German authors similar to or influenced by Buk? (2 Viewers)

Hey all. I studied modern languages at university, but I don't get a chance to use them often and I feel my brain rusting inside my skull.

So I have recently vowed to read more in German. I notice that there are some deutschsprachige Leute here in the Forum, and I'm hoping you can help me out.

I'm looking for some German speaking writers that are similar to Bukowski - new or old, doesn't matter. Any recommendations?

Thanks.
 
Similar is difficult, but of course there are or were quite a lot influenced by him. It was the German scene which (at least in the beginning) enabled him to live as a writer. He really made it big here/there.

Try Järg Fauser, he also interviewed B. for the German Playboy in the late 70s (it's somewhere here in the forums, I believe) and was quite a character. Also the biggest or most famous one of them all.

Then there are Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Nicolas Born, Wolf Wondratschek and Christoph Derschau, all poets, all influenced to some extent, I'd say. Although especially Derschau might be hard to get nowadays. Sort of disappeared.
 
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Funny, Pessimist's question sent me thinking about influence in the OTHER direction: German poets who might have been an inspiration to Buk. But I can't think of ONE mention by Bukowski of a German poet. Maybe Roni if he reads this can set us straight. Of course Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in the German Philosophy Department, but poets OR prose writers? NICHTS!
I often think of filmmakers Herzog and Fassbinder as being most like Buk.
Trakl, Holderlin perhaps the mad German poet tradition.

And German/Austrian music perhaps biggest influence: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf...
And lest we forget Germany's greatest cultural contribution to world civilization: BIER!
 
Herzog and Bukowski met each other, isn't it...

I was also thinking of Trakl, I think he was Austrian, not sure though, haven't read him for years but he is not forgotten. Everybody needs to read Georg Trakl! Me too again.

Just googled Trakl, found a translated poem:

Delirium


The black snow runs down from the rooftops;
A red finger dips into your brow;
Blue snow flakes sink into the empty room,
They are a lovers' dying mirrors.
Heavy and torn to pieces the mind muses,
Follows the shadow in the mirror of blue snow flakes,
The cold smile of a deceased harlot.
The evening's wind weeps in the scent of carnations.

Georg Trakl
 
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Johannes' recommendations are right.
These were all cats, who were influenced by Buk much before he came well know here. Some also were friends of Carl Weissner (that's Fauser and Derschau - and it was Derschau who invited Buk for his famous reading in Germany!).

David, I think Mr. Pinkgnome can name one German auther who influenced Buk.
;-P

David + Ponder:
Trakl (and Hälderlin) are great poets, with a dark depressive attitude. But I can't see Buk liking them, for the language they use is too pathetic to fit his tastes.


Not really 'like' Bukowski in style, but interesting to read is another Austrian (yes, Trakl was Aussie):
Thomas Bernhard. (When Robert Sandarg discovered him, he read all of his books right away. I'm not SUCH a huge fan. But try him, he's alright.)
 
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Trakl is Austrian, yeah, born and raised in Salzburg, my town. His birth-house is here, sign outside, and, a museum now. I believe. I've never been in there. Was a drug addict and had an incestuous relationship with his sister, it's rumored. I was always scared by his big nostrils:

tr1909.jpg


Thomas Bernhard is an interesting, but completely other matter altogether. Everybody seems to like him after discovering, and he is fascinating indeed, in person and in work, although I always found him more fascinating as a (media)person. Famed for the endless sentences of his later novels (pages and pages and pages long), mostly monologues by "Outsiders" (outside of everything), ranting against everybody and everything, hitting again and again against the catholic church, the Austrian state, socialism, stupidity of mankind, darkness all around us, death is near, death is everything, the coldness, the illness, the malady ... etc.

He really made it somehow, producing the picture of being a strange philosophical media hating reclusive and at the same time being in all the media all the time for his scandals, processes ... etc. Biggest with "Heldenplatz", a play about Austrias Nazi-past. The "Heldenplatz" is in Vienna, Hitler marched in and let himself be praised there for "connecting" Austria to Germany in '38. Until into the early 90`s the official Austrian version was, that Hitler took us over as the first victim of his madness, we had no chance, didn't wanted (of course) ... etc. Truth is different, Hitler was Austrian, people stood there praising and screaming for him without somebody putting a gun to their heads.

Bernhards play shook that up and it was HUGE scandal. Shortly after that he died, being sick in one way or other for almost all of his life.

He really is the post-war-literature in Austria up to this day.


bernhard.jpg


Thomas Bernhard
 
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hes quite fascinating this Thomas bernhard, have some video footage from him where hes praising schopenhauer and kant as the real original fools(jokes) in philosophy - all others are just plagiators.....- really an unique figure, though, hard to read i find...

joerg fauser is the nearest to hank i guess, if he only hadnt hit that truck so hard, coming home drunk from the bar...
 
I read Bernhard's Concrete and thought it was very good.
english translation, of course.

I'll look for some Fauser, thanks for the heads up.
 
hes quite fascinating this Thomas bernhard, have some video footage from him where hes praising schopenhauer and kant as the real original fools(jokes) in philosophy - all others are just plagiators.....-

Yes, that's a famous saying, he always stated that when he wanted to laugh he'd had to read Schopenhauer or another of the great pessimistic/nihilistic philosophers.
 
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Recht schänen Dank an alle!

If you think of any more, let me know. I'm also interested in the contemporary German lit scene - prose in particular.
 
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sad but true roni - they all just want to entertain, to be funny, to make us laugh- no space for "pessimistic" thinking and writing anymore - mostly because there are just tv-babys as readers available, i guess..

----
gern geschehen, Pessimist.
 
Nope - there is light on the end of the tunnel try this two german rookies :

Clemens Meyer and André Pilz - they nailed the words on the pages in the tradition of
Bukowksi and Irvine Welsh !
 
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Johannes' recommendations are right.
These were all cats, who were influenced by Buk much before he came well know here. Some also were friends of Carl Weissner (that's Fauser and Derschau - and it was Derschau who invited Buk for his famous reading in Germany!).

Roni, when Buk was in Europe there was a fan called "Son Of Bukowski". I believe there's a pic of him in "Shakespeare...", where he's wearing a Buk T-shirt. Was that Fauser?
 
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