Psyche Inference & Projection (1 Viewer)

Dugpish

Dugpish

I have always wondered about the embellishment of Buk, by himself & of himself, I mean, because his "fans" seem to have elevated him to an Apex Predator Of Some Kind of Deep Truth, so a kind of monster was created, either through choice or deliberate accident. Basic psyche analysis can evaluate accurately an over-compensation in some areas, a skewed perception in others, yet at the core there seems to be a patheticism: a "take what you can get while you can get it" kinda stink that permeates most of his writings. I guess the only person who truly knows the validity of his self-projection languishes beneath the ground for several decades now. All else is conjecture, after all.

But it has always interested me: identification with sour protagonists has always been a recurring theme with me, yet my self-humility prevents me from "fan-boy" fawning, or aggrandizing. But I digress...

Buk has himself admitted to some level of self-embellishment, or rather a blurring of realities. I think it can be agreed upon that he was a hugely insecure person & that this internal gaze in early years manifested into an integral drive in later years. There is a lot of bravado inherent in his conquestial tone, which is often mistaken for misogyny. But he redeems this with an at times, searing self-effacing brutality. This maybe what drew various vaginal endeavours his way, mid-career, before it all got a bit silly with groupies & shit in later years. I draw parallels with Charles Manson, as both men severely lacked in certain, supposed skillsets, yet both were able to amass an insane amount of female attention, incongruent with accepted societal norms of attraction & "success". And both men tended to "play to the gallery" when others were present. (I fully expect others to resent my comparison, but that's ok in that it is mine, and mine alone.) There is no doubt that certain events or "dalliances" unfolded and were "artistically represented", solidified in history by literary inclusion. But part of me can't help but ponder over the fictional additions....

Reputation gathers followers & detractors alike, but in terms of "truthful representation" is it more valid to admit to failings & subterfuge rather than present an accurate, honest projection to the world around & risk ridicule?. It all depends upon agenda & I struggle with most writers in this regard: those who use their personal lives & interpretations as a jumping-off point will always favour drama over substance??

Does any of this strike a chord with anyone, or am I just drunken rambling on The Internets?
 
Maybe instead of springing immediately into defensiveness and shouting clique! you should consider the lack of response to be an act of kindness.

I suspect that no one wanted to hurt your feelings by drawing attention to the fact that you'd written a lot of pointless gibberish and accidentally hit the "Post thread" button, so they just didn't say anything.
 
Interesting theory, yet tellingly assumptive.

I understand what is built here and in no way need to or want to undermine it in any way. I have interacted with dozens of similar endeavours all bearing the same hallmark of iconic fallacy. And yet I find it interesting still, to interact with such obviously gifted literary defenders of the faith, with the same resultory predictability. I seek no attention, or to stake my claim: but instead would prefer an honest discourse based upon sincere critique & erudite discussion, instead of the petty defensiveness that I observe as trite rhetoric from failed writers inhabiting a realm of wistful memories & circle jerks, circa mid 90's MSN chatrooms. But, the song remains the same, after all.
 
Dugpish said:
I have always wondered about the embellishment of Buk, by himself & of himself, I mean, because his "fans" seem to have elevated him to an Apex Predator Of Some Kind of Deep Truth, so a kind of monster was created...
Click to expand...
Okay, I'm dumb enough to bite, and I'm not too proud to say that I'm not.

My first question to you in response to this is, what is the matter with you? Are you under 25 or something? That's my only guess.

You are able to speak somewhat intelligently, yet you are obviously so entirely naive. Why would you come into a Bukowski forum, when you know there are people here that know way more about him than you do, and then make so many infantile comments about him -- as if your findings were actual true, agreed-upon facts? Are you saying you know how he's viewed in the public domain? You alone? I mean, we all have an idea, but you are way out there with your assumptions. This is all new to me -- this "'take what you can get while you can get it' kinda stink" thing. Really??

Personally, I think you don't know most things about what's coming out of your butt. Yes, you're just rambling. There are not "unknown" things about him that went with him to his grave, like you've presented. No mysteries (at least not as you're inferring). You know nothing of his real life and know nothing about how he wanted himself to be portrayed. He did not want anything of himself to be portrayed. He just wrote. Saying he "admitted" he "embellished" is also naive, or just false, because he's only ever said he wrote fiction.

