When did you discover Bukowski? (2 Viewers)

im just gonna go ahead and have a baby. We'll make him 15teen. Just so we,ll have something to talk bout k. And he,s a pirate also, so don,t even think some twenty year olds got the edge, k. luvkisses.
 
Thanks darling! Is that a real bird? Are you really blind in that one eye? Whats his name? Got you any luck at the track?
 
Ha Ha ~ no darling but close. it's just a snapshot of what happens while drunk in disneyworld. children were corupted. people were shocked. pirate costumes were purchased. but not necissarily in that order.
 
mjp said:
I think we have a few relatively young users, but we'll have to see if anyone younger than 16 cares to answer...
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Im 15...

Ham on Rye. I had tried reading Factotum first but I was uninterested in it (at the time). My friend told me I should either read Hot Water Music or Ham on Rye first. I went to the bookstore and didn't see Hot Water Music, but Ham on Rye was there. So, like other books, I read it all in the bookstore because I never had enough money for a $20 book.

I hate to sound like I read the book years ago, because I didn't, but when I read it I thought it was the greatest thing ever. It was real, no bullshit. It was my favorite book for a while... until I read Post Office.
 
Love Is A Dog, which I let a friend borrow, and never got back. I had never heard of him, until I heard the singer of the red Hot Chili Peppers mention him in a song. I have since been hooked, and a devoted collector of all his materials.
 
Melvin O said:
... the red Hot Chili Peppers mention him in a song ...
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I didn't remember this one, but i guess you mean:

Song:
Mellowship Sunky in B

Album:
Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Verse:
Being that I'm the duke of my domain
My hat goes off to Mark Twain
Singing a song about what true men don't do
Killing another creature that's kind of blue
Writing about the world of the wild coyote
Goodman Truman Capote
Talking about my thoughts 'cause they must grow
Cock my brain to shoot my load
I'm on my porch 'cause I lost my house key
Pick up my book I read Bukowski
Can I get another kiss from you
Kiss me right here on my tattoo

Those rock dudes love ol' Bukowski don't they.

:cool:
 
I think my first book from Bukowski, after I'd printed some of his poems off the internet, was 'The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship'. I love autobiographical works and diaries so, it was a thrill for me to read about his daily life. After that, a lot more books ensued.
 
with a five day beard trippin my feet up, an a whiskey moss growin over the eyelids, pinnin them back like the glare a some cross-eyed whore. strugglin wi the guts to keep the vomit out my gob. barnardos second hand book store was the only shop with no heatin system, and here i was feeling less like a toasted tuna sandwhich in a bus driver's back pocket.

i laid eyes 'pon this here name sounding vaguely foreign, BUKOWSKI. shit, i shelled out ?4 for a buncha shit balzac last week in the same state, this can't be any worse.

Dangling in the Tournefortia. tourne, tourne, tourne, i'm feelin ill now, an the acid gathers at the back of the gullet, but i've heard if'n y'can smile, it supresses the GAG REFLEX. i'm smiling.

open that son of a bitch up lest i poke yr eyes out with hot fuck son. page 87.

read on.

sway on.

smile on.

then I turn on the tv to the
morning soap operas
and I am glad that I don't live
with any of those women
they are always getting pregnant and are
always unhappy
with their doctors and lawyers.

I snap the set off
consider masturbating
reject that and
take a bath instead.

the phone rings, it's my
girlfriend: "what are you
doing?"

"nothing."

"what do you mean, 'nothing'?"

"I'm in bed."

"in bed? it's almost noon."

"I know."

"why don't you take a walk?"

"all right."

*

I get up, get dressed and go outside.
I walk south on Western
I walk all the way to Santa Monica Boulevard
go into Sears Roebuck.

there's a blue jean sale on.
I purchase a pair for under $10.
I take the escalator down
and in the candy section
I buy a large bag of popcorn.

then I stroll through the hardware section
looking at tools that I have no interest in,
then to the electrical section
where I stand looking at a series of
sun lamps,
jamming the popcorn into my mouth
and feeling like a total
asshole.
-----------------------

i cough up the ?1.50 for this, because the guy makes sense to me right now.

