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Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles. Bukowski's work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work.
The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City.
Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career, including his Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window, published by his friend and fellow poet Charles Potts, and Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. His poems and stories were republished by John Martin's Black Sparrow Press (now HarperCollins/Ecco Press) as collected volumes of his work. As a reviewer noted, "Bukowski continued to be, thanks to his antics and deliberate clownish performances, the king of the underground ... stressing his loyalty to those small press editors who had first championed his work."
Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife". Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal is he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp magazine hero."
During his lifetime, Bukowski received little attention from academic critics in the United States, but was better received in Western Europe, particularly the United Kingdom, and especially Germany, where he was born. Since his death in March 1994, Bukowski's life and writings have been the subject of a number of articles and books.
Bukowski's parents met in Andernach following World War I. His father was German-American and a sergeant in the United States Army serving in Germany after the empire's defeat in 1918. He had an affair with Katharina, a German friend's sister, and she subsequently became pregnant. Bukowski repeatedly claimed to be born out of wedlock, but Andernach marital records indicate that his parents married one month before his birth.Sounes, Howard. Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, p. 8
Afterwards, Bukowski's father became a building contractor, set to make great financial gains in the aftermath of the war, and after two years moved the family to Pfaffendorf (today part of Koblenz). However, given the crippling postwar reparations being required of Germany, which led to a stagnant economy and high levels of inflation, he was unable to make a living and decided to move the family to the U.S. On April 18, 1923, they sailed from Bremerhaven to Baltimore, Maryland, where they settled. Charles Bukowski. Miles, Barry. October 6, 2009. Ebury Publishing. Pg. 11
His family moved to Mid-City, Los Angeles, in 1930. Bukowski's father was often unemployed. In the autobiographical Ham on Rye, Bukowski says that, with his mother's acquiescence, his father was frequently abusive, both physically and mentally, beating his son for the smallest imagined offense. He later told an interviewer that his father beat him with a razor strop three times a week from the ages of six to 11 years. He says that it helped his writing, as he came to understand undeserved pain.
Young Bukowski spoke English with a strong German accent and was taunted by his childhood playmates with the epithet "Heini," German diminutive of Heinrich, in his early youth. He was shy and socially withdrawn, a condition exacerbated during his teen years by an extreme case of acne vulgaris. Neighborhood children ridiculed his accent and the clothing his parents made him wear. The Great Depression bolstered his rage as he grew, and gave him much of his voice and material for his writings.
In his early teen years, Bukowski had an epiphany when he was introduced to alcohol by his friend William "Baldy" Mullinax, depicted as "Eli LaCrosse" in Ham on Rye, son of an alcoholic surgeon. "This alcohol is going to help me for a very long time," he later wrote, describing a method (drinking) he could use to come to more amicable terms with his own life. Bukowski attended Susan Miller Dorsey High School for one year before transferring to Los Angeles High School. After graduating from high school in 1939, Bukowski attended Los Angeles City College for two years, taking courses in art, journalism, and literature, before quitting at the start of World War II. He then moved to New York City to begin a career as a financially pinched blue-collar worker with hopes of becoming a writer.
On July 22, 1944, with the war ongoing, Bukowski was arrested by FBI agents in Philadelphia, where he lived at the time, on suspicion of draft evasion. At a time when the U.S. was at war with Nazi Germany, and many Germans and German-Americans on the home front were suspected of disloyalty, Bukowski's German birth troubled the authorities. He was held for seventeen days in Philadelphia's Moyamensing Prison. Sixteen days later, he failed a psychological examination that was part of his mandatory military entrance physical test and was given a Selective Service Classification of 4-F (unfit for military service).
During part of this period he continued living in Los Angeles, working at a pickle factory for a short time but also spending some time roaming about the U.S., working sporadically and staying in cheap . In the early 1950s, he took a job as a fill-in letter carrier with the United States Post Office Department in Los Angeles, but resigned just before he reached three years' service.
In the spring of 1954, Bukowski was treated for a near-fatal bleeding ulcer. After leaving the hospital he began to write poetry. The next year he agreed to marry small-town Texas poet Barbara Frye, but they divorced in 1958. Following his divorce, Bukowski resumed drinking and continued writing poetry.