I'm not trying to be mean, but all this analyzing of his psyche is just overthunk, or rather, beginning at the misinformed starting gate. If you are a psychiatrist, or a psychoanalyst and are wanting to figure him out, you must start at the beginning of his life and you don't seem to know one thing about him, or frankly, the effects of trauma. That's psychology 101, man. And he was no different a person at "mid career" (that is so funny -- as if he had some normal path), than who he was when he graduated high school.

Looking back at some of the things you wrote here are kind of infuriating. Maybe you're just a troll. "The bravado inherent in his conquestial tone, which is often mistaken for misogyny?" What on earth? Are we reading the same writer? Anyway, there's nothing mistaken about it, at times he is misogynistic. You would be too if you went through the same shit, had the same life. Is he supposed to be some kind of perfect, resilliant being despite a fucked up shit of the world around him? The conquestial tone part -- when? Like a predator? Who are you reading?

"But he redeems this with an at times, searing self-effacing brutality. This maybe what drew various vaginal endeavours." Yeah right. I'm sure he did that to get laid, so he's a manipulator too? He got women to feel sorry for him by criticizing himself? It couldn't be because women thought he was talented. Of course not. Who is the misogynist here? And how is this his redeeming quality, and what exactly is he redeeming? You think it was disingenuous? Do you really know what drove the self-abasement? Whatever, I don't know who I'm talking to...maybe you had parents that loved you. You may not understand self-hatred.

I've gone on too long, because it has occurred to me that I probably am getting all worked up for nothing. You probably are a troll.

Please burn this message now.
 
Dugpish said:
Interesting theory, yet tellingly assumptive.

I understand what is built here and in no way need to or want to undermine it in any way. I have interacted with dozens of similar endeavours all bearing the same hallmark of iconic fallacy. And yet I find it interesting still, to interact with such obviously gifted literary defenders of the faith, with the same resultory predictability. I seek no attention, or to stake my claim: but instead would prefer an honest discourse based upon sincere critique & erudite discussion, instead of the petty defensiveness that I observe as trite rhetoric from failed writers inhabiting a realm of wistful memories & circle jerks, circa mid 90's MSN chatrooms. But, the song remains the same, after all.
Click to expand...

Why are you prejudging people that challenge you to be failed writer and circle jerkers, and so on? How would you be able to have fair discourse with anyone about YOUR theories if you already have that in play? That would be impossible.

It's NOT iconic fallacy. It's that YOU are ill informed. You should at least read a biography or two. Are you a scholar on this subject? Did you know that you are talking to a few here? It's not "fanaticism" as you think. Go to the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA for a week and study his papers and come back and then have some intelligent debate here. You can look through this site for an immense amount of information, bibliography, timelines, and then some.

Do a little study before you come here and accuse published authors of being failures and jacking each other off, and then speak out of some other mouth in your head and say you don't mean to undermine the wealth of data here right under your nose.

Now I'm really pissed. You're the unwavering one. I would have had a conversation with you before I actually read more of your posts, but the more I read, the more pedantic, snobby, and stubborn YOU seem to be.
 
Jesus.....are you all retarded or what?
Funny how I get tarred with all the same suppositions you so desperately cling to yet vehemently deny.
Monkey see, monkey get.

Adios, muchahcos....
 
"A handful of interview transcripts and some questionnaires allow Bukowski to explain his thoughts on writing. He admits in interviews that the character Henry Chinaski is actually himself, embellished only slightly. He also says that the raucous stories of fights and one-night stands are largely true but mainly from the 1940s and 1950s and played up for effect. He was aware of his reputation as a “badass poet”, prepared to brawl, puke, gamble and screw his way through life and turn that life into writing." © 2018 Alexander Adams

This is an excerpt from a review of "The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way": it is what I was getting at in my original post, before it was turned into a pissing contest. A person in the public eye, after years of striving to have his words known, recognised & validated accordingly, is suddenly afforded the attention as a kind of reward, a respite or an elevation onto another level, be it success, poverty, ignorance, increased focal criticism etc.. There are other people who feel the same way as I do: that once writing is elevated either via fame or common alliance, THEN it can become suspected as formulaic or coloured in some way. To be clear, I am talking about Buk when he was alive, BEFORE he succumbed to another editorial chapter in his life.

