charles bukowski

I don't see how you can compare Bukowski to Shakespeare. Why would you want to? It doesn't make any sense. Bukowski is a fun writer and holds at least SOME merit in the literary world for his visceral and exciting writing style. I wouldn't put him up high on any list of mine, but I didn't think that was something that should even be questioned, of course he's no Shakespeare. He's no Hemingway, Joyce, Faulkner, Proust, Kafka, Fitzgerald, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Wilde, or Rimbaud either. But since when did he try to be?

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Originally Posted by spookymulder93

What makes the novels you mentioned above so much better than Ham on Rye? Do they share similar themes like loneliness, abandonment, not getting laid, and basically everything that I liked about Ham on Rye.

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Pretty much sums up The Sun Also Rises.

Yep, listen to Neely Spooky.

just found out we will be able to study bukowski at some point at my uni.

I only know him through his worship of a great author I enjoy 'John Fante'
He wrote a foreword to 'Ask The Dust'

Bukowski is a minor writer any way you look at it

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Originally Posted by Jassy Melson

Bukowski is a minor writer any way you look at it

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I hate such biased and obviously debatable views stated as fact, without any objective acknowledgement... it's like everyone should drink from the bigot's cup, just cause his entire family's been doing it for ages...

I keep coming back to this poem of his, 'a smile to remember', which I can't post here, I guess, but here's a link:
http://bukowski.net/poems/a_smile_to_remember.php

It's a painful poem, but in this pain there's a sad reality for many.
A bit of it:
'.. my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, "be happy Henry!"
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week
while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within... '

That 'can' really leaps out, alone there on that line.

I hate such biased and obviously debatable views stated as fact, without any objective acknowledgement... it's like everyone should drink from the bigot's cup, just cause his entire family's been doing it for ages...

Biased? How is it any more biased thanthe notion that Bukowski is actually a great writer?

Debatable? With whom? 20 year-olds who've read 20... maybe 30 real books? What major critic has cited Bukoski as a major writer? What survey of world literature includes Bukowski as a major figure?

But of course we should all take your word as gospel rather than considering the opinion of these tired critics and professors... let alone our own experiences with reading which may (or may not) rival (if not surpass) your own.

Bukowski is a minor writer at best. Period.

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Originally Posted by Jassy Melson

Bukowski is a minor writer any way you look at it

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I by no means like all of Bukowski. In fact, the poems I don't like of Bukowski's I dislike like headlice. I do really like a few of his poems though.

The problem with this statement for me is the phrase: 'any way you look at it'. You can look at things in a number of different ways.

I thought this was originally a discussion on Bukowski's poetry, which many people quite like actually.

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Originally Posted by breathtest

just found out we will be able to study bukowski at some point at my uni.

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You may look into how the uni feels about capitalization...

**** capitalization, let's talk about bukowski! ;)

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Originally Posted by Silas Thorne

I by no means like all of Bukowski. In fact, the poems I don't like of Bukowski's I dislike like headlice. I do really like a few of his poems though.

The problem with this statement for me is the phrase: 'any way you look at it'.

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And a great big thank you.
This point is all I was advancing.
Personally, I am not and have never actually been the greatest Bukowski fan - I just hate idiots who state opinion (however shared) as FACT...
Exemplified: Personally, I truly despise reading (plowing) through Dickens, but you'll never hear the likes of me say something along the lines of "Dickens is a tiresome old bore", though I may sometimes think it to myself, and though, truth be told, I've never read Martin Chuzzlewit, which a friend assures me will utterly change my mind - but do you see? A single book? To change an entire outlook?
Why not a single paragraph? A single line? Nothing is immutable and nothing is universal Truth...
Anyone who would claim otherwise needs shut the **** up!

asdfg

the doc's reading 'post office' right now...about a hundred pages in and there were some LOL's in the first section...

it's the same buk that the doc has read before...just in a longer form...

working class wisdom...