save me from the shoes (1 Viewer)

justine

stop the penistry
jesus christ i'm bored outta my mind... i'm at work and i have 7.5 hours of fitting shoes to old ladies' mangled feet ahead of me... someone talk to me!! what i would really rather be doing is finishing hollywood... btw i think that would be the perfect Buk for futureactor to read...
is most of Buk's stuff written with a kind of autobio-narrative voice? i'm reading Pulp next which my flatmate told me is more of a straight-out work of fiction and not so good as his autobio stuff.
 
futureactor got the boot. and yes, the novels I've read (Post Office, Ham on Rye, and Women) are autobiographical, possibly Hot Water Music as well (although some of it is really incredible shit for a single person to go through, such as getting his dick bitten off, which as far as I know didn't happen to Bukowski). Good luck.
 
For me, PULP is hands down his WORST novel. A lame attempt at a detective/crime noir novel. Still if you're gonna read all his work, you gotta include PULP, just make sure you save something good like HAM ON RYE or POST OFFICE to follow up PULP!
 
I need to get factotum already, and then I'll get bold and get a poetry book. Honestly I think I've seen more poetry books from Buk than any other poet in the one bookshelf they devote to poetry in most bookstores. Then again, I haven't looked for much else. I've looked for something with Li Po in it, but I'm not really sure where to start.
 
I thought Pulp was a hoot!
Enjoyed every self-parodying page. It was a perfect last hurah from the man.
But do read it LAST. It will make more sense that way.
 
For me, PULP is hands down his WORST novel. A lame attempt at a detective/crime noir novel. Still if you're gonna read all his work, you gotta include PULP, just make sure you save something good like HAM ON RYE or POST OFFICE to follow up PULP!

bukowski did say that he could only write prose when he was feeling good, and we know where he was in his life when he wrote PULP. although, as someone has said elsewhere, b liked to thwart expectations - he did that with "our" precious literature and we lauded him for it, then he did it again within his own oeuvre.
 
'tales of ordinary madness' was the first book I read by Buk, and it must of had an effect because I've been in love with his writing since.
Having just re-read 'Notes of a dirty old man' thats probably not a bad start either, though obviously for a lot of people its 'Post Office' that gets their first stamp of approval (can you get booted for bad puns? i accept my punishment oh lord and master)
 
Buk's Novels

I completely agree. A terrible read. HOLLYWOOD, on the other hand, was a unexpected surprise. I put it right up there with FACTOTUM. Am I nuts?

Hollywood"”a terrific novel. Here's Bukowski finally able to relax and enjoy his success because of his recent financial windfalls, and making highly amusing comments about the falsity of the Hollywood scene itself: the making of Barfly. There's so much to enjoy, but I particularly love the scene where he and "Linda" are house-hunting and supposedly come across one of Charles Manson's old haunts. Whether that story is literally true or not, Bukowski captures the hippy weirdness of the experience like the true master of the word. I can remember the thrill of reading this funny and masterful novel as it was hot off the press years ago, and it was a great read for me, as Bukowski was now in a higher tax bracket, yet still Bukowski, still drinking like a fish, with Linda trying to keep tabs on it, and writing without any outside pressure from the standpoint of having finally made his pot of gold.

I also put his marvelous collection of short stories, Hot Water Music, in the same category of relaxed excellence as Hollywood. Again, here's Bukowski writing with the additional clarity of having finally made it as a financially successful writer, and his imagination just soars with a combination of fanciful story lines, humor, bemusement, and a beautiful mastery of the language. It would be hard to imagine anything that could improve his choice of every word in either of these two works"”as good as anything he ever did, in my opinion.

Ham on Rye I place in a different writing category, a great work, and a deeply honest one in terms of portraying his formative years and his deeply troubled states of mind as a kid and young adult.

I'll pass on Pulp, after having read it when it first came out... and Bukowski not seeming like himself in this parody of "bad writing"... but Factotum is a great novel because it starts off with the deadening dullness, the sense of tedium and dead-end futility, of having no where else to turn than to go from menial job to job on the low end of the food chain. It captures so perfectly what it's like to survive such jobs for the sake of the dollar and yet somehow keep his dream of a creative life alive. I consider Factotum his most universal work in that it captures the every man, Blue Collar life down to a T, in a way that anyone who can read at all can see themselves in it because of its amazingly basic, but emotionally evocative, stripped-down language.

To me, Post Office and Factotum are his most accessible novels, ones that anyone with any kind of life experience at all can understand and somehow feel better about their own future prospects or lack of them.

"”Poptop.
 
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Poptop, I agree with you comepletely when it comes to Post Office and Factotum. The only thing about Post Office I don't like is the part where he travels to Texas to see "Barbera". Well, I do like it but those chapters seems out of place. They sort of break the rhythm of his Post Office experiences. Apart from that it's a great book about the blue collar wage slavery.
I do like Pulp, although it's not vintage Buk. You have to know your Buk before you read that one. Otherwise you won't get all the alias'in the book and maybe not even the fact that Buk is dealing with his own impending death.
Hollywood is a great book about the making of Barfly! Poptop, I have nothing to ad, you said it all!
Ham On Rye - a deeply moving book about his childhood and teens. Here we get a good (and of course biased) portrait of his parents.
Women is a hilarious book! Here we have Buk enjoying numerous women after he got famous. Lots of funny stuff, although the women did'nt think so when the book was published. Buk caught a lot of flack from some of the women.
Then we have all the short stories. A personal favourite of mine is South Of No North. Stories like Pittsburgh Phil & Co., Christ on Rollerskates and A Shippingclerk With A Red Nose makes me smile just thinking about them. Not to mention the two early short stories reprinted here, All The Assholes in the World and Mine and Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts. A great book of short stories!...
 
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HOLLYWOOD, on the other hand, was a unexpected surprise. I put it right up there with FACTOTUM. Am I nuts?
No, you aren't. It's easily his funniest book. If you appreciate the humor in his work, Hollywood is undoubtedly among his top two or three novels.
 

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