Charles Bukowski: "A Laureate of American Lowlife"
- Jun 16
- 8 min read
With a distinct bluntness, Charles Bukowski renders a coarse portrait of American life that challenges conventional understandings of struggle, vice, and class.
Photograph by Ulf Andersen, Source: The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/14/smashed
Described as the "Laureate of American Lowlife" by Time magazine in 1986, Charles Bukowski is known to be one of the most controversial American poets. Writing in a raw, linguistic style about women, drinking, and urban drifting, Bukowski’s work elicits a range of accolades and criticisms from both the mainstream and the underground. In this article, we take a closer look at the work and life of Charles Bukowski to understand the elements that make him the creative embodiment of the American underbelly.
The Becoming of a Writer
Bukowski on Santa Monica Beach, Source: Byte Sized Biographies
Born in Germany in 1920 and moving to the US at the age of two, Bukowski grew up in Mid-City Los Angeles and was raised by an abusive father who punished him for the smallest offenses. Being a shy child at school, Bukowski was also frequently bullied by his classmates. In his early teens, Bukowski was introduced to alcohol by his friend – a “transformative” experience that would greatly influence Bukowski’s later life and literary works. At nineteen, Bukowski enrolled in Los Angeles City College only to drop out a few months later at the beginning of WWII. Following the dropout, Bukowski traveled to New York and started pursuing a career as a writer. However, facing countless rejections, Bukowski decided to give up writing altogether and embarked on a ten-year binge, which led him back to Los Angeles in a near-death experience. Picking up writing once more, while continuing with drinking and binging during the late 1950s, Bukowski's writing career would finally find success in Los Angeles’s underground literary scene.
Bukowski did not begin his professional career as a writer until his mid-thirties; however, this late start did not prevent him from becoming one of the most prolific American writers. In his lifetime, Bukowski produced more than 1000 poems, 32 books of poetry, 5 books of short stories, and 4 novels, along with a screenplay named “Barfly.”
Style and Content
Charles Bukowski on the French talk show Apostrophes, September 29, 1978, Source: Le Point
From poetry to fiction, Bukowski’s work is largely autobiographical and written with the least effort of self-glorification. The subjects of his writing have mostly been adaptations of his life experiences. Fictions are especially so. In Ham on Rye (1982), Bukowski narrates a coming-of-age story of a boy growing up in a dysfunctional family, in which his personal experience with his first sip of alcohol is adapted into a scene. Post Office (1971) is based on the two decades during which Bukowski worked at the United States Post Office from 1952 to 1969.
Bukowski is rarely abstract in his poems. Almost all of his poems are written in the narrative style, recounting experiences of encounters, events, or scenarios. These poems often contain no taboos. Coming across as inconsiderate and offensive, Bukowski never shies away from topics that are usually considered inappropriate, such as “bringing down someone’s wife” or “fucking an alarm clock” (phrases taken directly from his poem titles); and such reluctance in the omission of obscenity would be his main source of controversy.
However crude, all of Bukowski’s works are written with a brutal sincerity. With a deadpan sense of humor, Bukowski balances the inexcusable transgressions depicted in his work, yielding a kind of hope and angst specific to the American lower class.
Days Run Away Like Wild Horse Over the Hills (1969)
Bukowski and Jane Cooney Baker, Source: Singularity Poetry
Ten years after publishing his debut poetry collection Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail (1959), Bukowski published one of his first substantial collections that include 92 poems which explore the emotional side of Bukowski. Dedicated to Jane Cooney Baker, Bukowski’s major romantic attachment and muse, in the collection, Bukowski delves into the themes of love and grief. Ten years to Bukowski’s senior, Jane was an alcoholic widow who had been in a ten-year relationship with Bukowski until her passing due to a burst stomach ulcer in 1962. Jane was often considered Bukowski’s one true love and had been the inspiration for many fictional characters including Betty from Post Office (1971) and Laura from Factotum (1975).
While not all poems in the collection are about Jane, in Days Run Away, a number of it were about the grief of Jane’s passing. In “for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough:---,” Bukowski depicts an emotional scene where he remembers Jane through her clothes after her passing. Contrasting to the sardonic wit that is prominent in Bukowski’s later works, the poem is careful in emotion. Along with other poems, the collection reads more like a sensitive projection of emotion rather than an unregulated outpour of sentiments, which is characterizing of his later works.
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (1974)
Original Painting by Bukowski in Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame’s 1974 original publication, Source: Burnside Rare Books
Published in 1974, the poetry collection Burning in Water Drowning in Flame gathers a selection of poems from 1955 to 1973. Unlike Days Run Away, the collection assembles a selection of poems about which are written about the subjects of gambling, drinking, and women. Delivered in an early Bukowski bluntness, these poems narrate transgressions in a matter-of-fact manner. Though always written in free verse, compared to his later works, these poems are longer and more structured in form, more careful of rhythmic patterns.
