writers I love that Bukowski would hate (1 Viewer)

what writers do you love that you feel that bukowski would have hated?
for me its larry mcmurtry and stephen king
i dont know what he would have thought a cormac mccartry, but...
 
I like Ray Bradbury. Supposedly, Bukowski went to school with him but I've never read anything which indicated that Buk liked his work.
 
Buk did go to school with Ray Bradbury, although Ray was one year ahead of Buk. They traveled in different circles and I do not think that they knew each other.

Bill
 
..in an interview i guess i once read that hank was asked whether he liked Hermann Hesse.
He answered that he(hank) wasnt gay.

well, i like old hermann
 
its hard to say. bukowski seemed partial to rougher, grittier writing, but he also like william saroyan, and he is as sappy as you can get. i imagine bukowski would appreciate keilors lack of pretention. i like both writers so i like to pretend they would get along
 
Don't know how Buk would feel about James Frey the freud, but in my opinion, the ruse is a good read. (Too much alliteration there...)

Everyone knows I like me some Ginsberg, and everyone knows Buk had mixed feelings.

I love me some Hunter S. Thompson, but I also don't know how Buk felt about that - not too bad, I'd imagine, so that's not relevant.

Virginia Woolf has her moments. But then again, she's a woman. So she can't be that good. :p

Michael Cunningham's "A Home At The End of The World" was my favorite book for about a year at one point in time. The Hours isn't bad, either. To see it in film was odd, but good. I imagine Buk would hate him. Then again though, he liked "The Heart Was A Lonely Hunter", so who knows.

I'll probably add more later when they come to mind.
 
Personally me & Bukowski have very different taste in writers, I think the only ones we'd agree on would be Celine, McCullers and Dostovesky. Most of the ones I read, from his suggestions, I either didn't like or weren't impressed with much.

Two of my favorites that I know he didn't like would be Kerouac and Fitzgerald.
 
I'm pretty sure Buk wouldn't have cared much for Frank O'Hara, who I like immensely, though he does have his moments, like every writer does.
I think he might have been one of those poets that Buk had said wrote 'safe' poetry because of the tendency of his poems being cryptic and flowery in nature.
I like the style of James Frey's writing, but the whole 'tough guy/i'm-much-more-of-a-bad-ass-than-you-will-ever-be' got old, real quick
 
There is a french fashionable writer called Frédéric Beigbeder who adores Bukowski and has written some tributes in magazines and even in a collective book. The reverse would certainly not be true.
 
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[...] His sentences often look like advertising slogans [...]

well, that's what it is about.
right?
(of course, I only know his 99FRANC-novel)

also: I don't want to promote him here!
The novels (not the poems) of Houellebecq - that's something I would like to 'promote'. (even though rumor has it, the English translations of him aren't any good!)
 
I have read this one and Windows of the world (about 9'11). Both are written with the same style. And so are nodoubt the others.
 
On some levels I guess the point is moot because Bukowski wrote that he knew "nothing about literature" outside of what he personally liked and found relative to him; with that much said, the book I'm currently reviewing, the long-unpublished collaboration between Burroughs and Kerouac, "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks", would probably have presented a challenge for Bukowski. On the the one hand, he despised the Beats, as we know, and hated having his work assimilated into theirs (in terms of study) but "Hippos" is a very well-done genre novel that reminds me at times of "Factotum" in tone, characterization (very, very noir, especially the Burroughs chapters) and setting (New York during World War II).
 
Ridin' along in my automobile.
Me and my old lady at the wheel.
The night was long and the booze was cold.
With no particular place to go.
 
I love me some Hunter S. Thompson, but I also don't know how Buk felt about that - not too bad, I'd imagine, so that's not relevant.
Hunter gave me a paperback of "WOMEN" he had picked up in Europe in the 70s. He must have liked that book, because it was well worn. I could never get him to answer me whether or not he liked Bukowski's writing. Egos..
 
I bet he would have hated two of my favorites: H. P. Lovecraft and Opal Whiteley. Both are a million miles from Bukowski in every way. And from each other. But, oddly, Opal once lived on DeLongpre, not too far from where Bukowski later lived. I love finding meaningless connections between my unrelated obsessions. Lovecraft never made it out to L.A.
 

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