Hello!
I'm fairly new to this forum, although I have browsed a few of the topics on occasion while preparing for typing out my BA thesis. And that's what I'm here to ask about (hopefully on the right sub-forum as well). I'm going to be featuring some short stories from Notes of a Dirty Old Man in my bachelor's thesis (Buk and masculinity stuff), and came to question the back-cover's claim that the stories are written either from the perspective of Chinaski or "Bukowski himself". I could of course point to a few that seem to be about Buk's life, but all the narrators in Notes are highly unreliable, and while realistic, one can't claim the topics are real, as in, they happened exactly like that. I also can't point to a single story where Chinaski is the narrator (I harshly separate Chinaski and Buk, for narratology reasons for one), so I wonder what the back-cover author was smoking at the time of writing.
So my actual question is, can anybody think of an interview or a statement from Bukowski where he talks about/disputes the autobiographical nature of Notes? Thanks very much in advance for any/all thoughts you might have!
-I
I'm fairly new to this forum, although I have browsed a few of the topics on occasion while preparing for typing out my BA thesis. And that's what I'm here to ask about (hopefully on the right sub-forum as well). I'm going to be featuring some short stories from Notes of a Dirty Old Man in my bachelor's thesis (Buk and masculinity stuff), and came to question the back-cover's claim that the stories are written either from the perspective of Chinaski or "Bukowski himself". I could of course point to a few that seem to be about Buk's life, but all the narrators in Notes are highly unreliable, and while realistic, one can't claim the topics are real, as in, they happened exactly like that. I also can't point to a single story where Chinaski is the narrator (I harshly separate Chinaski and Buk, for narratology reasons for one), so I wonder what the back-cover author was smoking at the time of writing.
So my actual question is, can anybody think of an interview or a statement from Bukowski where he talks about/disputes the autobiographical nature of Notes? Thanks very much in advance for any/all thoughts you might have!
-I