More criticism of Bukowski... (1 Viewer)

[Olaf]

I love Bukowski but I also enjoy reading people that tear him apart, largely because for a long time I couldn't see past Bukowski. I still love his writing - all it's nuts and bolts fuck-it-lets-dance-posturing-and-flummery - but I liked the fact some people could make his armour rust just that little bit.


This girl make some valid points critising Bukowski and his Persona, but she also concedes his qualities quite succinctly at the end: http://www.flim.com/flim/index.html?20050219

This guy shows no mercy and attacks Bukowski for being superficial teenage jerk-off writer, glorifying alcholism and deadbeat stupidity, while trying to pass off pat-ball prose as something literary. You guys here on Buk.net will love this, you will want to tear him apart, he has a myspace (the bitch, how dare he be so fucking trendy) and he even writes for trendy little magazines and does comedy shows around the U.S. what we he know about the Grand Poetic Lonelienss!...*cringe* - http://www.bobanddavid.com/talent.asp?artID=99

have fun reading them.
I prefer the first one.
The second one is nasty and bitter (perhaps a parody, haha, and not very good) :D :D

 

[Bukfan]

Ahh, Olaf, you always liked to provoke and criticize Buk. - you...you...attention seeker you...:D

 

[Olaf]

Not at all - I just like all sides of the Story.

No attention seeking here. If this was real-dimensional life. It would be good chat nothing more nothing less.

Sure, I like to play Devils Avocado, it stimulates some good reaction, some food for thought, and spins our notions on their head. What did you make of the crit?

we rarely
look for that
which does not
support our view :confused:

 

[Bukfan]

Well, Olaf. I can see some of the points the first one makes. He's not totally negative but the second is just pure negativety. Nothing to learn from him...

edit:...you...you...Devils Avocado (yum-yum) :D

 

[Eldragon]

I heard from somebody somewhere that he wasn't as bad of an alocholic that he claimed to be. Also, that his stories were stolen from the guy named 'Kid Red.'

The truth is usually somewhere in between?

 

[wayne]

Can that be book store RED?somewere in between like between a rock and a hard place?not much room there. anyway find out more about this Kid Red

 

[bospress.net]

Kid Red Was Red Strange. The bookstore owner was Shalom Red Stodolsky. They were different people. There have been rumors about Red Strange being behind some of the stories. Maybe, maybe not, but it would not seem unfair to hear a story by a charismatic hobo and decide to rewrite it and build around that in your story. I suppose that is fiction....

Bill

 

[Bukfan]

Buk mentions Red Strange in The Buk Tapes. He says that he got some stories from Red which he used in his writings. That's quite normal for writers to use stuff they hear. You can't call it "stealing"...

 

[jordan]

paul f tompkins is usually really funny- i've seen him do standup a bunch of times, and i think he's great in mr. show and the tencious d tv show. i read this article when bobanddavid.com first posted it, and i thought it was dumb. usually his comedy revolves around picking out some thing he doesn't like and ranting about it for a long time, and the humor comes from how into hating this seemingly trivial thing he gets. this just wasn't funny, but i may just think that because he's recycling the same argument that everyone who doesn't like bukowski seems to put forth. i can guarantee you, though, that if you sent him a myspace message about it, his first response would be, "you care what i think?"

 

[Digney in Burnaby]

Kid Red Was Red Strange. The bookstore owner was Shalom Red Stodolsky. They were different people. There have been rumors about Red Strange being behind some of the stories. Maybe, maybe not, but it would not seem unfair to hear a story by a charismatic hobo and decide to rewrite it and build around that in your story. I suppose that is fiction....

Bill

There's a NOLA Express story by Buk that has he and this Red going into the hills of L.A. to visit some "bums", guys who were so far outside the system they wouldn't even visit "The Mission" for handouts, just go there for the garbage left over. Anyway, I guess we'd call them "street people" now, lots of them these days camping in the few green areas left in this urban landscape. (As the green foliage grows over the hiding gets better.)

The Notes From a Dirty Old Man entry (NOLA #93, 1971) begins: Up and over the Pasadena Freeway, to the east of it, that is, overlooking the works are these hills, and on these hills that run down a long slope are trees, grass and men.

Buk's initial description of Red goes: Red was a funny guy. He lived with great precaution, carrying steel, always on the alert. It was his training on the road; he'd seen men killed and mutilated out there. He was like an animal, an intelligent animal, but there was fear too -- yet he did mix it with humor and knowledge so it wasn't so difficult to take.

I don't think this has been collected but I could be wrong there. Couldn't find it in the original Erections or South of No North. Maybe something later, I dunno.

 

[Olaf]

I sent him a message and he replied:

I feel compelled to remind you that I was writing a humorous essay. Although perhaps I am informing you rather than reminding you.

What a cheeky prick! hahah.

I just said - ah, yes, I suspected you were writing nonsense. cheers.

 

[wayne]

Thanks now I know about RED,Shit for years all I did was read the Buk, not ask questions and look for the next good thing to read.With this site I can look back into the times I had questions,and get some real feed back. thanks

 

[vodka]

i like this:

First of all, poetry is an embarrassing art form and is only really done well once every hundred years or so, and Bukowski was no cummings.

???

 

[Olaf]

Acorrding to the writer it was a humourous essay....so maybe he was only joking.

Personally, I think he might mean that poetry is the most embarassing form because generally it shows people at their most private and personal and sentimental. And what private life is not utimately emabrassing? Oddly enough, this is why I like poetry very much, it shows people at their most vulnerable, their most idealistic, their most laughable. :p

 

[vodka]

i enjoy poetry for those reasons also. i particularly like to get a look inside people's minds. maybe i should be a therapist? but yah, everyone knows bukowski had his fair share of critics. he knew it too. i think really when you find something that works for you or something you can identify with it speaks to you in ways it might not speak to others. that guy just obviously didn't get it. and i'm cool with that. he doesn't really strike me as the sort of guy who needs to.

jen

 

[Ninjerk]

didn't bukowski credit cummings as influencing his poetry? or was that someone else I read that credited him with it...?

 

[Bukfan]

wasn't it from cummings Buk got the idea only to use small letters, as he does in Notes.. and in Erections...?

 

[Erik]

Acorrding to the writer it was a humourous essay....so maybe he was only joking.

Personally, I think he might mean that poetry is the most embarassing form because generally it shows people at their most private and personal and sentimental. And what private life is not utimately emabrassing? Oddly enough, this is why I like poetry very much, it shows people at their most vulnerable, their most idealistic, their most laughable. :p

Don't agree with this. Poetry turned "personal & sentimental" (wishy washy) in the 18th & 19th century. But for centuries before that poetry had been written in forceful, humorous, serious, clear cut, and other unsentimental ways. Homer, Lucretius, Virgil, Dante, Villon, Guthrie, whoever. This sentimental thing about modern poetry IS embarrassing when it takes over the whole scene. yuck.

 

[Olaf]

poetry had been written in forceful, humorous, serious, clear cut, and other unsentimental ways

Sure, poetry has always been comprised of these elements, and that has nothing to do with being wishy washy! Sentimentality does not exclude - force, humour, seriousness, clear cut or fierce poetry.

There all aspects of poetry and the personal

Poetry is poitical ideology, social commentary, play with language for its own sake, flummery. But what I mean is that, in a very real sense, an unwitting autobiography.

a kind of diary