Was Bukowski A Genius? (2 Viewers)

i love bea arthur.

and regarding whether or not bukowski was a genius, does it really matter?

do you like reading his shit?
 
do you like reading his shit?

I do, but the corn never seems to form coherent sentences.

As for Bea Arthur, Betty White once famously announced at a celebrity roast, that she would'nt fuck __(insert forgotten name here)__ with Bea Arthur's dick. Words to live by, to be sure.
 
No. I'm implying that Betty White thinks that Bea Arthur has a dick. Whatever Bea wants to do with it is apparently up to Betty White. :D

Disclaimer: As far as I know, Bea Arthur does not have a dick, and no portion of this thread was intended to imply such. Issues? Ask Betty White.
 
I have to apologize for degrading a thread about Bukowski's genius or lack thereof into a discussion of Bea Arthur's genitalia. In some warped, perverted way, it seems somehow appropriate. :D I just can't figure out why at the moment. :o
 
Bukowski's guest appearance on The Golden Girls as Sophia's Toy Boy, 1987...

Betty White? No apparently it was Jeffrey Ross.

Friars Club Roast of Jerry Stiller, October 1999
Following Sandra Bernhard's odd performance of Heart's song "Magic Man" for Mr. Stiller, Mr. Ross got up and said: "I wouldn't fuck Sandra Bernhard with Bea Arthur's dick."



Now, erm... what was the Topic? Oh yeah.

Was Bukowski A Genius? :confused:
 
It seems very appropriate. Can you imagine Bukowski writing about Bea Aurthur? "She hiked up her skirt a foot higher and showed me some leg. It didn't help. I couldn't get past that train wreck of a face, and the angry, man-hatting scowl. I poured myself another whiskey, tall. It was going to be a long night..."
 
" the world is full of shipping clerks
who have read the Harvard Classics. "

Bukowski PERSISTED in writing,,is that genius ?
Then he got lucky, is that genius ?

I rate him as the greatest poet of the 20th century, genius or no.

Blotto III
 
The word "Genius" is thrown around far too often. I have also heard that singers who do not write their own material are "Genius". Since when does the ability to carry a tune mean that someone is a genius. Like him or not, I can agree that Bob Dylan is a lyrical genius. Someone singing a Bob Dylan cover would not qualify as a genius because they sang it well.

Like him or not, Eminem is Talented; some say VERY talented. He could even be a genius (I'm not sure if he was ever tested, but that is the only way to quantify it).

I guess I object to everyone with talent being mislabeled "Brilliant" and "Genius".

Bill
 
Eminem is great, very funny, and humor was in short supply in that tired genre when he came along (with the exception of Snoop Dog who has always played an underlying humor very, very well). But in hip hop, the only "genius" in the last 20 years is Andre Young, aka Dr. Dre. Turned the genre on its ear, and everyone else followed.

Musical geniuses make it look easy - Mozart, some of those tin pan alley guys whose names I don't know, two of the Beatles (you choose the two you like, I don't want to start a fight), Dylan, Hendrix, Marley, Prince, etc.

Not only do these types change the face of things, but they also create continually. None of the people mentioned above (and of course there are others, I'm just typing here, not writing a history book) went to a villa somewhere for a few weeks every other year to write songs for an album - they wrote continually, obsessively.

There were trailblazers who were definitely not geniuses (hello Runaways, Ramones, Elvis Presley, etc.), but the geniuses did both, create great music and change the course of popular music.

You could argue that a lot of it is timing, but none of it is luck.
 
Many critics and writers have dismissed the importance of Bukowski. Many of them said his material is lowbrow and doesn't warrant serious attention. How do you feel about his work? Is it more than just a few laughs? Is there something that Bukowski brings to the table that no other author does?

Yes. This.



i met a genius

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.


it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

Charles Bukowski. from, Burning In Water Drowning In Flame.
1963. pg,127
 
reading bukowski makes me want to read him, hemingway, dostoevsky, philosophy and many other awesome things so yeah... I'm pretty sure he's a genius.
 
What, I believe would make him a genius is not only what new he brought to the modern poetry, but the hallmark is where is next #2? How far is his closest competition or imitator if you will.
 
how abouts we got to Hank himself in order to answer the quesion of "Was he a genius?"

from Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook, chapter titled "The L.A. Scene":

"...I decided, well, hell, I might be a writer, that seems easiest, you say anything you want to and they say, hey, that's good, you're a genius. Why not be a genius? There are so many half-assed geniuses. So I became another half-assed genius."
 
