charles bukowski

[country doctor]

ah, buk...the doc's about three quarters thru w/ 'post office' and he'll throw a few observations out there...

this one isn't as gritty and rancid as alot of his short stories...not quite as cynical, he's not quite as burned out...at least, so far...

this is just the doc's opinion, but he thinks that you really need to know that feeling of pushing through a day w/ a pounding headache, hungover something fierce, and know that feeling on a hundred different occasions to understand where the mad man is coming from...

it also helps if you've spent some of your time looking for the 'easy money' that comes via a gamble...whether it's the ponies, football or poker, if you have that gambler's mentality you should feel comfortable reading buk...

it helps if you've spent a good portion of your life living by your wits...no networking for you...not a chance of getting a step up from a connection...it's all you baby...that's all you really have in this world...all you can do is try to make the best of these circumstances...

and if you've developed some toughness and learned a few things the 'hard way' you would probably enjoy turning a few pages of buk...

the doc's been down that path and though he's been a little bit luckier than buk, financially, he's been there...and he appreciates that buk put it down on paper...

so here's to a life filled w/ cigarettes, booze, women and the ponies...if you're tough enough and smart enough you can keep your head above water in that environment...and once you've learned to adopt to the environment after years of living it and if you've got some talent, you can put it down on paper...like buk...

[country doctor]

buk and thoreau: two different attempts to quell the feeling of quiet desperation? they both see the same problem w/ society at different eras, they just have their own way of answering said problem as they see it...

just an idle thought by the doc today...and the irony is that thoreau goes down at 44 and for all of buk's hard living he lives to 73...

is the doc on to something here or not?

[Alexander III]

this is just the doc's opinion, but he thinks that you really need to know that feeling of pushing through a day w/ a pounding headache, hungover something fierce, and know that feeling on a hundred different occasions to understand where the mad man is coming from...

it also helps if you've spent some of your time looking for the 'easy money' that comes via a gamble...whether it's the ponies, football or poker, if you have that gambler's mentality you should feel comfortable reading buk...

it helps if you've spent a good portion of your life living by your wits...no networking for you...not a chance of getting a step up from a connection...it's all you baby...that's all you really have in this world...all you can do is try to make the best of these circumstances...

and if you've developed some toughness and learned a few things the 'hard way' you would probably enjoy turning a few pages of buk...

I am not a 19th century russian count and have never participated in war as an officer, yet I perfectly get where Tolstoy is coming from...

[Alexander III]

just an idle thought by the doc today...and the irony is that thoreau goes down at 44 and for all of buk's hard living he lives to 73...

is the doc on to something here or not?

Or it might be the fact that there is about 100 years of medical development between them.

[country doctor]

I am not a 19th century russian count and have never participated in war as an officer, yet I perfectly get where Tolstoy is coming from...

lot of folks don't 'get' buk...but for those that have went down that path that he did, even for awhile...well, the doc would guess that most of those folks do...

you have a point...just not a very strong one...

[country doctor]

Or it might be the fact that there is about 100 years of medical development between them.

lots of folks lived longer than buk did in thoreau's time...buk's living into his 70's probably has more to do w/ his strong constitution than the advances of medicine...

just typin'...

[FROADS]

I read Factotum and that alone made me not look for the rest of his other books. I'm not saying he's a bad writer or anything like that but he's way too much of a nihilist 4 me. Lemme guess, do the rest of his works deal with alcoholism, depressed loners, and women with character issues?