In high school, either junior or senior year, a friend of mine lent me Last Night of the Earth Poems. I didn't like all that much of it, but one poem really stuck out: something about 'my buddy, the valet at the racetrack.' Perfect motion in that poem, perfect cadence, exactly what I wanted to read, nothing more, nothing less.
But it still wasn't enough. Put down Bukowski for a while, went on to Baudelaire, Petrarch, Villon, Hamsun - all the delightfully somber writers of yore.
About 2 years ago (junior year at college), a friend of mine and I would often talk about topics of literary and philosophical nature. She began talking about Bukowski, reminded me that I had put him down with the expectation of picking him up again. Now, was I ready?
I then bought Tales of Ordinary Madness, and I got through maybe the first 5th of the book and put it down again. Waited. Waited.
By senior year of college, I was already well on my way to alcoholism, disillusionment, misogyny, and misanthropy. Too much schooling. Not enough fun or, as Buk calls it, moxie, dance, so on... And so for that spring break (bumming around LA without any plan, place to stay, nor too many friends) it made sense to return to Tales.... I ended up devouring it.
Since then, I find it difficult to read anything else as exclusively. Once I start a Bukowski book, I have to finish it before starting any other reading project. 2 summers ago, I spent the entire summer moving from one book to another: Women to Factotum to Ham on Rye. After I put down Bukowski, I read a bit of Fante (remember - Bukowski mentions him in Women [I believe]) (which is really like reading a more literary and Catholic Bukowski), but then after, whole months transpired when I couldn't read anything. I could just sit on Bukowski and wait until the next time I was ready to enter his quizzical, paradoxical, tragicomical world.
I've since realized at least one thing about Bukowski. I'm pretty sure he's the real-life manifestation of Fyodor Karamazov (I plan to flesh out this idea more in an essay). He can see his own buffoonery from a unique perspective - from outside and from within at the same time - which reminds me of the scene with Fyodor in Zosima's cell. And it makes me wonder if this isn't why he's so enjoyable to read. Modern life and literature are all about this dualistic self-perception...
More later.
Enjoy jacking off