Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast

By David Charlson

Charles Bukowski disliked academics, as this academic and readable book points out from page one onward of its introduction, "Charles Bukowski vs. American Ways." Begun before Bukowski died in 1994, Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast was the first doctoral dissertation on his prose and poetry up to that date, and it is offered now for fans and academics alike-no more need for black-market sales.

Chapter One, "Placing Bukowski," introduces Bukowski's amazing life and career and relates his work to influential predecessors (primarily Ernest Hemingway and John Fante) and four contemporaries (Raymond Carver, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederick Exley, and Hunter Thompson).

Chapter Two, "Bukowski Among the Autobiographers," pursues Bukowski's comprehensive autobiographical project. Harnessing Timothy Dow Adams' concept of "strategic lying," the chapter follows Bukowski's thinly veiled personae through three stages-first through the attention-getting "Dirty Old Man," then responding to the attention and (re)defining himself, finally culminating in "Henry Chinaski," the hero of Bukowski's five autobiographical novels.

Chapter Three, "Problems of Masculinity: At 'Home,' at Work, at Play," tackles the knee-jerk assessment of Bukowski as just a sexist "Dirty Old Man." Michael Kaufman's "triad of men's violence" (against women, other men, and themselves) explains the general Bukowski persona as a complicated gender construct. Bukowski's Bildungsroman, Ham on Rye, shows Chinaski as victim, practitioner, and critic of male violence, with the last role figuring into his other work too.

Chapter Four, "Bukowski vs. 'Institution Art,'" classifies this challenging author as both populist and avant-garde. As general postmodern phenomenon, he blends the democratic accessibility of populist writing with the adventurous gesturing of the avant-garde, and the result is direct, daring, truthful, and funny.

The book's conclusion, "Summing Up: Giving Bukowski His Due," predicts that Bukowski will be read far into the 21st century. Buy his books before you buy this one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 6, 2006
• ISBN: 9781412236577

David Charlson

David Charlson teaches English at Oklahoma City Community College. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas in 1995, choosing to write his dissertation on Charles Bukowski when little work had been done on him so far. Hearing rumors that the dissertation on this internationally famous author was fetching quite a price on the Bukowski black market, he decided to offer it through legitimate means.

Book preview

Charles Bukowski:

Autobiographer, Gender

Critic, Iconoclast

by David Charlson

© Copyright 2005 David Charlson.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Note for Librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html ISBN 1-4120-5966-6

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Contents

Foreword

Dissertation Abstract

Acknowledgments

Introduction:

Chapter One: Placing Charles Bukowski

Chapter Two: Bukowski Among the Autobiographers

Chapter Three: Problems of Masculinity: At Home, at Work, at Play

Chapter Four: Bukowski vs. Institution Art

Summing Up: To Give Bukowski His Due

Works Cited

Foreword

This is the first doctoral dissertation published in America that considered the entire oeuvre of Charles Bukowski up through the time of its publication in 1995, and I offer it as a historical document concerned with an amazing author who continues to matter to the world.

Ignoring advice back then to not write on a living author, I began the project before Bukowski’s unfortunate death in 1994. Ten years later, I hope that it provides a good introduction to Bukowski along with some worthy insights, yet I know that our author himself would prefer that you just read him. That’s not a bad idea at all.

With the exception of a few corrected typos and a few clarifications, it is published here as it was at the University of Kansas. Bukowski scholarship finally has begun to take hold to some degree, and I offer my contribution in that light.

—David Charlson, Oklahoma City, 2005

Dissertation Abstract

David Jon Charlson, July 1995

University of Kansas

Charles Bukowski:

Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast

Often dismissed as the Dirty Old Man he once called himself, Charles Bukowski is an American author whose surface vulgarity masks a deeper purpose, for his prose and poetry challenge the social and cultural status quo of America. Through dramatizing much of his life in his work, he targets the deadening oppressiveness of the workplace, the questionable aspects of traditional masculinity, and elitist attitudes in art and academia. Because of his first-hand experience in a lower-class underworld, his work sometimes resembles the Dirty Realism of Raymond Carver, yet Bukowski’s challenging autobiographical persona puts him more in company with Kurt Vonnegut, Frederick Exley, and Hunter Thompson.

Not an autobiographer per se, Bukowski told his life story mainly through the persona of Henry Chinaski, employing Timothy Dow Adams’ concept of strategic lying. In the first of three stages of his autobiographical project, Bukowski unleashed his Dirty Old Man persona to gain attention; the second responded to the attention and began to correct the initial impression; the third, primarily through five autobiographical novels, presented a Chinaski quite like Bukowski—still confrontational but no madman.

Michael Kaufman’s triad of men’s violence (against women, other men, and themselves) can explain the general Bukowski persona as a complicated gender construct. Bukowski’s Bildungsroman, Ham on

Rye, shows Chinaski as victim, practitioner, and critic of male violence, with the last role figuring prominently in his other work too.

Bukowski is also critical of what Peter Bürger calls institution art, a gesture both populist and avant-garde. As populist, he resembles the British working-class writers described in The Republic of Letters who aim to disestablish literature, yet he is no man of the people. His iconoclastic outsiderhood places him in the American avant-garde, defined as the work of the socially marginalized by Maria Damon. As general postmodern phenomenon, he blends the democratic accessibility of populist writing with the adventurous gesturing of the avant-garde. The blend includes the directness of Hemingway (an early hero), the freedom to be profanely honest, and the ability to laugh at himself and make us laugh as well.

