if you like bukowski... (1 Viewer)

hoochmonkey9 said:
I like De Niro and all (probably the best actor of his generation), but Mitchum was faaaar more menacing in the role. And if you want of the most menacing performances of all time, watch Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter.
Click to expand...

Yeah, "Love and Hate"...Mitchum takes it, hands down.
 
My list:

Dostoyevski (Notes)
Fante (all of it)
Ray Carver (almost anything)
Hamsun (Hunger)
cummings (Enormous Room)
Jeffers (Rock & Hawk)
Al Purdy (Collected Poems if you can find it)
Hemingway (your choice)
Celine (Journey)

and as a wildcard I'll throw in "Hell" by Henri Barbusse...
also "Bar Scotch" by New Orleans street poet Everette Maddox.
 
T. Coraghessan Boyle...very different but has a similarly sardonic sense of humor and a similarly honest kind of insight into things.
 
i'm also a fan of t.c. boyle
and recommend his novels

another author not yet mentioned
tom robbins
has written an impressive collection
of amusing and thought provoking novels
 
Daniil Kharms sounds like a terrorist, or someone who is stealing tech support jobs from hard working Americans, but your blog is good. You should post something here.
 
If You like the humanist in Buk, The Human Comedy by William Saroyan is a must-read. This little book is so raw and unfiltered, it will aim straight for Your heart and make no prisoners on its way.
 
Ask the Dust, by John Fante is a great book. The Neon Bible was written by J.K. Toole, who wrote A confederacy of dunces, and it's a very good novel, in spite of being written at the age of 15. I'd recommend you to read a Spanish book, but I don't know if it has ever been translated into English. That's as pity because its one of my favourite books, it's called El Camino (The Way) and its author is Miguel Delibes.
 
Willie Vlautin - especially his latest - Lean on Pete

Strindberg's Days of Loneliness

Hamsun for sure - check out one of his lesser-known works, Shallow Soil
 
I haven't read A LOT of Buk's work yet and I'm not sure if you like Bukowski if you'd necessarily like these other authors but two of my favorite are:

Chuck Klosterman
and
Chuck Palahniuk
 
I have read books by both of them and can't say they reminded me of Bukowski at all. What similarities do you see between them?
 
I guess I should have clarified.
I don't really see any similarities at all (or minimal at best).
I guess the point that I was trying to making was:

I love Bukowski.
I love Klosterman/Palahniuk.
There has to be a reason why I love all 3 authors.
I guess I thought that if I love all 3, others may like all 3?
I may be reaching here. haha.
 
Stay away from the Fjodor D, he maybe great, but his Booring.
If you want reality i the same ballpark as Bukowski and a sense of humour that is unlike Bukowskis, Try Franz Kafka. I'm a fan of prose/poetry so Kafka's writing feels kinda at home.
 
A lot of what I'd recommend has already been said, such as the early Hemingway short stories, Sherwood Anderson, William Saroyan, Celine, and Hamsun, but there are a few others.

Firstly, W.C. Heinz. I won't comment, just read this, it's less than two pages long:

Death of a Racehorse

http://www.bloodhorse.com/pdf/DeathofaRacehorse_Heinz.pdf

And how about Frederick Exley, in particular his novel A Fan's Notes? Very different stylistically, but I think if you appreciate some of the humour and themes in Buko, you'll like Exley's semi-autobiographical novel on alcoholism, football, and his time spent in a mental institution (among other things).
 
Ask the Dust by John Fante, of course.... Henry Miller's Black Spring and Tropic of Capricorn....
but something no one would think of, something quite natural and poetic and unpretentious in its own right,
is The First Third by Neal Cassady, a one-time acquaintance of Hank as mentioned in his writings, and of course made famous
and infamous by the overrated Jack Kerouac.
 
Have you read any of Philip K Dick's non-SF novels? Mary and the Giant, Confessions of a Crap Artist, The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, etc. I was quite impressed with those. I think they're all in print now (some of them, perhaps even all of them, weren't published until after his death). Supposedly he always wanted to be taken seriously as a 'proper' author. Not that his SF stuff isn't to be taken seriously.
 
There are two ways to answer that. First to mention writers who wrote like Bukowski, influenced him or dealt with similar subject matter. Then there are the authors who were completely different stylistically and whom he sometimes even slagged off publicly, but you find fringe "counterculture" people who are into Buk often appreciate. You can't go wrong with Mailer and especially Henry Miller, probably my favorite author. Mailer is too Harvard intellectual and Miller too philsophical and romantic for B., but they fit the bill if you're looking for some old fashioned hardboiled masculine firepower. Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson if you're into drugs and head trips. Strangely the guys Bukowski probably has the most in common with are the old Zen/Taoist Chinese and Japanese poets. We know he dug Li Po. Also check out Han Shan, Ryokan, Ikkyu and Issan. A lot of similarities: Simplicity, earthiness, melancholy, the hermit hiding from the world perspective, and of course the love of Wine. In a way Bukowski was very Zen, even if he would never admit it. There's a great anthology called "The Poetry of Zen" that I recommend if you're into that sort of thing.
 
I havn't yet read Pan by Hamsun, but heard 'Hunger', via audio, which I liked very much. Not that audio books are great but my hands were busy and I really got into it. The reading lasted 6-7 hours.
 
Hamsun's 'Hunger' was made into a very good movie. It's on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GDH9KA/?tag=charlebukowsa-20

Hunger.jpg
 
Bukowski always referred to Fante, Celine, Hamsun and Dostoevsky as his influences so maybe start with those. He also mentioned Jeffers and McCullers a lot (his tribute poem to McCullers is great). I'd throw in Raymond Carver, Hubert Selby JR and maybe some Hunter S. Thompson too.
Hank was one of a kind, of course, but these writers would probably appeal to most of his readers.
 
I picked up candy bars by gerald locklin the other day for a buck plus shipping on amazon.
It was also autographed /100 which was a nice bonus.
I think there is definitely some buk influence in his writing but he still maintains his own style a good nice short read though.
 

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