Anyways, this opinion may fall on deaf ears here, but it is given regardless in accordance with the forum multitudinal utterance "I opine, THEREFORE I AM."
 
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I guess still posting on a forum on which you apparently said you were done with, and where no one enjoys your posts gives you some kind of enjoyment, but Jesus you are really fucking boring.
 
Well, it is hard to have a real dialogue with someone who comes in here and claims that we are having a circle jerk, and is already defensive about US having OUR minds made up about being narrow minded, when it's he who had his mind made up when he got here. He's here to "debunk" Buk. He's already analyzing him against Charles Manson. He did not know Hank, didn't know anyone that knew him, hasn't seen or read all his letters and papers and other interviews. He knows nothing about the real person he was or how he just allowed people to think whatever the hell they wanted about him. Other people made him an "apex" and he just wrote and did his drunken readings. He hated them and then he finally stopped doing them. And here I am defending him, well, not defended as much as trying to educate this guy. Buk was not a fucking monster.

Dude, you think you know more than you do. You don't seem to be open to seeing that. When a person doesn't know that they don't know something, they can't learn things. You have to start from the basis of "I do not know" when you step into any forum, especially a forum of experts on a subject you are not an expert of. "maybe I do not know everything" would be a good place to start so you can calm yourself and listen and ask question instead of calling people retarded and accuse us of circle jerking. Like I said, why not look over this site, or spend some time at the Huntington Library before making these assumptions that he was some kind of predator. Yes Chinaski is a part of him, every writer writes semi-autobio characters to some degree or another. His are to a large degree true, but not true. Embellished. You seem to completely dismiss that part. Why would he embellish? Think about it. You're not a writer, are you? Writers are story tellers, you nitwit! (That's for the "retarded" remark.)

Have you even read Ham on Rye? Chinaski went through some shit. You'd fight, fuck, and drink your way through life too. But that's not exactly what Bukowski did in real life. The abuse part is true though. That really happened. And Schreoder's documentary shows that. Bukowski quit drinking for a decade, was married, had a child, worked... You don't seem to know anything about him. Just the "PR," Yet if you replaced everything you just said about Henry Miller, what then? It's all okay for him? He's legitimate? Because that is where you were going with this. You want to probably ultimately minimize Buk in some academic capacity.
 
Esart: the issue I have here is EXACTLY one of assumption. While I have no need to detail my experiences with Buk, it is rather assumptive of you & the others to declare that I know nothing of the man or his writings, but be rest assured that I have read, written AND digested a fair amount over the span of nearly 4 decades. It reeks of pretentious arrogance for others, right off the bat, to accuse a person of miseducation, ignorance and in the same breath to infer that "I know everything" (I don't. Duh). If you can point out where I said directly inflammatory remarks or statements of credibility about Buk offering them as any kind of "fact" then I can only assume you misinterpreted in some way. It was my supposition ONLY that a writer like him would maybe be misrepresented due to public scrutiny. I have already spent too much time battling defensively on the short time I have been on this forum, the back & forth petty childish commentary is kinda disappointing considering the level of intellectual maturity that I thought existed here: I was obviously wrong.

Again, I will state that my original intention was to accentuate my knowledge of the man & his works, NOT to start from scratch. And yet here again I am defending my integrity against a clique mentality: yes I have read Ham on Rye, seen the Bukowski tapes several times, ticked all the boxes that most of you have, so I in no way need to "minimize" him in any kind of academic or literary way??- Thats just mind-blowing that you would take that away from my words...

Most of y'all are writers, cool. I am not a writer, I already stated that elsewhere. I know how to write, sure, but whatever....that is not the focus here. Personal statements are hard to make, it seems, as they are obviously construed as bragging, or questioned in some ways. It's fucking tiring being defensive all the time, in a place where I should not have to. Boo-hoo, I can take my lumps as well as the rest of you, but to be honest, I kinda expected a higher level of maturity here. But Esart dude: you are the ONLY one thus far to have any kind of integrity or honesty & have conducted yourself accordingly, so I applaud you for that. It is just a pity that others seem to be more concerned with "other" agendas.

Let loose the dogs...
 
I can't bring myself to re-read your earlier posts, dugpish. As for the more recent ones:

"...increased focal criticism etc.."

