{"id":1341,"date":"2008-03-13T20:13:48","date_gmt":"2008-03-13T20:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skullcull.wordpress.com\/?p=227"},"modified":"2008-03-13T20:13:48","modified_gmt":"2008-03-13T20:13:48","slug":"turn-the-page-charles-bukowski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/?p=1341","title":{"rendered":"Turn The Page: Charles Bukowski"},"content":{"rendered":"

\\\"bukowski\\\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You find the beats, you find Fante, you\\’re gonna find Bukowski. As a writer how can you not be drawn to him? It is arguable that he is one of the most influential out of any of that type of writer — the ones taking their real life and fictionalising, drawing a thin veil between them and their reading public. Bukowski lived what he wrote — and he wrote it warts and all, none of that prettifying that some people go in fo; Bukowski didn\\’t give a fuck what you thought about him.<\/p>\n

He drank, he screwed and he gambled, and he wrote. I recently read Factotum <\/i>for the first time and had a kind of crisis of confidence in the guy. I had read Post Office <\/i>and loved it; <\/i>I think Ham On Rye<\/i> is the best thing he wrote; <\/i>I even enjoyed Pulp<\/i> which seems to be something of an accomplishment considering how many people slate it; and I really got into the poetry. You see, I was recently in New York (well, about a year ago) and someone I know had managed to get hold of some of Bukowski\\’s unpublished letters and I met someone that knew him — so it fired up a new enthusiasm in me for his work. I went out and bought loads of books of poetry by him and determined to read everything by the guy.<\/p>\n

Now Factotum<\/i> I was looking forward to and I wanted to read it before I saw the film, which is in my Blockbuster queue as we speak, and as far as I could tell this was one of the works that I could trust. But I hit a point about two thirds of the way through and, as if it was some kind of revelation, I turned to my wife and said \\’All\u00a0 this guy writes about is fucking, gambling and drinking, and he\\’s an arsehole.\\’ I think the thing is, the reason why that realisation hit my so hardis that the writing didn\\’t keep me engaged like it always had — something flagged in the writing in that boo, and I was suddenly standing outside in the cold looking in at something I didn\\’t really want to see; like an enraptured rubbernecker at a godawful accident. I think the dirge-like quality of the work lasted about fifty pages and then I got back into it and it seemed to find its footing again. What springs to mind is an audio-clip from the Manic Street Preacher\\’s album Holy Bible <\/i>(can\\’t tell you where from) that says: \\”I want to rub the human face in it\\’s own vomit.\\” That was how I suddenly felt — dirtied by what I was reading, and I have rarely felt like that — Jack Ketchum did it with The Girl Next Door<\/i> by making me feel complicit in the acts being carried out, and maybe that is what happened here: that I felt like I was glorying in the awful shit Bukowski was writing about.<\/p>\n

One book and it\\’s travails have not killed my enthusiasm for the man, but it re-framed him for me — let me see it in a different light. Perhaps you need that once in a while — to have people you look up to knocked down. I want to strive to reach the heights of my heros but if they are more human then it is more attainable. Bukowski\\’s humanity, his failure, is nothing if not\u00a0 a source of inspiration.<\/p>\n

—————-
\nNow playing: The Dogs D\\’amour – Empty World<\/a>
\nvia FoxyTunes<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You find the beats, you find Fante, you\\’re gonna find Bukowski. As a writer how can you not be drawn to him? It is arguable that he is one of the most influential out of any of that type of Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,20,25,60,77,125,134,168,171,181,182],"tags":[311,477,547,882,1193,1197],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beat-generation","category-blogging","category-bukowski","category-film","category-ideas","category-poetry","category-ramblings","category-turn-the-page","category-updates","category-words","category-writers","tag-books","tag-factotum","tag-ham-on-rye","tag-post-office","tag-writer","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/skullcull.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}