Charles Bukowski

Who?

Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 - March 9, 1994) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. He was born in Andernach, Germany and passed away in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California.

His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work.

Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over 60 books. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, in the LA underground newspaper Open City.

In the 1930s the poet's father was often unemployed. In the autobiographical Ham on Rye Charles Bukowski says that, with his mother's acquiescence, his father was frequently abusive, both physically and mentally, beating his son for the smallest imagined offense. During his youth Bukowski was shy and socially withdrawn, a condition exacerbated during his teens by an extreme case of acne. Neighborhood children ridiculed his German accent and the sissy clothing his parents made him wear. In Bukowski -- Born Into This, a 2003 film, Bukowski states that his father beat him with a razor strop three times a week from the ages of 6 to 11. He says that it helped his writing, as he came to understand undeserved pain. The Depression bolstered his rage as he grew, and gave him much of his voice and material for his writings.

Quotes From

• "For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
• "Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."
• "An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."
• "We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."
• "I have one problem, I don't hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism."
• "Find what you love and let it kill you."
• "People are strange. They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice."

Quotes About

• In 1986, Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife".
• Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero."
• "He had to write to survive. His childhood was brutal, it was a nightmare. You read about his early days and you don't know how he even survived"

More

If you'd like to read more about Charles Bukowski, as well as discover the many artistic and eccentric works he accomplished in his life, you should check out some of these links:

Coded by: jwhaney