Several of Bukowski's poems were published in the late 1950s in Gallows, a small poetry magazine published briefly (the magazine lasted for two issues) by Jon Griffith. "Sheaf, Hearse, Coffin, Poetry NOW" by E.V. Griffith (Hearse Press, 1996), pp. 23 The small avant-garde literary magazine Nomad, published by Anthony Linick and Donald Factor (the son of Max Factor Jr.), offered a home to Bukowski's early work. Nomads inaugural issue in 1959 featured two of his poems. A year later, Nomad published one of Bukowski's best-known essays, Manifesto: A Call for Our Own Critics.Debritto (2013), p.90.
E.V. Griffith, editor of Hearse Press, published Bukowski's first separately printed publication, a broadside titled "His Wife, the Painter," in June 1960. This event was followed by Hearse Press's publication of "Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail," Bukowski's first chapbook of poems, in October 1960. "His Wife, the Painter" and three other broadsides ("The Paper on the Floor", "The Old Man on the Corner" and "Waste Basket") formed the centerpiece of Hearse Press's "Coffin 1", an innovative small-poetry publication consisting of a pocketed folder containing forty-two broadsides and which was published in 1964. Hearse Press continued to publish poems by Bukowski through the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. "Sheaf, Hearse, Coffin, Poetry NOW" by E.V. Griffith (Hearse Press, 1996), pp. 30, 32
Jon and Louise Webb, publishers of the literary magazine The Outsider, featured some of Bukowski's poetry in its pages. Under the Loujon Press imprint, the Webbs published Bukowski's It Catches My Heart in Its Hands in 1963 and Crucifix in a Deathhand in 1965.
In 1964 a daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski, was born to Bukowski and his live-in girlfriend FrancEyE. She would be his only child.
Bukowski was published by the independent British poetry magazine Iconolatre in 1966. The editor, artist John Wilson McCracken, sent a copy of the magazine to Carl Weissner who would later become Bukowski’s longtime West German translator.
Beginning in 1967, Bukowski wrote the column Notes of a Dirty Old Man for Los Angeles' Open City, an underground newspaper. When Open City was shut down in 1969, the column was picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press as well as the hippie underground paper NOLA Express in New Orleans. In 1969, Bukowski and Neeli Cherkovski launched their own short-lived literary magazine, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. They produced three issues over the next two years.
Bukowski embarked on a series of love affairs and one-night stand. One of these relationships was with Linda King, a sculptor and poet. Critic Robert Peters reported seeing Bukowski as an actor in King's play Only a Tenant, in which she and Bukowski stage-read the first act at the Pasadena Museum of the Artist. This was a one-off performance of what was a shambolic work. Bukowski's other affairs were with a recording executive and a twenty-three-year-old redhead; he wrote a book of poetry as a tribute to his love for the latter, titled, "Scarlet" (Black Sparrow Press, 1976). His various affairs and relationships provided material for his stories and poems. Another important relationship was with "Tanya", pseudonym of "Amber O'Neil" (also a pseudonym), described in Bukowski's "Women" as a pen-pal that evolved into a weekend tryst at Bukowski's residence in Los Angeles in the 1970s. "Amber O'Neil" later self-published a chapbook about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero".Sounes, Howard. Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life. Grove Press, 1998. 275.
In 1976, Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health food restaurant owner, rock-and-roll groupie, aspiring actress, heiress to a small Philadelphia "Main Line" fortune and devotee of Meher Baba. Two years later he moved from the East Hollywood area, where he had lived for most of his life, to the harborside community of San Pedro,Ciotti, Paul. (March 22, 1987) Los Angeles Times Bukowski: He's written more than 40 books, and in Europe he's treated like a rock star. He has dined with Norman Mailer and goes to the race track with Sean Penn. Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway are starring in a movie based on his life. At 66, poet Charles Bukowski is suddenly in vogue. Section: Los Angeles Times Magazine; p12. the southernmost district of Los Angeles. Beighle followed him and they lived together intermittently over the next two years. They were eventually married by Manly Palmer Hall, a Canadian-born author, mystic, and spiritual teacher, in 1985. Beighle is referred to as "Sara" in Bukowski's novels Women and Hollywood.
In the 1980s, Bukowski collaborated with cartoonist Robert Crumb on a series of comic books, with Bukowski supplying the writing and Crumb providing the artwork. Through the 1990s Crumb also illustrated a number of Bukowski's stories, including the collection The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship and the story "Bring Me Your Love".Popova, Maria. "R. Crumb Illustrates Bukowksi" www.brainpickings.org. Retrieved September 25, 2014.
Bukowski was also published in Beloit Poetry Journal.