the green charity shop bag stinks a moth balls, an the book reeks a damp, i step out in to the coleraine street, 3.30pm saturday, a pram rolls past with some water-headed idiot child on board, wavin some piece of shit dog toy out it's yap an i vomit over the pavement an the outside of the green charity bag. i wipe the chunks a chicken an rice out of the beard an slosh the bag round a puddle for a few seconds, buy a bottle of Tesco's own brand scotch ?3.49, walk home. read the rest of the book an phone my ex-girlfriend at four am.
 
dylanjgallagher said:
Dangling in the Tournefortia.
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Well, you picked a good first taste. I think that's the best Black Sparrow collection of all of those mid and late period books. Hands down.
 
dylanjgallagher said:
with a five day beard trippin my feet up, an a whiskey moss growin over the eyelids, pinnin them back like the glare a some cross-eyed whore. strugglin wi the guts to keep the vomit out my gob.
.....
, i'm feelin ill now, an the acid gathers at the back of the gullet, but i've heard if'n y'can smile, it supresses the GAG REFLEX. i'm smiling.

....i vomit over the pavement an the outside of the green charity bag. i wipe the chunks a chicken an rice out of the beard an slosh the bag round a puddle for a few seconds, buy a bottle of Tesco's own brand scotch ?3.49, walk home. read the rest of the book an phone my ex-girlfriend at four am.
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I'm feeling a little queasy now, but it's not necessarily your fault. Chunks in the beard...save them for later; they make a good snack.

SD
 
My first was Post Office, which was given to me by a dear friend. "You'll like this guy, he's an asshole." I did, and he was. After that, I read 'em all.
 
Some guy I don't know and never will sent me one of Bukowski's poems via the internet. Just one humble little poem. Well, I loved some lines, they caught me and I went out and bought...What matters most is how well you walk through the fire!

I prefer his Prose-Poetry. His novels are good. But his poems sizzle with immediate creativity. O, rubbish! It's all worthwhile...

SINCERITY
may solves the troubles
of loving yet...

O the poem I read was: 'for Jane'
 
mjp said:
That's funny, shortly after reading Bukowski for the first time I went out and snatched up all I could find too. Which, of course, becomes quite a few books on through the years if you keep up the hunt.

Is that a common experience among others here?
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Hell yes. I first read "Dangling In The Tournefortia" and then proceeded to re-asses my budget limits to allow for less savings and more Bukowski. No doubt about it - the first writer in a long time to hit marrow and draw stem-cells. Complete absorption. OK - I'll stop with the physical metaphors because I'm drunk, but let me assure you - Bukowski is the most purchased/borrowed of any author in my collection nowadays.
 
I'm, as you can see, from Norway. And in Norway there are precious few film directors. So when my man Bernt Hamer went and made the movie Factotum I ran to see it (I'm a huge movie geek). After I saw it, I thought, hm, this Chinaski fella sure seems like a cool guy. So I stupidly went into several bookstores asking for 'Any books by Henry Chinsaski'. I even spelled it out to them. It was not until some bookstore clerk went on the net for me and searched 'Henry Chinaski' and the words 'Henry Chinaski, a pseudonym used frequently by author Charles Bukowski' that I saw the light.

I asked the clerk if he had any books by Bukowski, and he told me he had three. 'Mockingbird Wish Me Luck', 'Ham on Rye' and 'Post Office'. I asked wich one was the first he had written, and he promptly said, 'Post Office'. I bought it, read it and now have fifteen books by the greatest American Author of all time in my collection.
 
I first read Notes of a Dirty Old Man, while I was in college. Then I loaned the book to a friend. He refused to return the book, and I doubted that he was reading it. He became evasive about the book everytime I brought it up. I was becoming very concerned about the book. Finally, I had to break into his apartment through his window to get the book back. He had written phone numbers in it, and wrote on the title page that it was my biography.
 
LOL ...my favorite story in that is The Little Taylor...

does anybody know around what printings # the blue colored cover notes...

i've seen a few floating around and they just look so odd. are they legit?
 
HenryChinaski said:
does anybody know around what printings # the blue colored cover notes...

i've seen a few floating around and they just look so odd. are they legit?
Click to expand...
That's a legit City Lights release. Not sure at what printing they changed the cover. The one you see even less of is the one that came out between the original and the one with the blue cover...I hardly ever see those.
 