It may have simply been that they missed out on his genius because they just weren't lucky... They weren't lucky enough to land first on an undeniably great and faultless story like The Most Beautiful Woman in Town before reading the so-called low-brow stuff. This is one of the most beautifully written and evocative short-stories possible, and some of Bukowski's famous critics should be so lucky to write one that superb in ten lifetimes... Then they give up reading him and think that they understand the entire range of his works, when actually they stopped reading after missing the humor, total command and mastery of language in even his supposedly low-brow stuff... From there it's easy to decide that readers are lunatics because they prefer the alcoholic Bukowski to someone as narcissistic and limited in range as Elroy... Nevertheless, since I grew up in LA... had Elroy never written LA Confidential, I would have considered it a great loss, and I think it's possible for the work of both writers to exist in the same universe... It's too bad Elroy is so short-sighted, because they both had shitty childhoods in common and captured their love of the decadence and quintessential flavor of LA down to the ground... I would also include Raymond Chandler, his great detective story Red Wind in particular. Whenever I want to recapture my former life in LA and the creepy Santa Ana winds that could make your hair stand on end, I enjoy his compassionate but hard-nosed writing... On the other hand, it's likely that those who truly understand Bukowski's genius are born rather than made and they understand him instantly. That's why it's usually impossible to convince his rabid critics to the contrary.
 
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When the Ellroy/Wagner thread got started I was searching for something else I thought Ellroy had said about Bukowski. Came across a review of Pleasures (?) on some blog that seemed to get what Bukowski was aiming at -- the everyday, the road rage, the indignities of living in this place at this time. The reviewer had one responder, David Calonne (I'm assuming the editor of Portions, etc.), who also thought the reviewer understood.

Of course I didn't bookmark the fucking thing so now I can't find it which can drive a person mad and cause a great deal of wasted time. No doubt there is a poem in all that. But I'm struggling with a clogged up computer, bugs in the kitchen, and many other things I don't want to deal with, so I won't be the one writing it.
 
Eminem is great, very funny, and humor was in short supply in that tired genre when he came along (with the exception of Snoop Dog who has always played an underlying humor very, very well). But in hip hop, the only "genius" in the last 20 years is Andre Young, aka Dr. Dre. Turned the genre on its ear, and everyone else followed.
What about the Wu-Tang Clan?
Anyway, regarding the notion of genius, surely what really matters is whether or not you think Bukowski is a genius. What other people think is up to them. They can read what they like. The best thing about this place for me is that I can relate, at least in part, to anyone who recognises the genius in Bukowski's writing.
 
Many critics and writers have dismissed the importance of Bukowski. Many of them said his material is lowbrow and doesn't warrant serious attention. How do you feel about his work? Is it more than just a few laughs? Is there something that Bukowski brings to the table that no other author does?

I think he was an excellent entertainer, but didnt achieve the genious level. He talks about personal anecdotes, feeds a few jokes here and there, everything soaked in booze. You feel his "what the hell" attitude, like if life was just a grotesque joke, and that's why the average reader connects with him, because life really is grotesque joke.

But then you got real literary genious like Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Borges, Hemingway, and many others; Those were authentic heavy weights.
 
Well, if the last thing of Bukowski's I read was Pulp, I'd probably feel the same way. It did little for me and never struck me as characteristic of his genius - more the result of his waning energies as a man on the way out. But in general as he got older, his range widened enormously and he had tremendous depth. (Ignus Fatuus is a favorite example on the subject of death.)

After reading everything I could get my hands on, I no longer think of him as a booze or sex artist - not that I ever did. There's a 'presence' to his work even when he's writing on those so-called low-brow subjects. Tremendous confidence and courage. At the end of his life I think of his steady prose and the wisdom of the years - the writings of one who went from the turbulent childhood from hell and found peace within himself. That's what I got out of him because I was interested enough to find out everything I could about the whole man.

I personally would never rate him above Hemingway, because Hem never cut loose enough for me; and his writing got more tight and constricted as he got older, before he took a shotgun to his head... Whitman's a genius, but Buk celebrated the good, bad and ugly of humanity just as Whitman did... Wilde is tremendous but was something of a hothouse flower, and when he ended up in jail over a sexual scandal, it destroyed him; so he didn't have Bukowski's genius of resilience.

