There are few people more disgusting or more interesting than Charles Bukowski. A renowned German-born, American-claimed writer, poet and all-round scumbag, Bukowski was to my mother’s generation what I imagine Hemingway was to my grandmother’s—a voice of the counterculture who somehow managed to earn the respect of the mainstream. A well-documented alcoholic and womanizer, Bukowski lived a somewhat long life for someone with his lifestyle but passed away on March 9, 1994 of Leukemia. He was 74 years old.
Bukowski was born on August 16, 1920 in Andernach, Germany to a German-American soldier and some girl he’d had sex with while stationed there. A man of the times, Bukowski’s father did the noble thing and married the mother of his child a month before he was born (though the writer claimed to have been born out of wedlock). Bukowski’s father soon moved them to America, where his son Heinrich Karl became Henry Charles (and later just Charles), settling them finally in Los Angeles, where Bukowski spent a great deal of his life and what became the backdrop of his many of his antics and acclaimed writings.
Though even his earliest publications are gruff and gritty, it wasn’t until later—after a decade “lost” to drinking— when things started to get good for Bukowski, or more accurately, bad for him but good for us. After holding several jobs I can only assume he was less than enthralled about, one at a pickle factory and another as a fill-in mail carrier for the US Postal Service, Bukowski’s drinking began to catch up with him. At the age of 35, he was hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer.
But for a writer like Charles Bukowski, tragedy, self-destruction and pain were inspirational gifts from the creativity gods and soon after leaving the hospital, he began writing poetry. It was at this time that he also began collecting wives and baby mamas, starting with Barbara Frye, a Texas poet he agreed to marry without ever having met her in person. They divorced three-years later. Bukowski continued to write and drink.
In 1962, Bukowski was devastated by the loss of his long-time romantic obsession and muse, Jane Cooney Baker, who died suddenly from a burst ulcer. Bukowski took her death hard—basing much of his subsequent poetry on her. But in the spirit of getting over someone by getting under someone else, it wasn’t long before the troubled writer had moved in with another woman, poet Frances Smith, and knocked her up. His first and only daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski, was born on September 7, 1964.
Though she was the mother of his only child, Bukowski was never kind when referring to Smith in his stories. He called her all sorts of unflattering names like “old snaggle-tooth” and “white-haired hippie,” though it probably wasn’t personal. Bukowski seemed to deconstruct many of the women in his life with a harsh and critical eye, yet it never seemed to dissuade him from having sex with them.
In 1967, Bukowski launched a column in the LA-based underground publication, Open City, called “Notes from a Dirty Old Man,” which was later picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press and NOLA Express in New Orleans. But it wasn’t until he was 49 years old that Bukowski finally quit the post office and became a full-time writer. He completed his first novel, aptly titled, Post Office, a somewhat autobiographical story about Henry Chinaski, a postal clerk who became Bukowski’s literary alter ego. The book was published by Black Sparrow Press, a small, independent publishing company headed up by John Martin. Martin believed in Bukowski and gave him a shot during a time when he was still relatively unknown. Out of appreciation and respect, Bukowski continued to work almost exclusively with Black Sparrow for the remainder of his career.
If you have ever read anything by Charles Bukowski, you know what I mean when I say that you either love him or he makes you want to vomit and then take a shower. Many of his titles say it all—You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense; Notes of a Dirty Old Man; Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Famous for his raw descriptions and unfiltered prose, Bukowski’s works take his readers down his path of glass-totally-empty-because-I-drank-it perspective on life. His stories and poems highlight the ungraceful, menial and pathetic aspects of human existence in America. His characters are gross. Their lives are gross. They are all flawed and broken. Bukowski’s gift was showing us how bad it could be.
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