Acknowledgments

I would like to offer thanks to the following people: first, to Philip Barnard for saying yes to Bukowski and then pointing the way to theory; next, to Jerry Masinton, Don Warders, Doug Atkins, and James Woelfel for their continued support; and, finally, to Anne Dennis for laughing out loud at all the right parts of the manuscript—the best yes of all.

Introduction:

Charles Bukowski vs. American Ways

Since the Sixties, American academics have either dismissed or ignored the controversial American author Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), despite the fact that he is a counterculture hero in America as well as in Europe—especially in Germany, where he was born. Bukowski was an incredibly prolific author: his current works in print include numerous volumes of poetry, six short-story collections, six novels, a travel book, a screenplay for the cult favorite Barfly, and books of letters, and much of this has been translated into over a dozen languages. Obviously, he has a large and significant audience, yet not until after his death did a critical book on him appear, Against the American Dream: Essays on Charles Bukowski (1994), by Russell Harrison. As Harrison’s title indicates, Bukowski criticizes the American Dream, but that is probably not the reason for the dearth of criticism since many writers join him in that. What makes him different, a persona non grata in academia, is that his work runs counter to what many American academics hold dear. His oft-noted vulgarity in form and content is one obstacle to acceptance, and another may be his tamer subject matter.

This last statement needs elaboration. Besides writing about the sexual and scatological, Bukowski often protests from first-hand knowledge the working-class life that so many must lead, so his writing can seem banal or even boring to many serious readers. Harrison says that it is the working-class content of much of Bukowski’s work, rather than any so-called ‘banality,’ that is the sticking point for so many academic critics as well as for others (12). That is a nice academic comment in itself, but why not let loose Bukowski on this matter? Below is a poem that presents the conflict from his perspective, and Bukowski makes the rare move for him of using the royal (or not so royal) we to show that it is not just his perspective. The poem is

fronted by a typically explosive Bukowski title, with rare but significant capital letters as well. Here is Rape of the Holy Mother:

to expose your ass on paper

terrifies some

and

it should:

the more you put down the more you leave yourself open

to those who label themselves critics.

they are offended by the outright antics of the maddened.

they prefer their poesy to be

secretive

soft and

nearly

indecipherable. their game has remained unmolested for centuries.

it has been the temple of the snobs and the fakers.

to disrupt this sanctuary is to them like

the Rape of the Holy Mother.

besides that, it would also

cost them

their wives

their automobiles

their girlfriends

their University

jobs.

the Academics have much to fear

and they will not die

without a dirty fight

but we

have long been ready

we have come from the alleys

and the bars and the

jails

we don’t care how they write the poem

but we insist that there are other voices other ways of creating other ways of living the life

and we intend to be heard and heard and heard

in this battle against the Centuries of the Inbred Dead

let it be known that we have arrived and intend to stay.

This poem may not be brilliant or intricate or polished, but maybe that’s the point. Rape of the Holy Mother stands as an assault on academic poesy and its proponents as well as a manifesto of sorts for an alternative kind of art produced by what is not necessarily a marginal group of people. Bukowski is their spokesman in form and content, so much so that one brave critic suggests that Bukowski spawned a school of sorts in contemporary poetry (James 164). Clearly, Bukowski is a significant force in American literature as a whole, and this dissertation will attempt to explore his contribution. The dissertation’s general thesis is that Bukowski offers a critique of the social and cultural status quo of America through dramatizing much of his own life in his work.

For those who may not know much about Bukowski, chapter one of the dissertation first gives a detailed overview of the life and work of this intriguing man. Next, it discusses some of the writers who preceded him and whose work figures into his, including Ernest Hemingway, the lesser-known John Fante, and others. Finally, it attempts to place his work in context with that of four of his contemporaries: Raymond Carver, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederick Exley, and Hunter Thompson. Although Rape and other works of his suggest that Bukowski thought of himself primarily as a poet, he wrote six novels, a travel book, and about 200 short stories as well. As a prose writer, he shares something in common with the contemporaries mentioned, especially the latter three: the contestatory gesture (already quite obvious in Rape). In general, this dissertation will focus on the prose of Bukowski, yet the poetry will be called upon in support of various points, especially since in form and content it is so often quite similar, as Bukowski himself occasionally noted.

Whether poetry or prose, much of Bukowski’s work is autobiographically based, so chapter two investigates the persona of this persona non grata. Persona non grata translates into unwelcome person, yet it was Bukowski himself who prevented his welcome into many people’s lives by writing a weekly column early in his career called Notes of a Dirty Old Man. The columns gained him fame, or infamy, and the dirty old man label stuck. The essential question of chapter two is whether it is Bukowski or the man represented by the persona who is non grata for some. The answer in brief is that both are often misunderstood.

Chapter three shows how the dirty old man—whether Bukowski or the construct he built around himself—was an abused young man, not only by family and friends but also by the working-class world in which he lived. Since Bukowski grew up in the Twenties and Thirties, the occasional chauvinism that he displays in his work is no surprise; the