What Bukowski never did that I thought he'd be great at was write a children's story. Some of his conversations and poems with his daughter and other young people (The Great Zen Wedding) are full of innocence and charm. Wish he'd done that rather than Pulp and truly mess with the stereotype of just the alcoholic low-life he is sometimes portrayed as being. If that was all he was, I doubt that he would have been interested in the lives of the great classical composers such as Sibelius, Mahler and the countless others he listened to in while writing through the stillness of the night. That's why I have never sold him short or underestimated his enormous productivity or the depth and scope of so much of his writing. He's worth the growing public interest that's been shown in him, and I see that continuing over the next 20 or 30 years, at least.
 
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I think he was an excellent entertainer, but didnt achieve the genious level. He talks about personal anecdotes, feeds a few jokes here and there, everything soaked in booze. You feel his "what the hell" attitude, like if life was just a grotesque joke, and that's why the average reader connects with him, because life really is grotesque joke.

But then you got real literary genious like Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Borges, Hemingway, and many others; Those were authentic heavy weights.

It is fair to argue either way, of course, but to use his persona as his life's work is not doing the argument justice. He certainly wrote more than just "jokes" and anecdotes. Everything was not soaked in booze. Maybe you are talking more about the novels than the poetry. Especially the early poetry which was much more "poetic" than his much later work.

Still. I'm not saying you are wrong. He may not have been a genius, but judging him on this and using some of his later poetry, his novel and his public persona to back it up is not evidence of anything.

Have you ready any of the early stuff? Any poetry at all?

Best,
Bill
 
when he ended up in jail over a sexual scandal, it destroyed him; so he didn't have Bukowski's genius of resilience.

On the other hand, Bukowski never spend two years in an Victorian jail like Wilde did...;)
 
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There were trailblazers who were definitely not geniuses (hello Runaways, Ramones, Elvis Presley, etc.), but the geniuses did both, create great music and change the course of popular music.

You could argue that a lot of it

mjp, who's trail did the ramones jump on? I always felt they did something no one else(NY Dolls, Velvet Underground, etc.) was doing at the time. I always believed their first 4 albums to be a thing of genius?
 
This is a rather old thread. Not sure what I may have posted back in the day, but today, my thought is that I would not consider Buk to be a genius. A brilliant writer? Certainly. My favorite writer? Yes indeed. A writer who gets to the very essence of his experience? Like no other, to be sure.

Isn't that enough? Who needs a title?

I'll take art over an IQ score any day.
Bill
Mods, feel free to merge this with my previous post, but I went back and read the whole thread, and this speaks volumes.
 
There were trailblazers who were definitely not geniuses (hello Runaways, Ramones, Elvis Presley, etc.), but the geniuses did both, create great music and change the course of popular music.
mjp, who's trail did the ramones jump on? I always felt they did something no one else(NY Dolls, Velvet Underground, etc.) was doing at the time.
So then you're agreeing with what I said, the part you quoted, where I called them trailblazers. Good. It's important to me that we are on the same page.

Keep reading everything I type and one day you'll be a genius.

That's a service I provide to you free of charge.

But, there is a caveat - you have to actually read it. Not just kinda read it. Hang on every word. Trust me. It's worth it.
 
Well, I did just come home from watching Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 at the Arclight in Sherman Oaks... So forgive my mind for being a little rattled. Yes, now that I have re-read it, I guess I'd have to agree with you....The Ramones were trailblazers and not really geniuses. Dammit, I really effed that one up. BUT I still blame it on Rob Zombie or the taco's I had at El Torito after.
 
"Genius" is a subjective word. John Nash is a mathematical genius (an antisemitic genius, but hey). Bukowski is a literary genius. How 'bout that?
 
I feel that Bukowski is more of a philosopher than a writer of literature. Comparing him to Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoyvesky, or any of the elite literary figures (who also had extensive educations) is going to look completely nonsensible. You cannot compare Bukowski to (insert literary giant) on the same page without being trampled by all the arguments for imagery, theme, plot, irony, wordplay, reference, etc. of (literary giant). Bukowski is on a different level than the other writers. It isn't about metaphor, symbolism, and all that other stuff that literature is judged against. Bukowski was the creator of the Farmer's Almanac for the Depraved. He was a great writer, but because literature is judged in such a way (and it is, don't delude yourself), it's very hard to place him on the same page as those in the literary canon.
 
Alright from the infamous wiki:


Genius refers to a person, a body of work, or a singular achievement of surpassing excellence. More than just originality, creativity, or intelligence, genius is associated with achievement of insight which has transformational power. A work of genius fundamentally alters the expectations of its audience. Genius may be generalized, or be particular to a discrete field such as sports, statesmanship, science, or art.

okay this works for me, Bukowski definitely had transformational power on me and altered my expectations.:D
 

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