Here`s how I got to know Bukowski:
Back in `78 or `79 I studied german. One day the teacher gave us some german magazines to read. In one of them there was a whole page Bukowski ad. with the famous foto of him and Georgia in front of his fridge. Under the foto was some Bukowski quotes. My german was pretty lousy at the time but one quote I could read (more or less). It said something like: "Jails, whores and asylums are the universities of life. That`s where I got my exams". That quote and the foto got me interested in Bukowski. So I went to the largest library here in Copenhagen to find some of his books. There were none translated into danish but in the english section I found one single book - "Postoffice". And then I was hooked! Two years later - in 1980 - Bukowski was printed in Denmark for the first time ( It was a selection from "Erections..."). As time went by I discovered an English book store in town which had many Bukowski titles from BSP and it was also possible to order the titles they did`nt have. So now I have most of the BSP and Ecco books and Bukowski is not for the few anymore but a well-known writer...
 
Post Office and then The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills. Still two of my favorites. Before Post Office, only his Notes of a Dirty Old Man columns in an underground newspaper in L.A.
 
Around 2000 - 2001 I met this guy on the internet, very cultured and all. And he was totally into Bukowski. So, intrigued by this guy and Bukowski, I went to a bookshop and bought "what matters most is how well you walk throught the fire". And I was sold. 5 years later this guy and me met, we hooked up and still now Bukowski plays a big part in our lives. The last weeks, when my boyfriend's dad was dying, we've been sending a lot of Bukowski to eachother. So I can say, he's there in happy times and sad times.
Still now I'm trying to convince friends of mine to read Bukowski, and I must say a lot of them were impressed when discovering him.
I just thought this was a nice story to share.
:)
 
Ham on Rye.

Mr 1:15 suggested I read it. "Read this guy, you'll love him."

Well, Bukowski was funny, raw and fucked up honest.

Ham on Rye was the first.
He was right.
 
Foo said:
Around 2000 - 2001 I met this guy on the internet, very cultured and all. And he was totally into Bukowski. So, intrigued by this guy and Bukowski, I went to a bookshop and bought "what matters most is how well you walk throught the fire". And I was sold. 5 years later this guy and me met, we hooked up and still now Bukowski plays a big part in our lives. The last weeks, when my boyfriend's dad was dying, we've been sending a lot of Bukowski to eachother. So I can say, he's there in happy times and sad times.
Still now I'm trying to convince friends of mine to read Bukowski, and I must say a lot of them were impressed when discovering him.
I just thought this was a nice story to share.
:)
Click to expand...

Jesus Christ! That story is very similar to my own! Some guy I knew online sent me one bukowski poem 'for Jane' and read it and was intrigued and went out and bought 'what matters most is how well you walk through the fire' - and from then on I got fished in and discovered it all.

Bizzare and wonderful
 
First Bukowski book I read was Ham on Rye (the Dutch translation, called ?Kind onder kannibalen?, which can be translated back to English as ?Child amongst cannibals?). Really liked it. After that I read Pulp, Post Office and a lot of his poems. Planning on reading his other novels soon...
 
Godog said:
First Bukowski book I read was Ham on Rye (the Dutch translation, called ?Kind onder kannibalen?, which can be translated back to English as ?Child amongst cannibals?). Really liked it. After that I read Pulp, Post Office and a lot of his poems. Planning on reading his other novels soon...
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Don?t forget the short stories! Some of them are real good...
 
Hot Water Music and South of No North are both short story collections (no poems) and both highly recommended.

Some of the later books like Septuagenarian Stew also included half a dozen short stories mixed in among the poems, but in later years Bukowski's short story production dropped off quite a bit.
 
Godog said:
Hot Water Music consists of short stories, doesn't it? Can you recommend it?
Click to expand...

Yes, I can recommend it. Also "South of no North" and "Tales of ordinary madness" and "The most beautiful woman in town". The two latter was actually published as one book called " Erections, ejaculations, exhibitions and general tales of ordinary madness" but now it has been split up into two books. There?s also a book of articles called "Notes of a dirty old man" and as mjp says, you can also get books which combines short stories and poetry. So you have your work cut out for you...:)
 

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