In May 1978, Bukowski traveled to West Germany and gave a live poetry reading of his work before an audience in Hamburg. This was released as a double 12" L.P. stereo record titled "CHARLES BUKOWSKI 'Hello. It's good to be back.
His last international performance was in October 1979 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and was released on DVD as There's Gonna Be a God Damn Riot in Here. The reading was produced by fan/friend Dennis Del Torre, who rented a venue, Viking Hall, paid Bukowski and his wife Linda to fly up, hired a video crew, promoted the event, and sold tickets. The crowd and Bukowski were very drunk for the event. A heckler was near the stage and can be heard clearly. Del Torre later went to Bukowski's widow, Linda Bukowski, for permission to license it. He thought it was the last reading Bukowski gave, but Linda told him there was another reading after that in Redondo Beach, CA, in early 1980.
In March 1980 he gave his very last reading at the Sweetwater music venue in Redondo Beach, California, which was released as Hostage on vinyl and audio CD, and The Last Straw on DVD, filmed and produced by Jon Monday for mondayMEDIA. In 2010 the unedited versions of both The Last Straw and Riot were released as One Tough Mother on DVD.
Bukowski's work was subject to controversy throughout his career. Hugh Fox claimed that his sexism in his poetry, at least in part, translated into his life. In 1969, Fox published the first critical study of Bukowski in The North American Review, and mentioned his attitude toward women: "When women are around, he has to play Man. In a way it's the same kind of 'pose' he plays at in his poetry—Humphrey Bogart, Eric Von Stroheim. Whenever my wife Lucia would come with me to visit him he'd play the Man role, but one night she couldn't come I got to Buk's place and found a whole different guy—easy to get along with, relaxed, accessible."
In June 2006, Bukowski's literary archive was donated by his widow to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Copies of all editions of his work published by the Black Sparrow Press are held at Western Michigan University, which purchased the archive of the publishing house after its closure in 2003.
Ecco Press continues to release new collections of his poetry, culled from the thousands of works published in small literary magazines. According to Ecco Press, the 2007 release The People Look Like Flowers at Last will be his final posthumous release, as now all his once-unpublished work has been made available.
Bukowski often spoke of Los Angeles as his favorite subject. In a 1974 interview he said, "You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every bitch on the street corner and half of them you have already messed around with. You've got the layout of the whole land. You have a picture of where you are.... Since I was raised in L.A., I've always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. I've had time to learn this city. I can't see any other place than L.A."
Bukowski also performed live readings of his works, beginning in 1962 on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles and increasing in frequency through the 1970s. Drinking was often a featured part of the readings, along with a combative banter with the audience. Bukowski could also be generous; for example, after a sold-out show at Amazingrace Coffeehouse in Evanston, Illinois, on November 18, 1975, he signed and illustrated over 100 copies of his poem "Winter," published by No Mountains Poetry Project. By the late 1970s, Bukowski's income was sufficient to give up live readings.
One critic has described Bukowski's fiction as a "detailed depiction of a certain taboo male fantasy: the uninhibited bachelor, slobby, anti-social, and utterly free", an image he tried to live up to with sometimes riotous public poetry readings and boorish party behavior.
A few critics and commentators"a view of humanity that is cynical" https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/sep/05/bukowski
"is well known for his cynicism"
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/california/articles/an-introduction-to-charles-bukowski-in-8-poems/
"raw, cynical, pockmarked poet"
http://www.prrb.ca/articles/issue02-bukowski.htm
"cynical, sharp-minded and grounded"
https://charles-bukowski.quillsliteracy.org/charles-bukowski-love-poems/
"Ι am quite the cynic I would fall in love with Bukowski as he has the same dark, twisted view on life"
http://renemullen.com/book-review-ham-on-rye-by-charles-bukowski/
"He came by his nihilism and cynicism"
http://brianoverland.com/2014/03/16/writing-in-california-bukowski-vs-moody/
"cynic, sarcastic, pessimistic and disillusioned"
http://www.merchantsofair.com/a-small-neat-journal/charles-bukowski-the-dirty-old-man
"is one of the most cynical authors"
https://sites.psu.edu/caradorercl1314/2014/03/26/this-bukowski/comment-page-1/
"His work is abrasive, honest and cynical"
https://www.spectatornews.com/scene/2008/04/17/in-review-ham-on-rye/
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Timeline of Bukowski's life and publications at "the world's premiere Charles Bukowski website and discussion forum"
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