What is that? Don't write me a treatise, dugpish. Just tell me what those words mean.

"...that once writing is elevated either via fame or common alliance, THEN it can become suspected as formulaic or coloured in some way."

Way, way too many words. Also: what does "common alliance" mean?

And then there's this:

"I know how to write, sure, but whatever...."

Godammit. Now it's personal, fucker. Don't steal lines from Danny Valdez, dipshit. And don't call people retards.
 
Words are what tell others "what's up"...
Dictionaries were invented so retards could use said words out of context to bamboozle & obfuscate "the REAL agenda". (but NOT me, of course, I am different. Just like everyone else here.)
Thesauruses(sic?) were invented for writers who succumbed to the aforementioned importance of "words" and their projected "meaning", but lack a proper semantic cadence without repetition.

And retards were invented to enable inadequate people to feel better about themselves, in a general societal sense of "value & worth".
Do the work, dipshit. But never, EVER curse god again.....

Because karma is an omnipotent agent that will visit swift retribution upon those who ask too many questions about "unimportant shit".
Amen, right??
 
Please just answer one question for the sake of clarity, dugpish: what do you mean by "focal criticism?" Again: don't write me a treatise. Just tell me what those words mean.
 
Ok.
"focal criticism" is a construct by where every utterance, action or instance is presented in a public or private realm. It depends upon the audience AND the intended purpose. For example: I can say a deliberately inflammatory thing to be unmistakably intended (eg. "This guy" here, is obviously doing X, Y or Z and means it sincerely to be perceived that way as in the example of "trolling" to garner a certain, pre-desired response)... or "this guy/that guy" can say a thing that is genuinely misconstrued or misunderstood on an elevated societal scale (eg. 254 people think this guy is DELIBERATELY misogynistic because he has delivered various, fictitious examples of "games people play" & then you might judgementally substitute "people" with the genus 'female", thus arriving at the conclusion of "misogyny", therefore providing a justification for a skewed inaccuracy, that may or may not gather momentum ("validity") simply because of a numerical fallacy (aka "commonality" or "common alliance"). In psyche terms or philo terms is it what is referred to as a "cognitive bias".

My background is in Psych, so this is why I am more concerned with this aspect of fallibility & the inaccuracy of public opinion, for want of a better semantic term.
 
Dugpish said:
My background is in Psych.
Click to expand...

And now you use the rhetoric of that profession to play your verbal high jinks on Internet forums and chat rooms, no doubt embittered by your lack of success in your chosen subject. You need to get on your bike and "see someone."
 
Yes, like someone in the field of psychiatry. It wouldn't surprise me if he uses chatrooms like Reddit and such to prey on the vulnerable, with his Mansonesque complex. Just a theory based on research.
 
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Dugpish: Are you serious about the not cursing God comment? I hope not. I hope you're not here to teach us about our moral rights, too.

Okay, so let's assume I personally was wrong about what you know, that I made an assumption about you that is incorrect; you still assumed we are all retards and all the rest of your name calling. You still came in here with the assumption that none of us can listen and speak to you. If you would have come in with a different attitude, maybe someone (like me?) would have had a conversation with you about the subjects of which you were searching, but I don't believe you cared about that at all. I believe you came in here to stir the cauldron.

In my irritations with you, I gave you my viewpoint about whether or not I found your assumption valid. You are actually knocking it away when you minimize writers, or not having the mind of a writer. This was a very important point in my argument which you additionally disrespected. This will be the last time I'll speak about this with any hope to see a inquisitive person behind a troll, but being a storyteller is what I was getting at with Bukowski saying he embellished himself into Henry Chinaski. If you were a writer, you may know how and why these things work, and to what degree -- when writing fiction. I just think it's odd that people hold him accountable for the things he's done in his books, or comments he's made in interviews (many of which he may not have been serious, drunk, not thinking, the interviewer embellished or lied, or he just contradicted himself because we are all human, or if he meant it -- so what?), yet other writers are not held in contempt in the same way (Kerouac, Miller, Hemingway, Burroughs, Thompson, Salinger, et al). It's like holding Robert De Nero responsible for his crimes when he played Vito Corleone, or saying he's comparable to Manson because he was capable of playing the monster he was in Cape Fear. And god forbid he ever say one of those characters were close to his own personality.

But whatever.
 
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