Cut-Ups on The Bukowski Bus
by Tim Scannell

"We don't write to be judged; we write to get it out of us so we don't do something worse," Charles Bukowski once asserted. With that, he fits the encouragement/disclaimer of the editors at Nerve Cowboy, who invite work, "…disturbing enough to make us all glad we're not the author of the piece."

Bukowski's claim that most poets practice "effete intellectualism" is demonstrably untrue: Few are effete, even fewer particularly intellectual. Clearly, his cult followings in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere are not driven to him by mass intellectual appeal. His late-in-life embrace of wealth, of imported wines and beers, as the fawned-over toast of Sean Penn and other Hollywoodites was dilettantish.

In sum and substance, Bukowski's poetry is a repetitive narration of adolescent bravado: anger, substance abuse, violence, vexation by and resentment towards humans generally. For better or for worse, myopic rebellion and sullen mood are signal traits of a phase in adolescence. "People are always pointing out things to me," Bukowski wrote: "I'm a drunk or I'm rich or I'm something else. How about the writing? Does it work or doesn't it?" Agreed. Product is more important than biography and should be judged as such—in the same way that one makes bite-the-tongue allowances for the irrational rough edges of adolescents, hoping they survive the tumultuous initiation into adulthood.

Does the writing work, or not? Many sites on the www are devoted to his product, and over 1500 critical references in periodicals and newspapers may be found there, too. I have re-read some Bukowski poems. "Combat Primer" is about a long list of writers who died young, got shot or run out of town, committed suicide or went mad.

As an assertion about and judgment on the writing life, this product is surely a facile one, inasmuch as one could as readily assemble a far longer list of creative lives filled with quiet accomplishment, eased by successful livelihoods to a peaceful, natural death. Those are ignored because Bukowski's adolescent attitude demands Götterdämmerung, and the ubiquitous 'they,' who derail, spoil or obstruct the dream, his language appropriate in tone and voice for the psyche of the typical suffering teen.

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish
or obnoxious.

one is asked
to view their total error
their life-waste
with kindliness,
especially if they
are aged.
(from, "be kind")

As usual with Bukowski, the looming 'they' appear for venting spleen, as though any 'raisin' (as my one-time teenaged son used to call senior citizens) descending from his RV to load up provisions at a local Safeway were automatically outdated, foolish or obnoxious. There's little need for selective quotation: examples are legion, peppering his immature swagger and constant bullying. Vomit poem #3 is vomit poem #88; bite-off-my-woman's-clit poem #6 is-bite-off-my-woman's-clit #864; barfight #44 is barfight #333; cockroaches-are-better-to-love-than-human-beings #82 is…

Bukowski wrote and rewrote four or five poems. He is, simply put, a media creation of the alternate zine world itself, that very same one which so hates, derides, and whines about its mainstream counterpart for its creation of shallow icons: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Monroe, Warhol, Madonna, Penn, Winfrey, Mailer, et al., each ebbing and flowing in the ole in-and-out of fickle favor. Both worlds, alternate and mainstream, are chockablock with arrogance, ideology, and pseudo-holy turf wars. And stupidity. Of course, the Taliban would kill them all, all of them driven by a no less procrustean, totalitarian ideology. To mistake it as another, as different, is (kindly put) appallingly muddleheaded.

Despite his bluster, I consider Bukowski a very valuable poet deserving of a wide readership, but not deserving, as an adult, of emulation. My reasons are the two obvious ones: He writes, with humor, in a plain American idiom, which includes all those titillating words so successfully reveled in by, say, Mort Sahl and George Carlin.

'Cock' and 'cunt' reign supreme in Anglo-Saxon literature. I can recall getting the train into Chicago's Loop with my fourteen-year-old pal, Chris, and virtually running off it into Bretano's bookstore to buy our copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1958). We did more diligent reading and re-reading that joyous summer than ever during our previous K-8 schooling. Salutary. But, I must admit, in my later maturing, that Henry Miller (Tropics of Cancer, Capricorn) and the Marquis de Sade (Juliette) appeared abusive and juvenile. Much later, Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex… Well, I'd long been there, long done that--and better.

Bukowski is likeable for his humor. The most dire need of lonely teenagers is to laugh at themselves. Bukowski was always droll, even on his tombstone: "Don't Try." Totally unintellectual, yes, but that is just what a teenager is.

Happily, finally growing up, nearly every single teen will ignore Bukowski's silly epitaph, and will learn to strive and succeed—always with good humor, hopefully. Each will wrestle the demons of self-doubt and self-pity to stretch and reach for and grab the brass ring, fight through disappointment and set-back for long, long adult decades in the sun. No small irony, Bukowski himself reached 'raisin-hood,' at 70-something driving his BMW to the track. Good for him.

In spite of his own personal rancor, Charles Bukowski will provide for some yet two gold stars in the firmament for youth to hang on to: plain statement and trenchant humor. May they ultimately catapult themselves out of the pain and isolation of adolescence into a maturity of, "Do try," and even, "Do try again!" Very few Bukowski poems, if any, will make it into the Western Canon, but I cannot see that it really matters at all. I'm a 3.96 CUM graduate from university, yet my Superman comics and Mad magazine are still on the shelf, right alongside Beowulf and Macbeth.

(A prolific, independent reviewer and essayist, Tim Scannell is a regular contributor to the magazine. (Masthead) He lives in Washington State.)