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The author Charles Bukowski caught me unguarded right in my guts when I first read him. I was about twenty years old
and I got Post Office as a birthday present. The language he used was completely new to me and the subjects he brougth up - bad
liqouer, bad women, bad life - seemed to fit rather nicely into my own confusing and no-good existence. I felt there was a soul-mate
in Mr. Bukowski, a man who knew what he was talking about and did it in a way that breached with every literary style you can think
of. That is, of course, not completely true, but that is how I felt back in the angry-young-man days. |
I often have had to defend Bukowski when discussing him. Mostly for his Dirty-Old-Man attitude with all that sex, drugs and immoral
living that seems to upset a certain kind of malicious people. They never could, and never will, understand what was the greatness
of Bukowski's authorship. And I have never been very good in explaining. He just do things to you when you read his stuff.
I think, if I'm alowed an uneducated guess, that it is all about borders, limits, and what we all can do with them.
Another thing that feed my admiration for Buk's writing is the disregarding attitude by the cultural establishment in the States. How can they,
that have Hollywood, that have best seller authors that write shallow easy-to-read novels with no content, that have soap operas all the time
and every day on TV - how can they disregard a writer that was a mirror image of society, that pinpoints the very essens of life for many americans,
and for many people around the world? Is it because he wrote for those people in a way they could understand? Is it because he talked about things,
otherwise often discussed in highly abstract terms, in a simple way that would be just impossible for an educated person to do? I don't know... |
