My introduction to Bukowski
Seems like the best thread for me to start with on this forum.
I've been writing for a film review site called Film Threat (
www.filmthreat.com) for about five years now. I read a review of "Bukowski: Born into This" by then-editor Eric Campos (
http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=3799, and looked at the titles of Bukowski's books: Post Office? Ham on Rye? Didn't sound to me like titles you have for books. Seemed almost too regular.
I remember checking "Post Office" out of the Valencia library here in the Santa Clarita Valley, but don't remember much of the actual reading. However, I remember the exact day that I got hooked on Bukowski.
It was a Saturday, towards the end of the summer in 2004 and I was in my room in my family's apartment in Valencia, on my bed, with the blinds closed behind me, pure daylight filtering through the windowframe. By this time, I was too used to my parents fighting often. My mom was not happy with my dad still for moving us to Southern California so quickly, despite the fact that his job as a business education teacher was going to be cut in Florida by then-governor Jeb Bush in favor of the FCAT exam. We had to go somewhere and though it was thought that the trip to California that would eventually bring us here to live was going to be a vacation, there was job interview after job interview for my dad.
I don't remember what this fight was about (I imagine there was still some heavy resentment), but it was pretty bad. There's never been physical blows, but the raised and angry voices are just as bad. Being that there was no insulation in the walls of this apartment, I could hear them more clearly than I wanted to.
I ignored it as best I could (at this time, I always worried about my mom's insistence that she wanted to move back to Orlando since that's where we had our best times, because we'd just gotten here and we'd moved so many times beforehand in Florida that I really wanted someplace to be home already), and began reading "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," which I'd checked out from the library. Bukowski seized me from the first page. I was amazed at this honesty. The writing read so simply, and at the same time it was so loaded. I wanted more. Lots more. Not just because of Bukowski's writing, but because in a sense, he had saved me from my parents for a day. I truly felt like I was somewhere else and that helped a lot.
Since then, I've bought up lots of Bukowski's books. During the only time I was ever in San Francisco, I made sure to buy a few of Bukowski's books at City Lights, and even bought up two CDs, one a reading in Vancouver and a double-set recorded in his living room. I didn't mind that the total for everything came out to over $100. I'd been waiting to do that for such a long time. But I was glad to have received "Bukowski: Born into This" for free on DVD (for review), because the price at City Lights was $30. Far too heavy for me.