hi everyone. new to the forums. (1 Viewer)

i just registered and am excited to be a part of this community. it's good to know that there is a website specifically devoted to my favorite author. i am a bukowski fanatic just like the rest of you.

it all started when my buddy introduced me to "hot water music", and i read a few of his short stories. then the few turned into ten. then twenty. then before i knew it, i finished the book. for some reason i felt very depraved after finishing that book. there was nothing to do next.

a week later i bought another book of his ("ham on rye"). i finished that within a week. every minute of free time was concentrated on that novel. then in the next week came "post office". and then all the weeks following that was etc. etc. etc. i couldn't stop myself. my week was useless without reading the next book of his. i have read all of his novels, and short stories, except "pulp", and most of his poems. mostly because i just don't have that much of an interest in poetry in general.

what turned me on to bukowski was his simplicity approach (less is more), and his ability to make the most mundane activity seem intriguing. i write screenplays out here in los angeles, and i read his material to help with writing a scene. my aim isn't to imitate his work, but rather for his work to educate me. i have already learned a lot from his writings and as a result, have become so much more comfortable with my own work. to me, perfection isn't desired, and shouldn't be desired. i read one person's post on here where he stated that bukowski taught him to just write whatever comes to mind, and that single post alone encouraged me to join this community because i think that statement reflects the attitude of this forum.

anyways, enough already. i look forward to reading your posts and conducting my own.
 
Welcome, and don't take it personally when we talk shit about Hollywood and screenwriters. ;)
 
when you read a lot of buk very quick, as im sure we all do

"i read everything in a month!"

do you find it difficult to go back then and say what each specific book was about, or does it all blend into a haze of fights and women and horses and filth and life?

obviously some stories stick out more than others... but if you pound them all back to they just combine?

i ask because i went through a period in which i gobbled everything up, and now i find myself going back and re-reading everthing slower.
kinda like in Short Circut.
 
Melissa Sue said:
...i went through a period in which i gobbled everything up, and now i find myself going back and re-reading everthing slower.
I suppose that within a year of first reading Bukowski I had read everything in print and started looking for the older, out of print things. That could be considered gobbling it all up, and I would guess that it's not an uncommon story among people here.

And yes, it does tend to blend together when you do that. I find the individual poems in the posthumous books kind of blend together while I'm reading the book...if I take it in large bites. And I usually can't help but take them in large bites.

But going back and rediscovering the gems is what makes you really appreciate Bukowski, and understand that it wasn't all about "fights and women and horses and filth," but went much deeper.

I still haven't read everything (has anyone?), and that's what keeps it all interesting, and will continue to keep it interesting long after Ecco puts out the last book of "new" poems.
 
mjp said:
But going back and rediscovering the gems is what makes you really appreciate Bukowski, and understand that it wasn't all about "fights and women and horses and filth," but went much deeper.

exactly. and sometimes it's hard for me to read them slow, because some of them are so deep it's almost painful.

this happened also with me and cummings this week ~ i read the complete works in high school, and have just now started digging through the poems again, and i feel my mind's been blown by some of them. (i know everyone's got mixed feelings on cummings though so i wont go any further than that!)

but for me it could also be an age thing i guess ~ reading a lot back when i was full of piss and vinegar, and now coming back to the stories with a different mind. and they're better for different reasons.
 
B liked cummings, or so he claimed here and there:
"I liked the way he placed his words on the page. He had a painter's eye, a gambler's eye. Others try it, it doesn't work. There was a joy, and a rareness in the way he placed the word."
Reach for Sun, 249.

or [I liked cummings]

when he didn't get too too fucking cute
, Screams, 188.

but he also put him down somehow:
"Sure, old friend, I've read Pound and Eliot and Cummings and I can toss the words fancy, see here: the spathic lameness of reverie in metempirical phrases is the catch-crotch of the high bulgarians, and I am the last to blot or censure the mystery and high-dove go of the language, it is simply that coming out of the slaughterhouses and whorehouses wilted and impugned with foretaste, -the placenta must go, and the intortion and the divine bullshit, and also... the eunuchs, the civets, the cloisters of footmen, the lavender founts, oblique sirens, everything dastardly sirrocco and weeping must go,"
Beerspit... 95-96.
 
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Melissa Sue said:
when you read a lot of buk very quick, as im sure we all do

"i read everything in a month!"

do you find it difficult to go back then and say what each specific book was about, or does it all blend into a haze of fights and women and horses and filth and life?

obviously some stories stick out more than others... but if you pound them all back to they just combine?

i ask because i went through a period in which i gobbled everything up, and now i find myself going back and re-reading everthing slower.
kinda like in Short Circut.

yes, it does all seem like one big scene at times, especially books like "post office" where the pace is so frantic and abrupt. but his short story collections are good for me because i can always go back to a story i forgot about. i've been going back to "south of no north" recently to reread some of the gems in there.
 
don't have time tonite to read slow or - for that matter to read at all - digestion of the material is my method of choice - seldom do the gastro-thing with other poets but charles bukowski resonates - rings true like a really hard woman and hangs in much the same way as a pair of trailer hitch testicles...'he's got balls' to para-phrase a (used to be ) popular ad -

rrat
 
Welcome
At first I thought everyone on this forum was an asshole..(freaking know it alls) then I realized I was the asshole (freaking jealous snot).
If you like Buk this is the place.
I am amazed that there is always something new and fresh to discuss or read.
Enjoy!
 
Jimmy Snerp
i like 'assholes' - they perform a very useful (needed) biological function - bukowski was like the 'book on biology' human that is - he connected us 'anus apretures' to the 'brain' and did so while including nature's smaller in stature (but not in numbers) creatures - when you read in the 'classes' and 'societal' material...well - i just enjoy the truths and word choices the likes of bukowski delivered - i do read other poets and writers of all manner and styles - bukowski simply sat down to shit a bit different than...say a robert pinsky...and/or other poets goverment appointed.

vinden pacific
rrat
 
I just joined and first read all my Bukowski books a little over 20 years ago I think. Just started re-reading South of no North today. My favorite author and glad to see a site for him.
 

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