Widely considered Bukowski’s finest achievement, Ham on Rye details the coming-of-age of Chinaski in Los Angeles during the Great Depression. Women is, primarily, a comic examination of the dangers of fame and a rejection of salvation through promiscuity. His serious writing, however, reveals a gentleness toward women, especially the women he loved. He denied the claims, however, and wrote with startling frankness about prostitutes, rape, and twisted relationships. The book is also, in part, a reaction against feminist critics who argue that Bukowski was sexist and misogynist. The hilarious novel Women is a semiautobiographical novel that documents Bukowski’s unlikely rise as a ladies’ man. When he became a successful cult figure, women threw themselves at him, aiming-it seemed-for him to write about their adventures-and write he did. Womenīukowski, in later life, became obsessed with writing about women. Director Bent Hamer’s 2005 film adaptation of the novel, a film starring Matt Dillon as Chinaski, was a great success, bringing the novel to a new generation of readers. The novel traces the course of their relationship and documents Chinaski’s failures in work, love, and life. Unemployed, hungover, trying to make it as a writer, Chinaski falls for Jan, another barfly. Bukowski’s style is sharp, precise, and economical, and the novel is a hilarious and vulgar representation of a life lived “on the skids.”įactotum continues the adventures of Chinaski. He quits again and then pursues his career as a writer. Chinaski, like Bukowski, works for years as a mail carrier, quits, survives by gambling on horses, and returns to the post service as a mail sorter. The novel tells the story of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter ego, and his time spent as an employee of the U.S. Bukowski wrote Post Office, his first novel, in three weeks after quitting his job as a postal clerk. Post Officeīukowski worked a succession of odd jobs, had long periods of unemployment, and was a chronic gambler, but he did hold a steady post-office job for many years before devoting his life full time to writing. Furthermore, his writing contains biting criticism of his contemporaries, including Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Though he is often associated with the writers of the Beat generation, Bukowski felt he was following in the footsteps of the writers and musicians he greatly admired, including Pound, Faulkner, Hemingway, Jeffers, Fante, Fyodor Dostoevski, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Gustav Mahler.
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