im gunna say im a nazi, am i different enough?
James: hey, im a bastard child, am i edgy enough
James: im an alcoholic, fuck you
James: i dont write for anyone
James: buy my books
James: fuck you, you dont get it
James: *dies of cancer*

That's an exact excerpt from the AIM conversation.


He's never read a single word of Buk.



How does one approach this?
I found it entirely frustrating.
 
You really should be able to see this conversation.

He just said Berkeley teaches Bukowski because it wants to be edgy.


I don't know why I'm bothering.
 
Wow, he's nailed it. He needs to find a good literary agent now.
 
yeah, you cannot win with these people. Best to write the "friend" off. Not because he hates Bukowski, but because he delights in annoying you. That is what gets his rocks off. These relationships never work as he will always say whatever he can to bother you. Part of the frustration is that he is ignorant, and does not care. If he had read him and did not like him, it would be one thing.

It is like being a hardcore liberal and having a hardcore right wing friend. Every conversation turns to politics, where your friend calls you a pinko commie tree-hugger. It gets old after a while.

This advice comes from a liberal who used to hang around some right wingers before I realized that they got joy in insulting my thinking without considering it. I though that they were heartless and they thought that I was stupid. Frankly, I would rather be thought of as being heartless...

Bill
 
Well, for someone who has it all figured out, like your friend James does, Bukowski probably isn't right for him anyways. Buk is for all of us that don't know why the world is the way it is or which end is up, & need something to help us make it to another dawn.

Tell him to try wikipedia-ing Ayn Rand...seems more his speed.
 
He just said Berkeley teaches Bukowski because it wants to be edgy.

Anybody who teaches Buk "just to be edgy" doesn't really get him in the first place. And I'm probably not alone in thinking Buk would spit from the grave upon anyone like that.

I think of Buk as a grumpy paperboy who tosses his view of life upon our porch for us to peruse. Doesn't come up to our door to make us read it. Just puts it out there for us to see. Doesn't care if we don't like it, but inwardly appreciates us when we do.

I never started reading Buk to be edgy. I read him because he was easy to read and it grew into a guilty pleasure. My Lutheran upbringing would have been appalled at his novels that I've read. But sometimes you need to see the world without a sugar coating. Buk does that for me.
 
I think of Buk as a grumpy paperboy who tosses his view of life upon our porch for us to peruse. Doesn't come up to our door to make us read it. Just puts it out there for us to see. Doesn't care if we don't like it, but inwardly appreciates us when we do.
Definitely. I see him in a similar light.

James has since revoked his opinion because he realized he had no idea what he was talking about.

Also, I lol'd (literally) at the Ayn Rand suggestion. Nice.
 
I once try introducing Buk to a college "writers" group I unfortuantly belonged to. I read them a chapter from "Women" and the poems "dinosauria, we" and "The Bluebird". They liked the poems, but "not so much" the prose.

We then went into a discussion about the works of Jodi Proccult.
 
We then went into a discussion about the works of Jodi Proccult.
Jodi PICOULT
She is the new Nora Roberts/Danielle Steele... there is one thing that surprised me about her though-and no, I've not read her-but she wrote a book based around a comic/graphic novelist and actually includes segments of the characters work throughout the novel. It sorta' cracked me up to picture these suburban housewives reading this book and getting to the comic book part of it. I'm sure more than one skipped through it. CRB:)
 

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