Where Bukowski "Nailed It" (for me) ... (1 Viewer)

At the risk of beginning a topic that has been dealt with ad infinitum earlier (the ongoing risk of being a newcomer), I would like to note that I was recently reading an essay in which Bukowski just "nailed it" for me (several probably would say, "Soooooo? What else is new?"). Nevertheless, in "A Rambling Essay on Poetics and the Bleeding Life Written While Drinking a Six-Pack (Tall)" -- see page 33 of Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook -- Bukowski wrote the most perceptive thought I have ever read on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment: he describes three quarters of that novel in this way: "... one of the few things to keep a young starving madman alive in the dullness of our public libraries." (from page 36) The main point is that Bukowski sees that less than the entire book succeeds!

Dostoevesky's novel was once my favourite novel, many years ago, until I read Lawrence's Women in Love. However, what ultimately bothered me about the great Russian novel is exactly what Bukowski was getting at ... not all of it is great stuff but most of it is ... naturally Dostoevsky had a lingering challenge (his religious views) and it had an impact on his work and it ultimately has had an impact on my engagement with several of his novels ... he simply lets his religious viewpoint get in the way of finishing off correctly his great novels ... Bukowski "nailed it" in this essay ...

Cheers, DaP
 
Since I never read very much before I was 50 I have a different "nailed it" about reading Bukowski. In one of the first collections of his work that I read Run With the Hunted a Charles Bukowski reader, the poem, Ice for the Eagles. It reminds me of the first time I ever got up close to horses and how they didn't bite me or step on me.
If I had read more I might have gotten the essays on other writers but Bukowski makes a lot of sense in most all of what he writes.
 
I can't remember where I read it, and there's no chance I could quote it verbatim, but a good "nailed it" time for me is when he explains why he thinks most women despise whores. It was something along the lines of your average woman likes men to think that what they have is so wonderful and sacred, but whores are letting the secret out that all it is is a pussy. He explained it like the whores where ruining the game for the rest of the women, or something like that.

Sorry Bukowski.
 
At the risk of beginning a topic that has been dealt with ad infinitum earlier (the ongoing risk of being a newcomer)
No risk at all friend. Posts dealing directly with Bukowski's words are always welcome and often come from newcomers. We oldcomers tend to run out of steam, on the subject of Buk's words that is...
Bukowski wrote the most perceptive thought I have ever read on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment:
Cheers, DaP

The more I read Bukowski the more I understand the amount of thought that lies behind all the seemingly simple lines and rowdy off the cuff comments he put down on paper. Discovering the depth behind the clear line is what nails it for me at the moment. The Bukowski Tapes is another place where this shines thru clearly.

Cheers back at ya!
 
...a good "nailed it" time for me is when he explains why he thinks most women despise whores.
If I could remotely describe my wife's reaction to me trying to explain this, I would have enough material to write my own novel.

One thing I learned is that the internet is a great source of instruction on how to patch drywall.

You're right though. He nailed it. (No pun)
 
I think it occurred somewhere around here....

there is no escaping her being
there is no desire to. . .

my radio is playing symphonic music
that she cannot hear
but her movements coincide exactly
to the rythms of the
symphony. . .

she is dark, she is dark
she is reading about God.
I am God.


where I learned my favorite
Bukowski and still am amazed by those lines
 
... the amount of thought that lies behind all the seemingly simple lines and rowdy off the cuff comments he put down on paper. Discovering the depth behind the clear line is what nails it for me at the moment. The Bukowski Tapes is another place where this shines thru clearly.

well put Erik.
 
I read this online and this was the nail, or hook, that sent me to the bookstore.


if you're going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don't even start.


if you're going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.


go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you'll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.


if you're going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.


do it, do it, do it.
do it.


all the way
all the way.


you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.
 
Re-reading this thread tonight, I realize I entirely missed your point the first time through, D.A. - Sorry about that....

You're looking for where Buk made an observation about something in life and nailed it, rather than a line of poetry that "nailed it" for the reader.

So I would say that this observation does it for me:

"there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late"
 
Yes (that's the name of the poem). I like that poem a lot myself.

the "Roll The Dice" poem Stavrogin quotes ain't bad either.

Buk nailed it for me in those two poems (and in a lot of other poems too).
 
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I can't remember where I read it, and there's no chance I could quote it verbatim, but a good "nailed it" time for me is when he explains why he thinks most women despise whores. It was something along the lines of your average woman likes men to think that what they have is so wonderful and sacred, but whores are letting the secret out that all it is is a pussy. He explained it like the whores where ruining the game for the rest of the women, or something like that.

Sorry Bukowski.

Does anybody know what text this came from?
 
It's in Notes of a Dirty Old Man (page 163 of the City Lights edition, page 125 in the Virgin edition):

here in the United States, especially, sex is inflated far beyond its simplest importance. a woman with a sexy body immediately turns it into a weapon for MATERIAL advancement. and I am not speaking of the whorehouse whore, I am speaking of your mother and your sister and your wife and your daughter. and the American male is the sucker (bad term, yes) who perpetuates the extremism of the hoax. but the American male has had his brains beaten out by the American formal education and the American prenumbed parent and the American monster Advertising long before he was twelve years old. he is ready and the female is ready to make him beg and get up the $$$. this is why a professional whore with a towel under the springs is so hated by her counter-female professional whore (the near remainder of womanhood; there are a FEW good women, thank the Lord!) and the law. the openly professional whore poses a breakdown threat to the whole American society of Strive and Hustle all the way to the grave. she devaluates the pussy.
 
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