In the poem “i wanted to overthrow the government but all i brought down was somebody's wife,” Bukowski describes the time where he was “plotted to overthrow a tottering dynasty” with a tailor and a pharmacist only to let the plan fall through and end up “staying with” the wife of the pharmacist, while expecting to get “very drunk again” “very soon.” The poem is energetic and punchy, making being with a woman to be an adequate resolution for the inability to “overthrow the government.” Through a descriptive style and an energetic tone, the poem elicits a range of emotions from the reader without articulating any specific sentiments.
Love is a Dog from Hell (1977)
If there is one can only read one Bukowski poetry collection, Love is a Dog from Hell is the one that they should read. Published in 1977, Love is a Dog from Hell collects poems between 1974 and 1977. Written at what can be considered as the peak of Bukowski’s career, the collection exemplifies a stylist maturity which is consistent with his novels published around the same time.
The content in the collection continues to center around the subject of women and drinking. However, compared to Burning in Water, the verses in the collection are compact and concise, with a marked unseriousness and the spirit of not trying. Compared to the previous collections, the Bukowskian wit and humor are more pronounced in Love is a Dog from Hell. These poems have a little more urgency and less control but continue to be sensitive in between the lines.
In the short poem “cockroach,” Bukowski describes a scene where he finds a cockroach when “pissing” and proceed to kill it with pleasure, as the roach is a resident who did not pay rent, all the while expecting inevitable ending of the roaches “inheriting” Hollywood and the Earth. Through a deadpan humor, the killing of the roach embodies the thrill of control within a life of passivity. Without explicitly articulating any sentiments, the recounting of the event delivers the American lower class’s inability to change one’s environment with a specific type of irony, acceptance, and numbness.
Ham on Rye (1982), Post Office (1971), Women (1978)
Published separately in three different period of Bukowski’s career, Ham on Rye, Post Office, and Women are often seen as a series of semi-autobiographical novels, centering on Bukowski’s alter ego, Henry Chinaski. Although being written and published the last, Bukowski’s 1982 novel Ham on Rye is often seen as the first of the series as it depicts Chinaski’s coming-of-age stories in a dysfunctional household with an abusive father. The story follows Chinaski from his childhood to college, recounting his experience including Chinaski’s first sip of alcohol in his teen years, the mistreatments he has received in school, and his final attempt to find a worthwhile occupation in college.
The novel Post Office is based on Bukowski’s decade long experience working at USPS. The novel portrays Chinaski’s adult life of working as a slacking mail carrier, drifting from bars to racetrack and surviving through women, quitting his job only to come back for it a decade later. With a glazed sense of humor, Bukowski illustrates a character who is fated to be stuck in a cycle, unable to escape despite futile attempts.
Whereas Ham and Rye and Post Office are more closely aligned to the actual life story of Bukowski, the 1978 novel Women deviates from the tendency. Centering on Chinaski’s later life, the novel portrays the main character as a celebrated poet, instead of one who is with fault and controversy. However, the lifestyle of Chinaski proceeds, with the novel narrates the Chinaski’s many complications with various women that he has sexual relations with. Together with the previous two novels, Women speaks to the false promise of the American dream. Always attempting to find fulfillment but unable to do so, the character Chinaski embodies the futile struggles of the American underbelly.
Notes of A Dirty Old Man (1969)
Published in 1969, Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a collection of Bukowski’s weekly columns written for the LA underground newspaper Open City. These articles range from autobiographical to completely fictional, but all staying within the classic Bukowskian style of describing transgressions and unfazed reactions in a matter-of-fact tone.
Gathered in the form of a book, the short writings that were originally published in the newspaper become chapters in one complete novel. While they do not contribute to the “novel” in a traditional sense, in that they don’t come together and create one story that has a clear narrative arc, together, they stress the theme of inescapability that is typical at the core of Bukowski’s writing. The protagonist of the "novel" constantly goes through various tumultuous stages of life, making rash decisions without considering the consequences of his actions. Alongside the chaos created by the protagonist is a suffocating sense of dullness and an inescapable fate of the mundane. Note of A Dirty Old Man confesses that beneath every drunken night, failed relationship, and impulsive decision lies the same unavoidable reality: the dull persistence of everyday life.
The Legacy of Charles Bukowski
Photograph by Marika Bortolami, Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84666356
Bukowski’s writing is for people who understand the humor in pain, the absurdity in struggles, and the optimism in futility. While the content of his work is not something one should aspire to, the spirit of sincerity and bluntness in Bukowski’s style effectively sketches a distinct type of American angst that resonates with many of us. As Bukowski once explained, in all his stories of absurd misery, he never wanted his protagonist or himself to be pitied. Rather, he sees these lamentable moments of dullness with a wry lightness. Within this unfortunate life, joy is revolt, and humor is a choice.
Passing from Leukemia in 1994, Bukowski left the message “Don’t try” on his tombstone. Concise in form, the message not only embodies the Bukowskian creative principle of allowing the outpour of ingenuity, but also left us with one more bit of Bukowskian humor in which we can turn to and have a laugh amidst the mundane proceedings of our life.
“Don’t try,” because life is not that serious.
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